a brief, slightly inaccurate timeline of robocraft

Overview

this guide is to help you understand old robocraft videos!

the point of this guide

so you dont whine in a steam forum thread asking why you cant use t0 helium to make a satilliette like aavak did

the dinosaur days

when robocraft first came out, late 2013.

there were boxes, wheels, and smgs. tiers were still only half of a thing, but you wont be looking here for tutorials on anything.

expansion+integration

here most of the cubes we consider common things to build with (hovers, rails) were introduced around this time (early 2014- summer 2014).Also the pointless mechanic that everyone hated joined the fray, repair costs. tiers became much more like they are now, each component has:

a basic version for its tier (t2 smg)
an “s” type to help push you through a tier (t2-s smg)
you were intended to pass through each tier buying all of these components.

game balance: while many new weapons were added during the game in this time frame, smgs were clearly the best, as they didnt have reload, and could deal with ground and air units. rails, during this era, had far shorter charge times(in the league of plasma), which made armored “blimps” the best aircraft choice. Oh, and if you used wheels, you were a tank. none of this cruiser crap.

if you should read 1 part of this guide, choose this.

in august 2014, FreeJam made omponents be unlocked in later tiers, so you only would have smg’s and wheels in t1. this was mainky due to:

cpu constraints on things like t1 aircraft, lack of urgency to progress through tiers, and the like. so whenever you see a t1 rail, you cant have it, that part is outdated.

so at this point, we had

wheels, hovers, thrusters, aerofoils+rudders and

smg’s, plasmas,rails

just consider how far the game has come in such as short time.

game balance: rails became useless somewhere around here, increasing aircraft numbers, smgs are still the undisputed best.

the new stuff era, part 1

we see a ton of components join the battle, first nano’s and legs. these two led to a few things: 1.a resurgence of rails, as tey lended themselves to the new legs, and 2. much longer battles, where 1 tanky medic could stop those old wait 5 mins at 19% and get killed guys. the infamous repair mechanic get scrapped here too.

in addition, tracks get added to the game, which slows it down further.

around this time, robocraft would feellike the same game to someone who started playing yesterday now.

game balance: smgs are still king

new stuff era p2/megabots, game balancing

while this section covers the forseen future and is the current era, what really matters is that smgs are no longer undisputably the best weapon. rails have recieved a long needed buff and smg’s accuracy is now limited. if you intended on raking in the plasma bomber kills, rails are now the better choice.

oh yeah, megabots, those are here too.