Overview
This guide will give you some tips and tricks to use when building your bot. I will cover tactics in design, and weapon choice. You will also learn about ways to make asthetically pleasing bots. *DISCLAIMER*This guide is dead. I have given up on Robocraft and see no reason to continue working on it. I will leave it up for people to potentially use, but keep in mind that it is likely very out of date.
Vehicles: The Basics
Do you have no idea what to build? How to build effectively? What should I build? Then you’ve come to the right place! I’ll show basic, and advanced info about all the current vehicle types. You may copy and use any designs you see here! And I will continue to update this page until it’s completion. If new vehicle types become available, I’ll make sure to check ’em out and give you the latest about them. Stay tuned for more info, tips, tricks, and guiding pics.
I like to classify vehicle types based upon a few factors:
1-what movement cubes does it have?
2- what weapon class is it?
3- what does it look like?
4-what tier is it?
Now that you know my classification system let’s move on to vehicle types.
Hovercraft: uses hoverblades and thrusters to move.
Plane/Bomber: uses thrusters to move and has at least 2 aerofoils and 3 rudders to glide
Cruiser: uses wheels and thrusters to move
Tank: uses caterpillar tracks and thrusters to move
Helicopter: uses rotor blades and thrusters to move
Sled: uses skis and thrusters to move
Walker: uses walker legs and thrusters to move
Drone: held aloft by helium blocks and maneuver with thrusters
The bot types mentioned above are the basic stereotypical bots you might find while playing. However, there are those who are creative and make hybrids. These hybrids I have found work well:
Hovertank- has tracks and hoverblades. thrusters are optional speed bonus. Climbs very well. Very little hover lifting
Walker Plane- walker legs and plane type blocks. great snipers can be crafted from this hybrid
Sled Helicopter/plane- better maneuvering on the ground but may require thrusters. great aesthetic look
Hovercar- helps eliminate annoying drifting
And here are a few BAD hybrids:
Hover walkers- very annoying when legs grip ground on uneven terrain, results in flipping
Heli hovers- hoverblades prevent rotors from lifting bot
This section is to help you decide what type of vehicle you want (or not. it’s a bit vague right now. remember, WIP). Once you have decided what type of vehicle you want, skip to the section all about that vehicle type.
Cruisers
In this section we will cover cruiser design and weapon choice.
Basic Cruiser design:
beginning with 4 wheels is always the best option,at least 2 of those wheels should be steering. I personally prefer 8 steering wheels for my cruisers.
Placing your wheels are where it can make or break your bot. I would recommend the setup in the picture below.
Higher tiers-
Lower tiers-
Once you have your wheels placed, you can move on to the armoring of your bot. I recommend always to completely cover your pilot’s seat with your highest tier cubes. This will help prevent the cubes beneath your seat from being destroyed, and therefore killing your bot.
Next is an optional step, but one I recommend for a safer bot that will survive longer. Add electroplates. these plates will help shield your bot from incoming attacks. They can however, take up a TON of CPU and can be quite expensive so do watch yourself on placing these. The different shapes will help aesthetically as well as defensively, although I prefer building bots to function well rather than look incredibly good.
Now that you have the chassis built and your electroplates placed, we can choose weapons. I prefer to strap on a few thrusters for extra speed.
I would HIGHLY recommend using SMG’s. These will help you level fastest and tier up faster.
I would begin by placing your SMG’s on any openly available space and then using slopes to create pylons to attach any remaining or additional guns. 6 is the recommended amount of SMG’s for a vehicle.
Plasma Cannons:
These powerful weapons deal massive damage and are effective. However, they have a slow reload time and don’t tier up as quickly.
Railcannons:
These incredibly powerful cannons deal massive damage from afar. They have very slow reload time but if you attack from range, you will be a bit safer. It is recommended that you equip your bot with radar, jammers, and recievers to help find and detect enemines as well as to remain hidden. Electroplates are also recommended to negate attacks from far off enemies who somehow spotted you.
Nanotech Disruptors:
these useful, and not so useful, weapons heal your allies and damage your nearby foes. They have short range and medics are often the weakest vehicles during a match, but they are the best at destroying Protonium Crystals. They take a long while to tier up with.
Tesla Blades:
I would recommend putting these on your cruiser’s front and rear bumbers to deal melee damage, especially put these on medics, SMG cruisers, and snipers as you will get the most use out of them here.
Sleds
These vehicles are very straight forward and basic. However, I don NOT recommend using railcannons for these vehicles! You will not have accurate shots and will die a lot!
