Overview
Much of the information on the wiki for the game is now highly inaccurate, and there is much confusion as to what the best builds are. Every weapon has pros and cons and while some are more powerful than others, they are all better in some situations and have advantages and disadvantages. This guide also includes movement types because they factor heavily into strategy and weapon choice, and aims to give some clear and logical reasoning behind what each type of weapon and movement is good at and what they aren’t.
Introduction
Post epic loot, a great deal of the game’s wiki pages have become outdated. Tiers were removed, numbers changed, and new weapons added. Many strategies no longer apply… there is no longer such a thing as a pilot seat or an overtier weapon as just two examples. As an over level 100 player who started on the day Epic Loot came out, I plan to explain each weapon’s stats and my thoughts on them in this guide.
This guide is aimed at either new players or older ones who may be returning to the game post Epic Loot and might be feeling a little lost without tiers, as well as players who are unsure what the best weapons and weapon combinations may be. This is why movement types are also included. Propulsion factors heavily into some weapon choices… a slow bot is going to have more trouble making use of shorter range weapons, a flying bot will have trouble using sniper rifles effectively most of the time, and so on.
Weapons
Now on to the meat of the guide. Every weapon type will have a stat block associated with it, allowing for easy reference of a weapon’s damage and more importantly, things like damage per point of power consumed to fire and damage per second with the weapon’s fire rate. After this I will add descriptions, as every weapon has a few aspects that are very important which do not fit well as a simple number.
Stats for each weapon will follow the following format:
Weapon Type
Damage – Self explanatory, the damage per hit on the weapon’s tooltip.
Power – Power consumption per shot, also on the weapon’s tooltip.
DPP – Damage Per Power. Basically how much damage each shot does per power consumed. This stat is more important than DPS once the power meter is drained, as the Fire Rate will then drop to however long it takes for enough power to regenerate to fire again. As such, it is more important for a weapon the more power it requires per shot.
FR – Fire Rate from weapon tooltip for a single gun. Tends to be more important for high CPU weapons, the ones that cost between 250 and 300 CPU to equip.
NFR – Nominal Fire Rate from weapon tooltip. Often more important for “normal” guns that are usually equiped in multiples since they only take 30 CPU at most per gun.
SDPS – Single Damage per Second. Damage done per second if only a single gun is equiped.
NDPS – Nominal Damage per Second. At the gun’s nominal fire rate, the amount of damage it can inflict per second.
Description – My description of the weapon’s usage, generally containing important notes on its function. Every gun type tends to work differently in practice and so this is often more important than the above stats for what type of bot or situation a gun is good for.
Weapons that have tiers will list their lowest tier, highest normal tier, and the “super” version that costs between 250 and 300 CPU to equip if the weapon has one. For example, the laser machine guns will list stats for Wasp, Disintegrator, and Leviathan in that order. In general the super tier versions are going to be much better than anything below them, but remember the CPU cost to equip them is also going to be extreme… at most the nominal gun count of any normal tiered gun will require 180 to use, and for most guns the nominal count is unlikely to be useful due to energy costs so 120 CPU for 4 is plenty. Meanwhile weapons like the Laser Leviathan and Plasma Goliathan take a whopping 300 CPU each, and tend to take up a large amount of space on the bot as well.
The 300 CPU weapons are definitely worth using but equiping more than 2 is ill advised as otherwise the bot’s defense will be next to nothing, especially if you plan to use any of the special modules… the Power Booster is a noticable DPS enhancement and all of the other Legendary special modules are incredibly powerful when used correctly, but they cost between 285 and 310 CPU to equip themselves, also severely limiting options for other things on a bot. This is why the absolute most you want to equip even at level 100 is two 250-300 CPU weapons and one module of some sort once you have them. Now on to the meat of this guide.
