Robocraft:: Build.Drive.Fight

I stumbled onto this game while cruising youtube.

The idea behind the game is you build a combat vehicle and go into matches to earn experience, research, and cash much like you do in world of tanks. You pit your creations against other players. The vehicle pieces are single blocks kind of like building a combat vehicle out of legos then fighting them together.

The game is currently in Alpha and is up for green lighting in steam.

You can visit the site and try to sign up for the Alpha. It is currently a free to play to model with a boost for gains via premium packages.

Players can build both ground craft and flying craft each general design has its own pros and cons.

You can find the game site here

A lets play can be seen here explaining the basics.

Wow no other comments. Surprised there are not at least a few other tropers who play this.

I have played it off and on over the last couple of days.

It is an oddly fun game. There is a learning curve though in designing vehicles that do anything other then roll on the ground. They have three kinds of vehicles.

Wheeled vehicles. Basically vehicles that are like the military multi-wheeled combat vehicles or armored cars. You will see some wacky designs often covered in guns and armor. Really easy to make and drive. They have three kinds of wheels. A drive wheel that gives the vehicle propulsion, a wheel that is just for steering and a wheel that is combination.

Hover vehicles which use ducted fans to hover a little bit over the ground. Balance of weight and placement of your engines is important. These vehicles are fast but if you knock off a few engines or knock off enough of other parts you can unbalance the craft leave them easier to pick off. They need to be lighter then most other vehicles so they can hover quickly.

Flying vehicles. The hardest vehicles to design and arm. They are hard to build a balanced design with and require the use of a special block called a helium block to achieve said balance. The advantage is they can fly high above the battle field out of reach of any ground even hover vehicle weapons. Vehicles armed with plasma guns can sit up high a bomb enemies below. However they tend to be the most fragile vehicles because they need to be carefully balanced and even light damage can send them spiraling out of control to the ground where they are then usually mauled quickly by ground forces they have been harassing.

The game has some physics applied like slick surfaces, center of gravity and weight balance, and even for direction making for some interesting combat experiences.

There are very few weapons and few unique blocks for the time being but that may change in the near future. Additional propulsion systems are apparently also a wish list item as are more block shapes and types.

It has a practice mode where you can test designs and weapon placement of your various vehicles to see how they perform.

There are only three weapon types right now. Turret lasers, hull mounted lasers, and turreted plasma guns which are artillery Ao E weapons.

edited 17th Mar '14 4:51:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Well let's give this a try.

Good luck. The starter vehicle is ok to start with for your first time out. You may want try different position arrangements for your guns though.

Good news! Robocraft has been Greenlit for release on Steam!

edited 19th Mar '14 12:42:23 PM by SonicWind

Not really surprising. In 3 days they went from just starting out to number 10.

Decided to give this game a whirl.

Man, I can't play it to save my life. I suppose that with time I'll manage to get myself a vehicle that won't explode on the spot and one that won't necessarily get me stuck somewhere.

Smgs are overpowered compared to plasma and rails but unlike the latter it hasn't been nerfed. Good job devs.

Plasma is long range artillery and rails are your sniper rifle The rapid fire laser is mid to short range. I had roughly equal success with all three.

As for not being good. It takes practice. There is the arena mode that helps you test your builds and how they handle. It is also good for target practice.

Just had a dubious pleasure of fighting against a rail gun user.

Bugger kept riding in what was essentially a speedy, no-man rickshaw one-shotting folks like it was nothing. I'm gonna need more armored tiles. ._.

@Practice: Well, eventually I should be able to score better results more consistently.

edited 13th Aug '14 11:39:53 AM by FergardStratoavis

Robocraft now has a page! Please help make it not suck!

edited 8th Sep '14 10:38:39 PM by SLthePyro

Lol Battle Carts are amusing. You will see them with plasma cannons as well and they will ram you and then fire. Lead the target and if you are using SMG's fire in bursts to keep accuracy.

So this is pretty much the Robot Wars game I have been wishing for ages? Yes please!

Got one question though, you said there are microtransactions; are they the sensible type (more like Lo L's where nearly everything can be gotten through play and power cannot be bought), the pay-to-win model (eg free players get a peashooter while paying players get a nuke) or the Dungeon Keeper model (game is completely unusable unless you pay)?

Better things can be bought via hard cash, but you should earn enough points to at least have your ride fully repaired for the next bout every match. An average win additionally earns about 10 tech points which is enough to unlock stuff, at least early on.

Its more like World of tanks. You can unlock your kit via game play. As you get further in this takes longer. The number of blocks you can use is limited by your level. The higher the level the more blocks you can build. Tier is determined by the type of vehicle you build and with what blocks. Basically all the parts have a value that goes into a calculation that determines your vehicles tier. You can mix and match tier parts to a point so clever building can net you say tougher armor blocks or more powerful weapon tiers to a point.

You have three types of vehicles. Ground vehicles, hover vehicles, and flying vehicles. All require specific parts. There are also plenty of hybrids.

