[OUTDATED] Robot Design

Overview

Here is a guide giving advice on your robot design. We will look at designs for robots in t1-t4, t5-t7 and t8-t10. We will also be looking at efficient use of armour and weapons.Got an epic screenshot of your (or someone else’s) robot? Send it to me and i will display it in our community section!7000+ Unique visitors and over 170 current faviroutes! Thanks guys 😀

Introduction

Welcome! I’m glad you have taken interest in this guide. I can think of 2 reasons why you’re reading this….
1) You find it interesting
2) You need help making an awesome robot
Either way, you’ve come to the right place. I aim to make this guide as simple, interesting and informative as possible.

Before we contine please note this isnt a guide on how to make a robot, it is the asethics side of robots. I will talk about how you can armour your robot and make it look awesome at the same time!
This information will be split into 3 main sections:
1) Tier 1-Tier4 Design (Basics)
2) Tier 5-Tier 7 Deisgn (Fliers, Hovers and Blimps)
3) Tier 8- Tier 10 Design (Epic decoration)
4) Armor Techniques
5) Armor Physics (WORK IN PROGRESS)
All of these sections will talk about placement of blocks, usage of special blocks and each type of weapon class.

If i have spare time on my hands I might make a new section talking about the tech tree and other stuff.

In summary, this will be a very detailed guide. Dont be sad though, because if you’re looking for ideas i will be providing images too… Both of my own robots and random images from the internet to help… (That will be in the very last section)

Without further ado… lets go!

Tier 1 – Tier 4

So, you must be quite new to the game.

I cannot stress enough, this is simply design ideas, dont complain about the things such as ‘Oh its too small’ or ‘Oh no i cant put my pilot seat!’ Because i am not talking about that in this area. For armour look in the armour section.

The good thing about being a low tier is that you can use as many tier 1 blocks as you want, because they are free! You could do something like this…..

Or maybe a bit more… Un-childlike and more epic…

Feel free to use any of the designs here!

I have to say, one of the most trolling designs ive come across was submitted as a guide.. Here it is.
[link]
Please note, this is only a joke… But sometimes its fun to have a mess around 🙂

Ok, so lets go to the details. I will use my star trek design as a baseline.

So as you can see… the robot looks pretty badass. However there is alot more than what meets the eye.
When i started making the design, it wasnt a 5 minuite quick-build. It took at least 45 minutes to complete. Thats the first thing you have to consider. If you want a good looking robot you have to put effort and time into it… and RP…. in some cases alot of RP (Thats higher tier stuff though!)
When you have made the basic layout of your robot, you must consider the placement of your wheels/hoverblades/seat/weapons etc. If they are in the wrong place then bad things happen…
For example, when i first tested this design, there wasn’t enough hoverblades at the front and therefore…. well it went bottoms up… literally…

(That is the front scraping the ground – I couldnt move very far before getting killed)
When placing the seat you want to make sure its well protected… Make sure it isnt visible to the enemy…. Usually when i start a new design i place the seat first and spam a bunch of blocks around it…. you can guess how effective that is…….. (Not very)

(That was a joke)
Seriously though… protect your seat! Look at the armour section to see more effective means of protecting your robot.
If you are using a land robot (wheels) then consider the placement of your wheels. Personally i would do something like this:

(That is only a layout. dont do that as a robot….)
Doing this sort of design allows you to turn quickly (Turning wheels at back and front).
The only problem with something like this is that it is too narrow. That is why you should always use an alignment rectifier (The flippy special block – as i call it). This block allows you to put your robot back on its feet (wheels) if you flip over.
Another way to avoid flipping over with wheels is to make it wider. This means that sharp turns wont do that…

When placing your weapons make sure they are in a good place. Make it so that they can shoot where you need them to shoot…. not just directly ahead…
Instead of having the guns like this:

Why not like this? You can still shoot in front, but also all around you.

Your weapon type defines your class… Using SMGs makes you a smg gunner…. Obviously. My personal recommendation when using SMGs is to have around 5/6 of them. This gives you the fastest rate of fire.
You also have access to the Plasma Cannon at tier 3. The more plasma cannons you have, the longer the reload. So dont put unnessicary Plasma Cannons in useless places. With a hover robot have them at the bottom, with a land robot have them at the top… Simple, is it not?

To summarise this section:
1) Try to use your blocks sensibly.
2) Protect your seat.
3) When making a good looking design, take your time.
4) Dont make it look good and have no armour…… Do both!

Now to the next section!

Tier 5 – Tier 7

So, you’re t5, 6 or 7? Brilliant! You’re climbing the ladder! So at this point you would’ve unlocked ALOT more, Excited? You should be!