Laser Machine Gun
Laser Machine Gun (Laser Wasp to Laser Leviathan)
Damage – 3,798 / 14,384 / 24,078
Power – 0.749 / 3.131 / 4.872
DPP – 5,071 / 4,594 / 4,942
FR – 6.35 / 1.69 / 2.42
NFR – 15.87 / 4.22 / 3.03
SDPS – 24,117 / 24,309 / 58,269
NDPS – 60,247 / 60,700 / 72,956
Description – The starting short ranged weapon looks impressive for its damage per power rating. However, its targeting is some of the worst… either you have the worst DPS of any weapon at long to mid range, firing every few seconds to keep it accurate, or you get very closed to an enemy bot where the spray pattern will mostly let your shots hit. The lack of accuracy also means it is difficult to target key components of most enemy bots, and the damage will spread out over the whole bot as your guns pepper it.
This means that laser machine guns are most useful as a secondary weapon for short ranged combat. They can be combined with a longer range weapon and switched to when other bots close in, or a higher burst damage weapon may be utilized and followed up with machine gun fire once power is drained due to low power use and high damage per power point used to fire.
Below the Laser Leviathan, DPS and power per damage tends to stay relatively close through the tiers. The main benefit of higher tier versions is that their damage per individual hit is higher, making them more likely to blast off key components such as weapons with a trade off of firing less frequently. This is the main reason to use the higher tiers, although it can often be beneficial to strike a balance between firing speed and damage per hit… my personal experience is that the higher firing speeds are better at taking out towers and more guns are harder to completely disarm, leading me to prefer the Blue versions of the gun, especially Blasters.
Plasma Launchers
Plasma Launcher (Plasma Pulser to Plasma Goliathan)
Damage – 12,615 / 37,845 / 90,827
Power – 5.591 / 14.373 / 27.547
DPP – 2,256 / 2,633 /3,297
FR – 0.6 / 1.39 / 2.08
NFR – 8.33 / 8.33 / 8.33
SDPS – 7,569 / 52,605 / 188,920
NDPS – 105,083 / 315,249 / 756,589
Description – Plasma has very high burst damage but tends to chew through your energy supply faster than any other weapon. It loses no accuracy from moving or firing, so a skilled player can land shots at an impressive distance. This requires practice however as the shots are effected by gravity and will arc down over time. They do have an explosive radius, but the shot still needs to at least hit terrain near an enemy and the damage delivered will be considerably less than a direct hit. This can sometimes be useful however for intentionally shooting beneath a bot to hit components on their underside or hitting the wall or ground next to a bot that has taken cover to deal a bit of damage and stop their healing.
Because of the shot arcing, plasma is a very skill based weapon. It has the best burst damage of any weapon other than an Ion Distorter, but the power consumption causes its DPS to drop sharply after the initial volley. Careful aiming and skill can even hit a sniper at max range. The high burst of damage and lack of any accuracy loss while moving also makes them popular weapons for bots that use wings, as they stay moving constantly in the air and tend to be much more vulnerable to shorter range weapons on the ground. These bots are known as “plasma bombers” and often do quick fly bys, inflicting heavy damage from above to cripple an enemy bot on the ground or destroy a weaker one as well as hitting towers from the hole in top or the enemy reactor.
The very high power draw of these weapons makes the Power Booster perhaps the greatest upgrade for them of any weapon currently in the game, allowing a bot to recharge for another volley 20% sooner.
Railguns (a.k.a. Sniper Rifles)
Railgun (Rail Piercer to Rail Erazer)
Damage – 26,400 / 61,097
Power – 15.208 / 30.625
DPP – 1,736 / 1,995
FR – 0.22 / 0.22
NFR – 1.33 / 1.33
SDPS – 5,808 / 13,441
NDPS – 35,112 / 81,259
Description – Railguns have no Legendary version and are really a mixed bag. They have the highest single shot damage of any weapon, the longest range, and the best accuracy combined with the highest zoom in of any gun’s scope. The downside is that they have extremely weak actual DPS and the lowest damage per power used to fire of any weapon. The result is that they are one shot wonders at any range but long, tending to lose to any weapon they are pitted against unless they can outrange it.
