Overview
This guide is focused around building flyers and giving an introduction on how to make a relatively sturdy flyer and how it is balanced and then showing how you could take it to Tier 7.
Introduction
Hello!
My names Smashwutz and I am a Youtuber who does primarily robocraft. I have made a (currently) 115 episode long Robocraft Series and have upwards of 50 build guides on my channel.
Alot of you may of come here from my old guide, if so yes your in the right place. The game has changed massively since I last did my flyer guide!!
I have also made 2 other very popular steam guides;
Building Tier 1-5 robots that are pretty much the most solid you can make;
[link]
And building all the Roboshop Robots without using GC;
[link]
So I have been around a bit and the question I get most is “How do I build a Tier X flyer”
All the time, and so I’ve made a detailed video guide for Tier 5 where flying begins and upwards to Tier 7. This flyer is not going to set the world on fire with creativity but what it will do is teach you about balance and thrust and what things to consider when you make your flyer and how to fix the problems!
Enjoy 🙂
Basic Flyer – Tier 5 – Your first one, how to build one and how to balance one
So I am well aware you can put wings on Tier 4 vehicles etc, but thats not where they are meant to, and frankly you won’t be making enough RP to get very far in T4.
Let’s begin with Tier 5, this is where you first get Aerofoils. To begin with them come in two types;
Aerofoils – Long wings which give lift and are stronger up and down
Rudders – Meant for turning and stability
Now you can use rudders for wings, they do work and many people do it. I find a mix of both better.
So now we know that the last real componant to flying is thrust.
Thrusters come in each Tier and each one is stronger and faster, for any aerofoil I would advise you use a Tier higher for at least 2-3 thrusters. So if in T5 use 2 or 3 T6 thrusters, you can buy 1 tier higher remember. Thruster positioning is covered in the video.
Thruster balancing is fiddly, as is cube balancing, watch the video and se what I do, any flyer you make will need lots of practice matches to get it perfect ideally you want;
—— Level when thrust is on full
—— Gliding when all thrust off and no steering
This is easily achievable for most all planes, the more complex the longer it takes to balance.
To fix an issue when thrusters are on you need to move the thrusters around, further forward will push your plane down when thrust is on, further back up. Also higher up pushes the plane down and below the plane up.
To fix a gliding issue if your planes nose tips up when you let go of thrust your ass end is too heavy, remove cubes from here or add to the front and vice versa.
So onto the main part of the guide, were building a stable flyer and it’s easier if I show you the video and then mention the key points;
[link]Right so you’ve watched that, this video acts as two things, firstly information on how flyers are built and stabilized and secondly a step by step guide if you want to build the same one and learn as you go.
I’ll now cover some of the points raised in the video;
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1. Cubes and block: Flyers suffer weakness towards any damage, because there are less blocks you have less room to attach critical componants to, and se losing 10 cubes on a flyer is much more devestating then 10 cubes on a tank.
Always build you’re flyer out of the highest cube you can for your Tier, or at the worst 1 level cbe below otherwise you will be blown apart.
2. The structure: Unless you are experienced you want to mirror your flyer down the middle, what I man by that is build in odds, so length wise make the total length odd. This means you have the same on the front end weight wise as the back end. Of course this changes with componants but it helps if you start the build balanced!
3. Keep it simple: If your reading this you are probably newer to flyers, don’t go crazy, on my channel you can see lots of designs, and flyers cause me the most headache. Stick to simple flyers first and slowly build up.
4. Don’t forget guns; Too often I see incrediably well designed flyers, but then they have 3 guns or barely enough thrust to go up. Your robot fights first then looks pretty, minimum 6 guns on any combat effective robot, some would say 8 and always use enough engines to reach a decent height.
5. Redundancy: You can make your flyer tougher in two ways. Armor and EP’s or Redundancy. Armor and EP is self explainatory and in the video you see me protecting my underside with EP’s. Redundancy is something alot of newer players do not get.
With flyers if you have 4 wings and lose 1 you are gonna struggle, if you have 8 wings and lose 1 you’re still fine. Yes it’s more CPU but how much damage do you do on the floor with a Gunbed barrelling down at you??
