A guide to wall climbers (UPDATED TO INCLUDE WALKERS)

Overview

A guide including an explination of wall climbers along with strategies and styles.

What are wall climbers?

As a basic introduction to wall climbers, lets start with one thing, they move up and along walls. Its pretty simple. Using thrusters, hoverblades, or rutters on a lightweight and agile craft can allow it to “climb” walls. This class has the unique ability of riding along the edge of the map and around large mountains, with out actually flying like a plane, blimp, or sattelite. The most common and reasonable weapon choice for a wall climber is a rail cannon. Using few, higher tier cannons with this class of robot can let you strike from one place, and quickly be on the other side of your enemy without them ever knowing were you were.

Types of climbing bots

In Robocraft there are many classes, and they all have an indefinite amount of sub-classes being made all the time. For wall climbers to make things simple I have shortened it down to four basic types, each has its own pros and cons, along with different driving strategies.

The most common wall climber sub-class is the buggy-climber. This sub-class is usually made of lower tier, lightweight blocks, has few, but high tier cannons, and many thrusters. Since this style uses lightweight blocks, you are weak and need to stay hidden behind rocks and other barriers. As you can easily be one-shot. However this sacrifice allows for higher tier guns, so you have the chance to take out a good amount of people before they find you (if ever). This design relies on downward thrust to create “suction” to a wall, so you can come at it from any angle, hold SHIFT, and work your way up. A good tip for when designing your buggy class climber, is to elevate your front wheels. This makes it so that when you apply forward thrust it is at a slight downward angle. This reduces the number of downward thrusters needed to stick to the wall (which normally slow you down).
I have a guide for my tier 3 buggy climber, located here:
[link]

The second sub-class is the glider-climber. Though these bots are too bulky and out of shape to actually fly, the airfoils and rudders used make you stick to the wall while holding SHIFT just like in a buggy. These are the tank class of wall climbers. Meaning they’re bulky and slow. You may have to get a good run at the wall you’re trying to climb, and go at it straight on to get up. This may also take a few tries more than the buggy, and you will probably fall over a lot, so an alignment rectifier is necessary. In what this design lack in agility, it makes up for in guns and armor. Although the cannons aren’t as high tier as the buggy ones, you can have almost twice as many. The added armor also comes in handy, so if you do get spotted in this craft, you can afford to take a few hits as you make your escape.

Some people may not know this, but a well built hovercraft can climb walls as well! Although it does uses a different technique to do so. For the buggy, and air climbers, you rely on some form of downward thrust or push. In a hover climber however, you don’t actually “climb”. Its more of a run up a wall, kind of if you imagine a fast car going up a ramp. You need a good head start and a straight wall to climb up (or else you’ll go flying off the side of it). When it comes to armor and fire power, this is a good half way between the other two sub-classes. It can have a medium amount of both. When building a hover-climber, it would be best to place your hover-blades high, and add a surplus of thrusters above the hover line.

Walker robots were designed specifically for the purpose of climbing. The walker legs will stick to any surface. Most walking bots are slow, but you can make them in just about any fashion. If you have a really well designed buggy, or any vehicle armor with the wheels exposed, you can simply replace the wheels with walker legs and have a functioning climber. This class is very pricey. The lowest tier walker leg you can buy is tier 7, and cost just over 15,000 RP! Hopefully they will add lower tier walking legs in the future, but for now you have to be above tier 7. Two unique abilites this class has the other three dont, is that it can hang upside-down, and it can jump using space.
WALKER FLYERS are a sub-class of walker climbers. They are a good mix between walkers and interceptors/bombers. Because of this they combine the strategies of a climber and a flyer. It also allows the walker to get to certain places other walkers cant, like pillars.
I have a guide for a tier 7 walker/flyer which you can view here:
[link]

BUGGY-CLIMBER:
-Armor: Low
-Gun tier: Higher than bot tier
-Gun amount: Average 3-4
-Speed: Fast
-Starting tier: 3
GLIDER-CLIMBER:
-Armor: High
-Gun power: Same as bot tier
-Gun amount: Average 6-8
-Speed: Slow
-Starting tier: 5
HOVER-CLIMBER:
-Armor: Medium
-Gun tier: Slightly higher than bot tier
-Gun amount: Average 4-6
-Speed: Moderate
-Starting tier: 2
WALKER:
-Armor: High
-Gun tier: Several higher than bot tier
-Gun amount: Average 6-8
-Speed: Slow
-starting tier: 7

Strategy

For buggie style climbing bots, stealth techniques are ESSENTIAL! This class has extremely high fire power, but it has no armor whatsoever and will not stand in head to head combat. The best thing to do here is find a tall mountain were you can view a large amount of the map, and sill have a small hole or some kind of rock you can hide behind.
You can use the corner of the map behind your teams base, but if a storm of enemy bots come in you have no method of escape! So choose your targets wisely, pick off singles that are far from their team, along with flyers. If you are in a map were you can ride along the edge of it, search for satellites above the enemy base, if you take them out, your team can get in for the capture easier.
Once most of the enemy is destroyed, you can ride alone the edge of the map or the force-field to get those extra base capture points at the last second!
NOTE: If you have a well built buggy-climber, it is possible to ride along the force-field that keeps you from exiting the map, although I do not recommend it because you are completely exposed.

Because gliders are so bulky, I do not advise using the mountain strategy you would use with a buggy, because you are too big to hide behind shelter, and can be spotted by ground troops. Instead find low hills with a flat top, this way you can have an easy shot at any flyers overhead, and be out of range to any enemy bots lower down. BE ADVISED: if you are too close too the edge a plasma bombers arking shot can hit you, so try to center yourself on whatever hill you do find.

Because hovercraft shake so much, This is the only class I wouldn’t recommend a rail cannon for. Its best to use your wall climbing ability to get behind and enemies fire and take them out from their weak point. A good example of this is if your cornered, and an enemy if blocking you in. You can climb up the wall behind you, around were they cant see your movement, then jump down behind them. When approaching a wall as a hover-craft, slow down, do to a medium altitude. Too high and you’ll fall back, too low and you’ll drag on the ground. When going up the slope, maintain a near parallel relationship with the ground level. So that your nose is closer to the wall. When you reach the top, slow down and drop altitude for a smooth transition.

Walking bots can apply the targeting and group strategies of a normal tank. Mobility with a walker is completely unique to any class of robot. Spend some time in practice getting used to this. Spend some time upside-down and on the edge of walls. Make sure to layout your guns to you can shoot while sideways and upside-down. Armor the top of your bot and stick to the side of a mountain like a spider. If you use rail guns, stay at the edge of a hiding place, so you can pull back and reload. If you use plasma cannons, center yourself around many small hills. This way you can move from one to another easily and confuse planes flying above you. A very special aspect of walker legs, is jumping. With SPACE you will make a leap into the air. With a few thrusters and forward momentum, you can use this to leap large distances!

Thanks to Alighierian for your comments on hover-climbers that helped contribute to the guide!
Thanks to GhostWolf_X for your comment on walker-flyers that helped contribute to this guide!