Their high per shot damage can be useful even at mid to short range however to take out a high priority part on a bot. They can be used to pick off an ion distorter on a bot closing in, or destroy a missile launcher on an enemy bot before the missiles hit. This won’t actually keep the missiles from hitting, but it will prevent more from being fired. It is best to have a backup weapon however even on dedicated sniper bots as they just don’t perform very well most of the time if enemies manage to close in.
Snipers are especially effective against flying bots and any bot that is fragile but has high DPS. Fliers can easily have wings and other things they need to maintain control or stay in the air shot off by a good sniper, and targeting all the jets on one side of a flier can lead to hilarious control problems for them. Meanwhile high single shot low actual DPS guns can take out the more fragile bots in a hurry… a commonly seen bot in low CPU matches has a few hoverblades and a strong gun for a really fast and small bot that can deal massive damage but is very fragile if it gets hit. This type of bot can easily by one shotted with a sniper round to their hover blades, and if it doesn’t die it is likely to at least have serious control and stability issues, making picking it off easy even if it survives that first hit.
Like the Plasma Launcher, the high power draw of a sniper rifle makes the Power Booster a significant upgrade to this weapon. The low fire rate and damage per power used still harms its DPS, but the difference with a Power Booster is still noticable.
Tesla Blades
Tesla Blade (Slicer to Nova)
Damage – 45,000 / 101,250
Power – 0.0 / 14.348
DPP – NA / 7,057
FR – 1.67 / 3.33
NFR – 6.67 / 6.67
SDPS – 75,150 / 337,163
NDPS – 300,150 / 675,338
Description – Right away the stats alone point out that Tesla Blades are incredibly powerful weapons. They are essentially the opposite of sniper rifles… extreme DPS, very low energy use for the damage they deal, but pure melee weapons. They are in fact the only melee weapon in Robocraft, and as such can be difficult to use despite their stellar stats. They are quite fragile when targeted and if a player sees a tesla blade comming they will often blow it off before it can reach them.
This makes it extremely ill advised not to have a secondary weapon on a bot with tesla blades, and also makes them most useful on fast bots with radar jammers that can attack an enemy while distracted by something else. Placement can also be tricky, mostly done along the front and sides of a fast bot. For obvious reasons they are useless against snipers and fliers. But when an opportunity to use them presents itself there is no more effective weapon for destroying an enemy bot quickly if they can hit.
Aeroflak Cannon
Aeroflak Cannon
Damage – 31,710
Power – 10.843
DPP – 2,925
FR – 1.33
NFR – 1.67
SDPS – 42,174
NDPS – 52,956
Description – There are three hidden facts about the Aeroflak that make it very good against flying targets but very poor against ground targets. One is that the shots have a 25 meter AoE and will automatically detonate when close enough to hit a flying enemy. Two is that damage against ground targets is 1/3 of the listed damage, making it around 10,500 per shot and lowering the DPS to below even railgun levels. Three is that it is another weapon with perfect accuracy even while moving, so if a flying bot can somehow manage to equip it the aeroflak cannon can be effective in dogfights.
Unfortunately it is very heavy, very big, and requires 300 CPU to equip. This makes putting it on a crippling disadvantage when facing bots on the ground. It has a better fire rate than sniper rifles but its DPS against ground bots is about the same and its shots have some travel time making it less effective at long ranges if a bot is moving. Overall this makes it an inferior weapon to literally any other weapon against ground opponents, but makes it easy to hit flying ones repeatedly and knock them out of the air. I personally have to recommend against this as a weapon since there is no guarantee flying bots will be in a match and the 300 CPU could be much more effectively spent on other weapons most of the time.
If air is enough a concern to equip one, remember that the damage vs. flying and explosive burst is based entirely off of height from the ground. When a robot with legs jumps, it is vulnerable to the flak cannon while in the air. If a robot drives off a ledge, it can be hit while falling. Sometimes hovers even become vulnerable if they are high off the ground and going downhill since hovers tend to descend relatively slowly compared to their forward movement. Switching to flak and punishing enemy bots that are vulnerable like this can greatly improve the usefulness of a flak cannon.