Well what do yo do with all this new stuff and old robots? Well start with using the best cubes you can find. Instead of having your old cubes…..

Upgrade them to the latest new tech!

(Already Looks soooooo badass!)
However, something’s missing… Oh yes! Better weapons! Now that you have reached this tier you can access the Rail Cannons. These are good for long range combat… And I’m sure you have already raged at being 1-shot from the other side of the map!


Ok, what else have you unlocked? Walker legs? Those things are awesome! (Tier 7)

Here’s a few tips about the walker:
1) You can jump! (Spacebar)
2) You can crouch! (Shift)
3) You can climb up walls!
4) You can even hang upside down!
5) When using a walker, you should always have at least 3 legs, any less and you become a crab – they’re not brilliant.
6) Make sure you have a backup plan in case you lose your legs! Ejector seat? Wheels? Hover?
(And that’s why they’re awesome)
I’m pretty sure you’ve seen a few fliers around. Not the helium ones, the wing ones (helium ones are called Blimps or ‘drones’).
The wings and rudders can be a bit tricky. If you get it wrong then you will end up flying in circles, lterally. In order to make a suitable flier you must consider balance. It is a bit similar to the hover robots. No balance = no good. The positioning of the seat also determines your centre of gravity (Highly illogical, but it was FreeJam’s idea to do that) So keep that in mind too.
So how do you balance? Whenever i do it i have a rough idea on my design. Wings at the front, Rudders at the back and a tail. Take a look below:

See, a flier. There are weapons but i will speak about that a bit later.
When deisgning your flier you must seriously make it heavily protected, not like my one. This is because you are flying, and it is easy to spot you. Just remember: More mass = More required speed and more work on balance.
There is more than one way to use wings. There is sleds…
[link]
Hybrids…
[link]
And my personal fav- Dragonflies
[link]
Each of these guides explain how to put together a flier (well something similar at least) using wings and/or rudders. Take a look!
(I’ve just realized how much you unlock…)
Nano…Nano…Nano…
Did you hear that? It sounds like the crazy lead scientist ‘Professor Simmons’.
Does anybody remember that reference? (It was from RoboNews)
Yes now i am talking about the Nanotech Disruptor – You unlock them at tier 6.
So what do these weapons do? it’s pretty straightforward really – They destroy things (the opponent) and heal things (teammates). You can lock onto a damaged teammate using Right Click. However you cannot lock on to anything else.
Enough of that – what is a good medic design?
I have actually found a guide about medics and how to use them. However it doesn’t talk about how to make them look badass and work like a charm. So just how do we do that?
Unlike the other robots, this robot needs more work done to it. You cant just put blocks on it and except it to work. You will be in the heat of battle with little armour and a weapon that does 1/3rd the damage of an smg of the equivalent tier. You need…. Electroplates! Look in the Armour Techniques section for that.
Its time for a picture…. Ive written way too much here – Here is the way my medic looks:

As you can see, it looks cool. Thats because of the streamline look that i have given it. When looking at design you should try 1 of 2 types of design:
1) Aerodynamically Streamline (Had to say it like that)
or
2) Decked out with no protection.
A good example of the second one is THE REAPER (a robot that FreeJam designed during the hallowfest) It looks badass – yet every time I get 1 shot with it. This is it in case you’re wondering:

Phew, i think thats it for this section….. Lets move on.

Tier 8 – Tier 10

(Now we’re hitting the leaderboards, baby!)
Hello again. If you’re here then you are obviously looking at what you can do to improve your robot even further… Well as far as effectiveness goes – look at the armour techniques section (As usual).
However… If you are bored of using the same design over and over and over and over again… You are in the correct place. Here i will devote ALL of the text (and pictures) into some awesome ideas that you can use – no permission required!
So what are you waiting for? Drop that old robot and buy a new one today… Kinda.

Lets take a look at one of my old designs… I will be improving it as we go along this guide.

Please note- I have tested this design and it works, so freel free to copy…… even though its rubbish
Now, lets revamp it shall we? First of all, the size…

Those blocks are weak… Fix #2 on the way

Ive gone for a medic look. Ok, next is armour

Ok, so now we need to sort out our way of transport

I want a faster turning speed. However instead of using engines i will use rudders because it looks good like that

It looks alot better now. So lets sort out the placement of weapons.

And there you have it, an upgraded robot! This is the simplest way to upgrade robots. Remember
Bigger
Stronger
Faster
Weaponised

Or BSFW for short 🙂

However thats not enough for me. (Yeah…. i know…)

There are many other stuff you can do to have fun in robocraft. One of which would be pixelated art. Yeah you heard me. Try something awesome, and if you have something awesomely pixelated art like – tell me, it could end up here as an example (I cannot do it. so yeah…)

See… theres tonnes of stuff you can do, let you imagination go wild….
Personally, i like to do boss battles, fliers get shot easily. At tier 8-10 if you have friends to play with you will kick ass.
Why are you still reading this? Make a crazy robot, go out there and be a badass!
Got a crazy design? Send it in, maybe it will end up here!