To make an effective sled, you need a few basic blocks:
2 steering skis
2 skis
2 thrusters for forward movement
2 thrusters for reverse
at least 1 thruster PER side for better steering.
Some Basic Important info about Sleds…..
these vehicles can be incredibly fast. This is because they are generally lightweight and can be flung around by high tier thrusters. Sleds have no “brakes” to make them stop after you let go of the keys, they stop very slowly by friction, or more quickly by pressing the key for the opposite direction.
Start with a simple platform of blocks. Follow my favorite rule, armor wins, and cover your pilot seat with high tier armor. then attach your skis in the desired positions on the flat bottom of the craft. Fill in extra space below if you desire. Then shape the rest of the bot to your liking. Then select your weapon (best used with SMG’s and tesla blades) and put them on available space. Create pylons to attach any additional or extra weapons if you so desire. Here is an example of a fast and powerful sled, my tier 9 Stormwind Campion:
Another design utelizes a rudder so that you could glide off a cliff. Such as my t10 medic sled shown here:
Planes
These vehicles can be hard to build accurately. However, if you can build a stable plane, your bot can be both fast, and deadly. I would recommend some basic compenents to build a stable aircraft:
2 aerofoils (I would recommend 4)
3 rudders (I would recommend 5)
4 or more thrusters (higher the tier, the better)
Aero rods (optional but creates a lighter and stronger body)
Helium (optional but negates some weight of armor/weapon)
Here is a bare bones setup:
You could improve it by ading more rudders are aerofoils.
I found that the aero rods are great for building an endo skeleton for the chassis of your aircraft.
Here we see 2 long rods, 2 short rods, and 2 shaped rods. They give a simple outline where we could build around if we choose to do so. Below is a completed plasma bomber.
It utilises the aero rods to build the long stretch to the tail, a couple of aerofoil placements, and the basic shape of the pilot’s “pod.” I later added 3 helium blocks for reduced weight and higher speed. I also added some equipment such as radar and recievers.
Let’s talk about what the extra aerofoils and rudders do. I’ll show some variations of the placements for different handling results.
The original setup has increased Barrelroll capabilities and has slower steering. The slower steering means that you may need to use space/shift to steer a bit sharper. This will also allow your plane to travel in a straight line with no variations.
Let’s now try removing the t4 aerofoils. This will increase turning speed, reduce weight, increase speed and decrease gaining/losing altitude speed. You will still be able to fly straight.
Let’s remove the extra rudders and keep the extra aerofoils off. steering is much sharper and more responsive. Flying striaght is dependent upon weight ratios. This bomber has 2 helium cubes on top to reduce weight at the front, and 1 in the middle to balance that.
Ok, now we’ll try moving the main foils back and adding extra rudders at the front. This will slow down your steering and decrease climb rate.
Let’s now try adding the extra aerofoils in the back. this will not change anything from the previous setup.
Now we will try one last setup, the extra rudders in the middle. This will increase climb rate and steering responsiveness.
In conclusion, the first setup is the better one.
Ways to improve design:
increase armor tier
add more helium
increase thruster tier for more speed
increase aerofoil/rudder tier
increase weapon tier
increase aero rod tier
Variations of design:
different weapon placements
different weapon types
angles instead of curves
Tanks
These vehicles are built to eat up damage. I rarely use electroplates on tanks, but I will still show you intelligent ways of placing them.
Start with some basic components:
2 caterpillar tracks (4 is recommended)
Hoverblades (optional but increases speed and climbing ability)
Electroplates (optional but recommended for increased defense).
There are different things you could do with tank treads. If you want increased handling in turn for less armor and weapons, use 2 tracks instead. 4 is the recommended number, but feel free to choose which setup suits you best. 4 tracks will give you more space for more/better armor and weapons. If you wanted to sacrafice a ton of armor, you could even place 6 tracks! But of course it’s all up to you: more armor/weapons or better handling.