Lock-On Missile Launcher (LOML)
Lock-On Missile Launcher
Damage – 40,700
Power – 19.167
DPP – 2,123
FR – 2.67
NFR – 3.33
SDPS – 108,669
NDPS – 135,531
Description – The LOML is a cool idea on paper but in practice is somewhat situational. However, at only 275 CPU it can be considered an excellent replacement for the Aeroflak in most ways. Its damage is not as high other than an initial burst since it tends to drain power much like a plasma launcher, but it stays the same whether it is targeting a ground bot or aerial target and on most maps flying bots will have difficulty taking cover to dodge the missiles making them likely to all hit. This makes it an effective anti-air weapon that can sometimes serve to supplement others against a sniper or far away ground target.
Unfortunately enemies will get an alarm sound when the launcher achieves lock on, so most will immediately take evasive action. There is no guesswork involved, once the launcher locks on they even have a little stream of red arrows telling them where the missiles are going to come from until they break the lock on. Meanwhile you have to keep that small dot at the center of the targeting reticle on the enemy bot or the locking will be broken after about a second, and will break instantly if the enemy bot hides behind any terrain feature. So the grand advertisement the developers made promoting firing missiles from cover is actually a lie, you will have to keep line of sight to use this weapon. This also means any sniper you get seen by may just blow it off your bot, so it takes some care in usage and tends to really fall short at short ranges.
The several second lock on time and lack of any real accuracy without a lock on make this a very poor choice at close range and also means other bots have time to hit you first, so positioning and timing can be key to getting the most out of a LOML. For all its downsides forcing an enemy to try and evade the missiles coupled with the ability to fire them from a long distance away makes this an excellent support weapon.
Ions (a.k.a. Shotguns)
Ion Destabilizer/Distorter
Damage – 130,263 / 225,000
Power – 18.571 / 28.75
DPP – 7,014 / 7,826
FR – 0.8
NFR – 2.0
SDPS – 104,210 / 180,000
NDPS – 260,526 / 450,000
Description – The Ion line is infamous for its incredibly high damage per shot and relative ease of use. It’s like a tesla blade that can be used at short range in exchange for using some power per shot. Coupled with only taking 245 CPU to equip for the Legendary version, the lowest of any Legendary weapon, and the Ion Distorter earns its reputation as perhaps the most devastating weapon in the game. It can easily be considered the 250-300 CPU version of the Tesla Blades.
The Ion Destabilizer is a little cheaper at 145 CPU, has effectively the same HP and damage per CPU, and has fewer shots sprayed… 11 as opposed to 19. The actual damage per shot is actually identical, the damage decrease comes from there being fewer of them. However, fewer shots means that the Destabilizer is even less threatening at longer ranges… both weapons get damage reduction dependent on the distance to target, and fewer shots means individual parts of a bot are less likely to be hit. That means it becomes more difficult to knock weapons off an enemy bot with the Destabilizer than the Distorter at short to mid range, but the massive damage means it is nearly as effective up close. It also has the same block mount at bottom as a Proto Seeker, which makes it slightly harder to blow off itself from armor hits nearby than most weapons, though not by much.
All that said, the Ion weapons are not the end of all balance that a lot of people claimed them to be when the Distorter first came out. It has the same pros and cons of most shotguns in FPS games… very high damage at very short range that rapidly drops to basically nothing at longer ranges, although a particularly slow opponent can still lose some guns at mid range to one of these despite its bad accuracy. It is also extremely heavy… the only weapon in the game that weighs more is the Aeroflak Cannon. Two Destabilizers weigh more than a single Distorter as well, so the Epic version doesn’t really have an advantage over Legendary other then lower CPU cost making it easier to fit more than one on a bot to make them harder to blow off. For a bot to be very fast it needs to be relatively light for the propulsion system it has, meaning an Ion Distortor can slow a bot down if the builder isn’t careful, making it difficult to build a bot that is both durable and can get the most mileage out of one of these. Its short range and large size also tends to make it an actual target for enemies… a bot with a single shotgun can often find it blown off before getting in range if the enemy sees them coming and has a longer range weapon, or the first shot doesn’t take out enough of a machine gun bot’s machine guns. It has a large HP reserve, even for a Mega weapon, but being one of the first things enemies target still tends to make it die relatively quickly.