How scoring works

Basic Rules

Front of Combat Car Notice the two different colors of blocks. The Copper is Tier 2 Armor the Green is Tier 3. The copper are cheaper in both credit cost and CPU cost. Once I have enough RP it will be all Green.

On the back there is a tier 1 Radar and a Tier 3 jammer Inside that raised portion encased in armor blocks is the pilots seat.

It has wheels they are just hidden by an armored skirt

Notice I have level and CPU with x out of X. The level determines your total CPU you can use. Values of the blocks take up CPU. At the bottom there is a bar with some numbers. The one in blue is my tier. Top right you can see my premium cash count, my RP or resource point count. Its low because I just bought a whole bunch of stuff yesterday to build this iteration of Combat Car, and a gold/yellow star with a 3 representing my current tier and how many points I have in it. You can see your total tier points in other menus.

edited 9th Sep '14 4:23:51 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Fr those that haven't tried it, try making a tank that only uses thrusts. Its incredibly fast (but the handling is usually poor) get a good straight area and you can tear up the landscape, and the enemy tanks with some plasma. Trust me, Rocket Sleds, are so incredibly fun to use. ramping off a mountain into the enemy support lines, killing rail walkers an hover medics all running around.

I'm finding this game to be nigh-unplayable beyond T1.

The higher CPU limits means veteran players can skimp on everything else and stick a ridiculously overgeared weapon into their rather bare vehicles, usually some sort of railgun. They then get into spots only vets know and one-shot the "legit" T2 players. When all you have are those dinky, tier-appropritate SM Gs, you don't stand a chance. Being outgunned is in general a very bad issue, but it's past T1 where it gets really ugly.

At this point I'm lucky if I can pick up the odd TP from a T2 match, making progression extremely slow. The only way I envisioned a change in this status quo is by ponying up the cash...grind T1 TP, use Galaxy Cash to convert them into Überpoints and use them to unlock the superweapons or anything else you may want.

Those guys are easy to kill because they notably under armor. They get splatted by anyone paying attention.

That they are, yes...but that's easier said than done when they're snipers or those abominable flying snipers, where locating them is hard enough, let alone destroying them.

SMG does a good job of picking apart the fliers. They are easy to spot. they have that obvious beam or the overt bright coloured flight blocks. Hover chairs are predictable. I love shootign those down.

yeah, I have to admit that there are several points when ascending the tiers where you are obligated to pay to progress. But I understand it: It's how freejam make money.

At the tier you're playing at, once you can get around six SMGs on your machine you can become the designated Anti-air platform. Ground snipers take too long to charge, and plasmas are affected by gravity.

Of course when you get to tier 6 and above all the fliers are slow plasma bombers with electroplating out the wazoo. It's a hard life, being an SMG.

edited 9th Nov '14 8:09:17 AM by SCDifference

The Rail guns are better for picking off slow moving enemies or large enemies because of aim lag and the obvious targeting beam. Plasma is good for that long range lob or in face blast. Lousy against faster movers and fliers. The SMG's though especially when massed do a lot of damage and if you learn to burst fire can be very accurate and generate repeat hits often driving off fliers or forcing them to fly wide. You are more likely to land hits with an SMG. They take a bit more to hammer through the larger vehicles but make good harassment fire platforms.

Started playing the game recently, i love it.

what i love even more is when you are shot into pieces but still manage to kill somebody with a weapon thats still attached. "Down but not Out!!" it just feels so good.

but i think my current most hated enemy are the snipers that use a Helium box, fly above the enemy base and, well, snipe everyone who enters, if you have SMG's or turrets...yeah

The gun chairs yea. Basically flying turrets. I usually snag a few kills just swatting them. Most of them though have very little or no protection and are easy to pick off if you can find them.

I don't want to be a buzzkill at all, but did the "magic" of being able to craft your own vehicles eventually fade?

For me it did.

You can create anything you can thing of, only limited by the parts the game has to offer, but unless you build a shoebox of a tank with all its important components encased in blocks - preferably the armored sort - your vehicle will have some sort of exploitable weakness that hampers its lifespan in the battlefield.

• Using exposed wheels makes your vehicle vulnerable to immobilization. More wheels adds redundancy and makes it harder to fully immobilize your bot, but doesn't prevent it.
• Exposing your pilot makes your bot vulnerable to one-hit kills.
• Hovertanks seem fiddly and unstable. They easily flip over on their own and can be thrown out of control if they lose even one hover blade. Hover blades also have limited lifting ability, compared to wheel loads, which makes it hard to armor a hover tank effectively.
• Haven't gotten to wings or helium yet, so no comments on these yet.

Due to this "revelation" I gave Robocraft some time off. Originally I thought the grindiness and repetitiveness of the game's progress system could be offset by experimentation - and it was - but now that I found an optimal design I don't see much more reason to experiment...

edited 17th Nov '14 3:46:15 AM by angelg55th