Here are some basic placements of treads:
A standard placement-
A more desirable placement (in terms of protecting your seat)-
Here is the tank we will be using to place weapons, armor, and equipment:
Here it is with SMG’s placed nicely so that each one will fire clearly (could use more and of higher tier):
Plasma:
Rail:
Medic:
Now there are other various ways to increase your tank’s defense, by adding more armor layers. This will take quite alot of CPU but will give you extra protection. You could also use electroplates but, they take up lots of CPU and can be more expensive. When having multiple armor layers, use some of your lower tier cubes so that you will have to buy less (or buy super cheap). I might suggest you put the lower tier armor on the outside and the higher tier armor beneath it which will make the enemy chew through the lighter layers first and giving you the opportunity to deal more damage to them. When attaching weapons to this build type attach them to higher tier armor cubes so that they will have a less likely chance of being severed off instead of being reduced to 0 health (which gives you more time to use that cube). Another handy thing about putting lower tier armor on the outside is that you MIGHT fool enemys into thinking that you’ll be an easy target with say, tier 2 armor in tier 6. But of course, you could also have multiple laers of high tier armor as well to have harder to chew through layers. This type of armoring could be used on most bot types but can only be used by players of higher levels!
Helicopters
Helicopters are some of the most versatile machines in robocraft. They can fly high and low, fast and slow and can be pretty useful with just about every weapon type.
Basic components:
2-4 rotor blades (optimal 4 in lower tiers because you’ll probably have a heavy chassis to lift)
small number of your prefered weapon type (tesla blades are less effective on helicopters but it’s your bot!)
Thrusters (optional speed/handling increase)
helium cubes (optional weight reduction/lift increase)
electroplates (optional but recommended defense)
Here I have constructed a t9 plasma bomber that wasn’t originally designed to work well. It has 12 plasma cannons, 12 aerorods, and 103 t9 cubes. as well as 2 t9 rotors. As for electroplates, it has 16 t4 ones. This simple design has eliminated rails and medics easily. It struggles with SMGs and Megabots, and is especially weak against plasma.
Hovercraft
Hovercraft are often very unstable and constantly flip. However, there is a work around. If you add extra blades for more stability, you can build an almost unflippable craft.
This simple design is an easy way to protect some core components while still having stability.
Begin with a line of cubes down the center of your garage. Then retrieve some slopes to begin with the circular shape. In this design t7 and up blades fit the shape best.
Repeat this shape on both sides and the back of the bot. Then add more hoverblades on the edges of the shapes to give maximum stability.
If your bot is going to be t9 or t10, then add an extra cube to the protective casings.
Some drawbacks to this stable design is that you may not be able to fit as much as you want (this can be easily fixed by changing the design a bit), and it can be very costly since 12 hoverblades (as seen above) are the most stable.
Walkers
These vehicles are versatile and make exceptional snipers. I would recommend that you combine aerofoils and rudders so that you can arrive at a cliff much faster.
Basic components:
4-8 legs are recommended
2-4 aerofoils (optional)
3-5 rudders (optional)
start by placing some cubes down the center line. You may increase the width if you choose, but it may inhibit your climbing ability on ridges. I usually use 8 legs, but you may use more or less. I would definetly use at least 4. Here is an example of 4 walker legs placed on the side for a basic designed walker:
The bumpers are there for you to potentially place electroplates or armor to increase defense.
Drones
Welcome to a most unique and hard to build bot type. These strange “machines” flaot about with helium or fly around with thrusters. Great snipers can be forged on the backs of helium by crafting a drone. Make sure you have a few thrusters so that you can do these basic movents if you plan to float:
turn to correct aim after firing rail/plasma or get better angle with SMG’s
travel up to max altitude faster
travel down into fusion shield to heal or avoid attack/reach cover from ground vehicles.
(if wanted try to add thrusters for movement though it can be extremely difficult)
Please NOTE: these vehicles are best at floating high in the sky and are often sitting ducks. Late game you might also find yourself having difficulty getting up to altitude (if your team is losing) or getting kills (if your team is winning).
When building a drone most normal shapes are useles. Make sure you have plenty of helium and aero rods so that you can float high and have some protection. Landing hits will be difficult so plan accordingly (have extra bot to earn more money or continue to develop your drone to perfection).
Here are a few design ideas:
(need to buy more helium!! 😛 I’ll edit this soon!)
Weapons
SMG: Sub Machine Gun- standard weapon in combat and deals massive damage in a short amount of time. Up to 6 fire at once, but 8 is a good number to have. Gunbeds can be powerful, but need to be defensive as well.
Plasma Launcher: another common weapon that deals large damage in bursts and even has an area of effect that deals damage as well. up to 6 fire but any number attached will do some good. Commonly found on planes and Helicopters.
Railcannon: Snipers- a weapon found tiers 4 and above. Very powerful and great for long range sniping. Has a very long reload time though. Walkers are best for those who find railcannons to be their niche.