A common shotgun use at low levels is a very fragile, very fast small hover bot… these are not effective against more experienced players and are mostly used to destroy lots of newer players that start to panic after the first few times encountering a shotgun when they see one coming, especially since they have to get incredibly lucky to get a drop of one of these very rare weapons themselves. This is called “seal clubbing” by the community and is a bad practice that frustrates newer players and leads to a lot of the rage about Ions being overpowered, when in reality these bots fair extremely pourly against more experienced players that will destroy them quickly without giving the shotgun a chance to get in range to be very effective itself. This makes such a bot heavily discouraged, both for how easily longer ranged weapons wreck it and because it’s a design that mostly trolls and exploits newer players lack of experience.
Proto-Seeker
Proto-Seeker
Damage – 2840
Power – 1.485
DPP – 1,912
FR – 3.34
NFR – 20.0
SDPS – 9487
NDPS – 56,800
Description – It has an unknown bonus to damage against electroshields but its DPS against regular blocks is lower than the lowest tier Laser gun and each one takes 100 CPU to equip. Its only saving grace is that if you keep that targeting reticle on an enemy bot all shots will hit, but the damage per hit is literally the lowest of any weapon in the game and it is completely unable to target any specific part of a bot, meanwhile each one takes up the space of a Laser Vaporizer. The nail in this thing’s coffin is that the high fire rate at its nominal gun count actually sucks a bots energy up quite fast, meaning you run out of energy for less DPS and less damage per hit than Laser Wasps after spending 600 CPU to equip six of them.
Now, to be fair having a medium range isn’t bad, it will outperform laser machine guns at medium range due to actually being able to land their shots at full fire rate there. But 100 CPU apiece to equip makes them incredibly expensive… getting decent damage out of them requires they be used in numbers, so in truth they are as expensive as any 300 CPU weapon or more so for far less DPS. They might be worth it if they were cheaper to equip but as they stand they are the weakest of all high-CPU weapon options.
Nanos (a.k.a. Repair Guns/Healers)
Nano Healer (Binder to Constructor)
Description – Nano guns are short range healing for allies rather than weapons. They can be used in group combat to keep allies in the fight longer, but will rarely be effective at healing a a heavily damaged ally back to full health before auto repair kicks in. This means that they tend to work best as a secondary weapon, allowing a bot to back away from a fight and heal allies still fighting, or on a dedicated support bot for group combat that can add firepower when that would be more effective than healing allies. Either way nanos are always most effective with allies to deal damage while the healer stays back and keeps them blasting away long enough to take out the enemies or at least their guns, making it less likely allies will be disabled before enemies.
At lower levels they heal less but do so with no or little power consumption while they do tend to eat up some power at higher levels in exchange for much better heal rates. I would personally recommend the higher level nanos.
Propulsion
The way a bot moves often makes some weapons more effective or less so, and can greatly influence what tactics are effective for a bot. For this reason I will be including the various propulsion types here and some descriptions to explain their pros and cons.
Walkers
Walker legs are large, take a lot of CPU, and have high Shield values along with high jumping heights. They also don’t care at all how much weight is loaded onto them. That said, they are also the slowest movement types. Without additional parts added for control they can’t do much in the air to change direction and can be easily shot there by enemies, though some bots jump in an attempt to throw off the aim of enemies at short range. And the large height makes the bot easy to target. In short, tanky, slow, some minor terrain clearance, big target.
Insect Legs
Not as tall but fairly long, these legs have the unique ability to climb and cling to walls. They share the Walker legs speed and are considerable less tanky, but their ability to climb and cling makes them a favorite of most sniper bots which can find a high perch and cling to it with them, offering a high vantage point the majority of bots won’t be able to reach and the ability to back up and take cover when attacked. Without at least four however they tend to make a bot circle in place instead of moving forward, so caution is advised since they take a lot of CPU to equip and are pretty easy to destroy. They also do care about weight, and won’t climb effectively if their weight limit is exceeded.