6 wings is about the minimum I usually fly with, 8 is great. Some people go to the extreme and use 12. Find the balance.
6. Tactics: So many times I see flyers take off up and straight forward or to the side and forward and are in the enemy half before our tanks have even left the start area. The get shredded and no amount of armor will save you. Stay back at first, you never want to be flying where you don’t have tanks below or ahead of you, your friendly tanks that is!
7. Dive bombing: Looks cool and increases aim, but is dumb as hell, as a SMG tank play I love it when the flyers come down close, they will never one shot my tank but I will shred their wings and then it’s easy. Stay away and bomb from a distance!
If you are confused just build the robot I made by watching my video and play with it in practice mode, you will understand more by doing then reading.
In the video you will see me play a normal game, I don’t do montages this was the game I made after I built the robot. Some games are good, others are bad. Play any vehicle for 5-10 game sbefore you judge it “good” or “bad”.
So now to analyze the flyer we built;
Pro’s
– 6 wings, redundancy and great turning
– Simple design – Glides perfectly and has no balance issues
– Full guns, all 6 guns are strong for the Tier
– Easy to make, theres no trickery here.
– Electroplates below
Con’s
– It looks simple!
– Only 2 layers of cubes
– No gun redundancy
So you can see it’s a balance, you cant have everything, CPU limits it. And you don’t need to build it fully to start. Make 4 wings first and 2 or 3 EP’s and then upgrade it, this is just the final design.
So now how do you progress, well fret not because I have taken this design to T6 as well see below!! (It actually does better than this one!!))
T6 Flyer – Like Tier 5 but better! (7 Kill game wut)
Now onto Tier 6.
So you’ve built the Tier 5 version, you’ve practiced a bit and got a feel for how it was built. Luckily there is nothing to change structurally, you just need to upgrade the componants as seen here;
[link]So alot shorter video because essentially nothings changed, the componants have gone up 1 tier each but nothing else has changed, now thats useful for a guide, so thats two of the trickest Tier’s sorted!!
Again you don’t have to make the whole change instantly, upgrade the guns first then work on the rest!.
Analyzing the plane now;
Pro’s
– Alot better EP coverage, Tier 6 plates in T 6 is strong
– Good weapons for the Tier
– Solid Armor cubes, full pink, most other planes are in Orange
– Mor engines, leads to faster speeds and better redundancy
Con’s
– Not blue cubes!
– Still simple
– Couldn’t quite get 6 T7 guns!
So again a bit of a compromise but alot better, this thing (as seen int he video, 7 kills wut!) really can put out the hurt If it’s flown right!! If you play dumb you’ll just die!
It’s also good because it gives people an easy upgrade route!
Now for Tier 7!
Tier 7 Flyer – Final Stage, beginning of the hell zone!
And now Tier 7… but wait theres an issue!
Due to how things increase in size our other plane no longer fits.
So we have to redesign, but we are sticking to the exact same principles as before and luckily I have fully built it on camera!
[link]So the things that have changed.
It’s longer and wider, this is to accomodate all the Sheilds below and the extra sizes on the guns.
We also have the engines on the arms as oppose to between, again due to the increase in size. But all the principles from before are here.
1. Build in odd’s so you have the same weight at the front as back
2. Balance the thrust
3. Leave space for guns
4. Armor the bottom
5. Build redundancy
This plane has all that but is slightly heavily and so you’ll notice an increase in engines, it’s a fact of flyers, the heavier they are the more engines they need!
This is the final result, again it’s very similar looking and I’m sure someone could work the plates out better but for a first time flyer, it isn’t bad and with practice i’m sure it could do decently most games.
Bear in mind if you prefer faster jets you could reduce its size, low the number of guns and increase engines, and conversly if you want more, reduce aerofoils but bear in mind you’ll have to sacrifice other things!
Conclusion
There we have it, from Tier 5 to Tier 7, nothing complex and a solid plane all the way. All of these can be tweaked and changed and I whole heartedly think you should!
If you enjoyed these please check out my YT channel, it has many many more builds and explainations, pretty much every Tier is covered. My current TIer 10 flyer is based around this design so it does work!!
My channel;
https://www.youtube.com/user/Smashwutz
Thanks 😀