Nanotech Disruptors: heal guns- a rare weapon tiers 6 and above. very good at destroying protonium crystals and can both heal and damage allies/enemies. Hverblades and Skis are very good with these expensive weapons. A side note on medics is that they earn rp and tp much quicker (not to mention that healing someone to 100% health has more rewards than 1 kill with any other weapons). You can also level very fast and earn more CPU.
Tesla Blades: these uncommon weapons deal mid ranged meele damage and are useful when affixed to a medic as they can deal more damage and get kills easier. But they make a great addition to any bot nonetheless. Great on hovers nd sleds but can be used anywhere.
Helium Cube usage
These cubes will provide a slight lift from being inflated with helium. These cubes are useful when reducing the weight of your bot. However, helium takes up extra CPU and increases drag. Drag will slow down and can cause drones to flip easily. But, if you can pack a few extra thrusters onto a plane, the speed reduction can be negated easily.
Armoring your bot
When protecting your seat (and functional cubes in general), armor cubes are the most useful. There will be some functional cubes that are more important, such as weapons, thrusters, aerofoils/rudders, thrusters, and wheels to name a few. Of course, you could use electroplates, however, they can take up most of your CPU and cost boat loads of raw, hard earned cash. This is why I prefer to use armor cubes as they take up little CPU and can be used to make multiple layers of thick armor. When armoring, you should place your highest tier cubes around your seat and at the attachment points for your more important cubes (especially when creating pylons to attach weapons). If you decide to add a few electroplates, you should place some in the front (where most of the incoming fire will come from) and on top of your bot, particularly above the seat (where bombers will be firing at). You could also add some on the sides if you like broadside attacking or are afraid of being attacked from there. Or you could also add some the the rear of your bot so that you could attack from both the front and back or so that you will have some protection when fleeing back to a medic or your shield.
Protecting your bot
There are some electroplates that fit well together, such as t7 and t6. They fit nicely leaving an opening to place a weapon or two.(I am not yet tier 10 or have t9 electroplates but will update this section when I have some of these. after all, this is a wip).
The first electroplates available are tier 2. I personally don’t like these as much because their shape is odd and doesn’t quite fit the same way others do. They are nice in tier 2 but quickly become obsolete in higher tiers. I also don’t like t5 plates because of their odd shape and they are hard to accurately and effectively place. Here is an example of t2 plates in use:
t3:
t4:
t5:
t6:
t7:
T7 and T6:
t8:
t9:
t10:
tx-1:
Aesthetics
We shall begin with the curved cubes. I think they give a more “aerodynamic” feel to the bot and prefer to use them on flying machines. I will show you how to improve the look of the example bomber (placing not changing).
first, build the chassis of your bot and place your weapons. Here we have removed the curves to begin again. I will start by using symmetry to place the curved slopes.
Now we will add some curved inners and tetras to decide where we place the rest of the curves.
Here we have added enough curved inners and tetras to know if we need any more slopes. Now we will move onto the back of the pod.
Now we have completed the back of the pod and can continue to the back of the entire vehicle.
With the straightforward placements complete, we will move on to add some tetras.
In case you had not noticed, there was a line of cubes running along the middle to add a more realistic design element as well as more accurate placements for weapons. We will fill in this ridge by placing slopes to give the bottom of the plane a elegant and curved feel.
Now we have completed the aesthetics of this plane! This particular design uses 1031 CPU, so aesthetics may not be important if you are lower level.
Now we will be completing aesthetics for a tank. This tank will be using the non curved blocks.
Here we have a brand new tank ready to be aestheticised.
Now we have added slopes to provide a basis for adding more complex cubes.
Here is the front bumper after adding more cubes
The rear bumper
the pilot’s “pod”
Now you can go experiment for yourself!
Conclusion
This is the end of the guide, for now. Freejam is constantly updating their game to include new features and cubes. As these cubes are released, I will try to get my hands on them and bring you the latest news in bot building technology! I hope you enjoyed and/or got some useful tips from this guide. Any suggestions? Comment them below! I’ll try to include them if I see fit and as quickly as possible! Thanks for reading…
Unfortunately, Freejam’s latest update, “Team Orders” has put many new restrictions in place so that new players can play easier. However, for those of us who were around before the edition of a new game mode, these restrictions prevent us from having a bit of fun with art bots and whatever other crazy inventions we may have. I will be working this guide to add some design overviews in the future but they have been delayed by these restrictions. Stay tuned for more updates…..