Hover
Hover bots are some of the fastest bots in the game, are able to turn in place, and hover a short distance off the ground allowing them to clear some obstacles and often climb short terrain features. That said, they can be somewhat unstable and tricky to build, and are notorious for losing control if even a few hover blades are destroyed. They also have to stay light enough for the blades to support or they will suffer slowdown and manueverability issues and in extreme cases may not even be able to move if weighed down well over their weight limit. This can make hover bots fairly fragile and easy to knock over or send spinning just by ramming them.
Treads / Tank Tracks
Treads cannot be sped up with jets and have no weight limit or jumping ability. While their HP is really high for their CPU usage they have no shields either… however, they will make a bot much lower to the ground and therefore less of a target than Walkers and have no real clearance to the front and sides required, meaning they can be armored in addition to their already good HP values. They are a slower, tankier version of Wheels that can turn in place if spaced far enough apart to do so. They are also very very heavy like walker legs, so rarely get combined with another means of movement.
Propulsion 2
Wheels and Skis
Wheels on the surface look barely any faster than Treads while having a weight limit and less HP. However, they also take up less space under a bot and more importantly strapping Jets to a vehicle with Wheels allows them to go as fast as the Jets can propel them. This means they can attain much greater speeds. Note that unlike other forms of propulsion they can only turn a bot while moving, much like a real car. It should also be noted they turn in reverse when the vehicle travels backwards, which can make control a little more challenging.
Skis are included with Wheels because they operate on nearly the same principles. The only real difference is that they cannot provide any movement of their own… they must be combined with some other form of propulsion, typically jets. A similar effect can be achieved with curved armor on the underside of a bot.
Helicopter Blades
Helicopter Blades offer excellent control as long as they are placed in a balanced fashion around the center of a bot and can hover in place, invaluable for attacking towers or stopping to attack an enemy that isn’t moving much for some reason. That said, like insect legs they are fairly fragile and can easily be destroyed by enemy fire that hits them, and any hovering in place makes them an easy target. Even moving their large size makes them an easy target… any part of the circle they make while spinning is vulnerable to enemy fire. They can also carry much more weight individually than wings, making helicopters more likely to equip the larger weapons and more armor for the underside at least. They also cause the robot to slowly float up and down, making sniper rifles useless if they are the only movement form. Dedicated sniper bots that combine insect legs for landing and copter blades for flying to a perch are fairly common and effective.
Wings
Wings work very much like they would for a real aeroplane. The button to rise will pitch the craft up and the button to lower will pitch it down. Wings can allow slightly faster movement than copter blades and while fairly long aren’t as large, take less CPU to equip, and the constant movement can make them harder to hit than copters. They are however also less maneuverable and like a real aeroplane placement is important for ability to turn and maneuver.
It should go without saying that they have no lift or thrust of their own and require another means of forward movement to achieve liftoff and forward momentum to provide the lift they do… usually jets, although a copter blade pointed forward rather than up can make for a nice WWII-style plane… since by itself it can be blown off though it is recommended not to rely solely on one copter blade to stay in the air.
Jets
While Jets can work on their own it is tricky to get them to do so and jet only propulsion tends to be even more fragile than hover blade bots. The primary use of jets is to augment other forms of propulsion… jets pointed sideways will fire when turning in an attempt to help, while forward and back pointed jets will assist in accelerating or reversing. They can sometimes be used to control a jumping robot in the air, such as turning or propelling them forward faster, but their primary use is flying robots, hovering robots, and wheeled robots.
That said care must be taken in placement. This applies less most of the time to wheels, but for most other bots if they are too high or low they will make it spin in place instead of moving forward while placing them to one side will cause a similar problem. This also means bots that use them frequently suffer some control loss when thrusters on one side are blown off, causing them to try to turn as they move forwards. They need to balance their forces as close as possible to a bot’s center of balance to work correctly, meaning particularly heavy guns like the Ion Distortor can alter where they need to be placed by themselves and cause the bot to spin if destroyed because the weight distrubution changed so much with their loss. By far correct thruster placement requires more testing and skill than any other aspect of bot propulsion.