Another thing, try using images to help you.. Maybe look on google or something. Or – take a look at our community design section, theres some good ideas there!

Damage Physics

This is very hard to explain, so bear with me.
Also, this involves maths… You have been warned.
NOTE- The figures in the calculations are highly inacurate and are for demonstration purposes only.
I will be talking about the way that the robocraft damage system works. In order to do this there are two images involved.
Lets start with the basics.
We have a line of blocks, as shown below.
When 1somebody hits the front of this line and deals 100 damage, then the damage will go until it is ‘nullifued’ (Equal to 0).
So lets look at this picture.

As you can see there is 100 damage going to the first block, each block provides 10 resistance, with this in mind the damage will go down to 90 when its hits the next block, this will continue to damage and destroy blocks until it reaches 0.

Now to the more complicated stuff…

Lets say the damage reaches a block that has more than 1 adjacent cube. We must now work out how where the damage goes and how much damage goes there. To do this i have devised a formula.

S = E / A
S = Split Damage
E = Entry Damage
A = Adjacent Blocks

Split damage is the result of the leftover damage transferred to the other adjacent cubes
Entry damage is the total amount of damage that hits the current cube.
Adjacent blocks are blocks that are connected to the current cube

Now take a look at the

Armour Techniques and Components

Electroplates:
When FreeJam released electroplates i had only just got the game, i didnt know how useful they were… until i reached tier 7.
Electroplates are AMAZING at absorbing damage. They are definately a requirement from tier 7 and up. Not only that but they also help with your tier upgrades.
So how should you use electroplates?
Remember my medic from the tier 5-tier 7 section? Here it is:

You can see i have just covered the whole thing with them. There is more though. I learned that electroplates will take 1 shot from a plasma/rail gunner of the same tier before being deactivated. (I learned the hard way…) Therefore it is completely pointless using a low tier electroplate in a high tier match. a way around that is to use lower tier electroplates to hide the not so visible areas.
Another way to use the electroplates is to layer them. I know this sounds weird but when i lose an electoplate – i like to have backup plans…

(Look at those layers!)
I think the biggest problem when it comes to design is that some people dont know how to use electroplates. Just test with them. Trial and error. (It is the way of the robots)
Armour Spacing
Not as common as the Electoplates, but still quite common.
The name says it all. You space out your armour. This can only allow the direction of damage to go left/right (to adjacent blocks). The idea of this is that it takes longer for the damage to reach your inner defences, thus you live longer. Here is what it looks like:

(This is only a small design… ive seen it in a much larger scale before!)
This armour is only effective when damage is coming head on to it. So if armour comes from the side, well its not very good news for the robot now, is it?
The TriForce Technique:
The TriForce technique is used to redirect damage. In the long run it is very helpful to make your robot more durable. It is made using Prisims, tetras and inner cube blocks.
So how does this work? Here it is in action….
Thanks to TheZ3roCool for these images!
It is a bit hard to see like that so i made a small edit:
Better? As you can see this armour uses tetras to help redirect the damage. Look carefully, there are only 2 sides that connect to adjacent blocks. Here’s a better view:
See! So instead of directing the damage to the blocks behind it, the prisims will direct the damage to blocks above and next to it. This is the way damage is redirected.
A crapload of blocks:
(This is more of a joke, but its possible)
The picture says it all….

Community Designs & Screenshots

Got an awesome design? Want it here to help inspiere others? Tell me! I will add it here!
TheZ3roCool – Tier 8 Flier

Bricker9257 – Tier6/7 Hover Medic
Zachdogg
FSoG Watson
.iG 狂犬
Cobleguy
Dont forget to send your designs!

Credits

I would like to thank the following people:
Vappikkamehu (Steam Username)
For giving me the idea of making this guide 😀
TheZ3roCool
Providing images and information about Tri-Force for me 🙂
Bricker9257, Zachdogg, FSoG Watson, .iG 狂犬, Cobleguy
Submitted their own designs to the community section and made it!
People who made the guides that i have refered to
They deserve all the credit for their own work – thanks guys!
Freejam
The developers of RoboCraft (Great game btw… you should get it xD)
You (Yes you, the reader)
Thanks for reading! If you found this helpful please ‘Thumbs Up’
This list may expand. probably will.

Coming up:
– MegaBots, what are they?
– A guide to bosses.

Will be released when the next version of Robocraft is updated!