Gun Recoil
This is… well, it’s kind of not a good movement type, but it’s worth mentioning some guns have enough recoil to knock a light weight bot around. This should never be counted on much, but it might say allow you to push your bot behind cover or off a ledge as an attempt to evade enemy fire after primary movement has been taken out. Again, mostly useful for very light weight bots, like a grounded hover or flying bot for example.
General Building Strategy
Where the rest of this guide goes into detail on individual parts, this section will discuss some general advice that may be useful. By no means is this a truly in depth discussion, but hopefully it will provide some ideas for bot building that might benefit players looking for a place to start with their newest creation.
First off, lets talk about armor blocks and rods. Rods are rare drops, getting large numbers of them is going to require using the forge. A rod has the same amount of HP as the number of cubes it would take to cover the same length and the same CPU requirements. However, they only connect at each end and are far far lighter than those cubes… 1 KG per CPU as opposed to 15 KG per CPU. Details on how this effects damage spread is better left to a guide on Triforcing, of which there are several easily searched for.
Here however, the benefits of a good sized stock of rods will focus on their use in craft that need to worry about weight. Triangles and other shaped blocks such as the Rounded Edge (some refer to the triangles and rounded edge as “prisms” and “rounded Prisms”, they’re the same thing) to a verying degree have a little less HP for a noticable weight decrease, but only the Corner Slope has better weight per CPU use and it has only slightly over half the HP per CPU used of a rod. Rods are not only incredibly useful for Triforcing, they are also incredibly useful for armoring a bot that needs to remain as light as possible. Any bot that uses jets to go faster fits in this category as does the majority of flying bots. Careful design can allow rows of rods to act as armor as strong as cubes but far far lighter.
The only real downside is the same downside that applies to any bot that uses Triforcing. Weapon shots can often take out the blocks on either side of lines of rods, making entire lines fall off without even being damaged. This is especially true of weapons that deal large amounts of damage with single shots such as sniper rifles and higher level plasma shots. A mixture of actual cubes and rods is recommended, balancing weight and strength.
Another worthy topic is propulsion type vs. weapon choice. Getting a shorter range weapon into range can be more difficult for a slower bot. Walkers can often have trouble using lasers effectively, and are some of the most prone to having big dangerous weapons like the Ion Distorter blasted off, especially since they are notoriously tanky and blasting their weapons off makes them much less threatening. Meanwhile, a bot that moves fast but isn’t stable often is not the best choice for making sniper rifles a primary armament. This applies to all flying bots, but hover bots also will have to stabalize themselves before firing and their tendency to be less durable means they often lose a sniper dual.
This means slower bots often find more use out of longer range weapons with a shorter range weapon as a backup, while fast bots are more suited to shorter range primary weapons with longer range ones as their backup. This is mostly important for players that have multiple high CPU weapons and are deciding whether their bot should have something shorter ranged like an Ion Distortor or something longer ranged like a Plasma Goliathon.
Finally, there are electroshields. Electroshields have a lot of shield HP, but the CPU cost for any rarity above the green ones means they actually have less HP per CPU than cube would have, while the lowest level ones actually more. This means they are only worth using for either high priority spots to protect, bots that want to stay small, or bots that need to keep weight down since they do weigh less for the HP provided than armor cubes would. This makes them another option for armoring bots that need to stay light, in exchange for high CPU cost when covering larger portions of a bot.
Conclusion
I will try to update this guide as necessary as changes are made in balance, but it is my hope it will be helpful to new players and veterans alike in building their bots. I’ve yet to see another guide that goes into great detail on all the weapons as they are post Epic Loot expansion, and this caused me to struggle getting into the game initially. The wiki seems severly outdated meanwhile and forum talk mostly tends to degenerate into trolling and flames about this weapon or the other being overpowered. I am really hoping enough players that need something like this find my guide and it can help them make more sense of the game.
As a side note, in response to one of the commenters I made a second guide, a detailed tutorial on building a hover bot which also covers the differences when building other types of bots. It explains the ins and outs of hovers and some important building concepts, please check it out!