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slightly large
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Jan 20, 2015 23:52
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Chard posted:Does it still use a single point of contact? Trying to plot out the tiniest bot that can carry two of em. Yes, any foot. Front foot for placement, but you can remove the block if you have another foot set. e: 
bimmian fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 00:05
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First attempt, decently effective. No utility atm, but I still have some room. Only 6 hovers, it's fine unless the rear ones get shot off, then I'm just a sitting/spinning duck. 
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Jan 21, 2015 02:09
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Shalhavet posted:Railguns are better than before. Plasma bombers continue unabated. Thruster drones are still obnoxious as gently caress. Walker legs actively sabotage your feeble attempts to right a flipped 'bot. Hoverblades are actually useful now, which is new and different. Hoverblades have been quite useful in the couple months I've been playing. Nowhere near as easy to build as a wheel/tread/walker bot, but the speed and maneuverability outweighed the effort, especially as a medic. No matter what I tried to build I always came back to hovers. Have the said anything about thruster drones? I agree, those are quite annoying and AFAIK you can still get warp speeds too. Played a few matches last night and and yea, plasma bombers were wreaking havoc. Out of sight and scoring direct hits non-stop, god help you if there are 2-3+ and you don't have really good SMG players on your team. The range is the most annoying part for me. Sure it applies to smg fliers too, but the plasma splash is a different beast. SMG fliers are just annoying when they are way out, they don't really pose an immediate threat.
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Jan 21, 2015 15:44
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Dizz posted:Since we're speaking about hovers, Are they more mobile and faster than wheels? I kinda like SMG builds where I can just drive in one direction, Blast someone away, then drive around the corner and blast more fools down from the back. I'm hoping that hovers will still allow me a low profile but also give me the option to completely ignore terrain issues. Built properly, you can peek around corners, peek above terrain elements, and climb near-vertical walls. More maneuverable, you can rotate in place, keep going if you flip (controls are just flipped). I believe wheels are capped to their top-speed of 147 or whatever, but you can strap more thrusters on a hover and go faster ( I don't have a wheel robo so someone may want to confirm that). My T10 medic hover does 165 with 2 t6 thrusters and I blow by any ground robo. With the latest update the stability is improved, so you'll have more leniency in design.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:39
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Dizz posted:Good to hear. I might grind a bot to afford some hovers and begin experimenting with them. Post a screenshot of your bot, preferably with all the hovers showing.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:38
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Nordick posted:If your hoverbot is too spinny, experiment with rudders. I use one on mine. I wouldn't recommend that. Yea it'll stabilize it, but once you lose it you're basically done. Unless it was a bug previously, if you lost the rudder it doesn't then behave like a normal hover, it loses the ability to turn basically. Touchy steering = hovers not far enough apart and/or bot too short. Side thrusters aren't a good idea either, they'll turn fast enough w/o them. Wobbly = poor weight distribution, x and/or y axis I'm guessing your bot looks something like this- (x= hoverblade) x-x --- --- --- x-x bimmian fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 03:08
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Dizz posted:It's a variation of http://robocraftgarage.com/b/armored-killerbot which i didn't like at all so i just I'll try to give some general advice since you are in T4, most basic principles will continue to be applicable as you move up through the tiers. You have a bunch of CPU left though, so you'll be able to add some stuff. Some of this may not apply quite as much as it did before the patch, I've only built one hover post-patch vs 20+ prior. The easiest way to almost guarantee hover stability is symmetry on the x and y axis and having your center of mass below the hovers. You can certainly build non-symmetrical hovers, you just have to pay more attention to weight distribution. Here are two examples of stable hovers platforms: Symmetrical. The hovers here are stacked, 4 sets of 2.  non-symmetrical. Not pictured, but it was stabilized, but made slightly nose-heavy by another nano on the front bottom so that it could climb better. Hard to see from that angle but all the nanos are below the hoverblades  Both of those have good steering characteristics, not too touchy. The first one is more touchy than the second. The hoverblades are too close together considering how wide the craft is, especially with the plasmas mostly being above the hovers. Ideally you want to keep your center of mass below the hovers. Probably not as important now with the changes, but it still applies. I bet you would notice improved stability if you moved the front hovers out a block, inline with the rear ones. Weight wise you're probably ok, but I would put another hover or two on there both for increased stability and redundancy. You're probably pretty crippled if you lose any one of those. You have more weight in the rear, so I would at least try to get one more back there. Steering-wise, you can control how touchy it is by placement. (all examples pre-patch) A long and thin craft will be more touchy. This example was very stable and 99% self-righting, 4 hovers in the front and back, there middle ones are stacked. Notice that pretty much all weight is below the hovers. Obvious downside to this design is bombers. This is when I was playing with rudders to improve steering control. It did, drastically, but like I said above, once you lost that rudder you were pretty much unable to turn.  This one kept the front/rear pair high, but added another 4 centrally located and lower. This was less touchy than the previous example, though it did have a decent bit more weight. Still quite stable and self-righting, but needed more weight compensation underneath. The good thing about this type of design is that it can take one hell of a beating and still have a chance of being able to fly straight and true.  (I'm at ~30% hp here)  The way that I build hovers is very incremental. I'll take barebones design, like the first or second screenshot (though w/o weapons), and take it to the practice map. If it isn't 100% stable then it gets scrapped. If it is stable, then add weapons and enough blocks to compensate for that mass, testing often. If it loses it's stability, I go back a step and re-think it. Harder to do with non-symmetrical bots since weight distribution plays a larger role. bimmian fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 15:13
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'd it a bit into something more manageable but I still don't like it. Maybe it's good with plasmas but I haven't really bothered with anything that wasn't an SMG.
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Ixjuvin posted:Is it just me or is there no way to save a robot design, and no "clear all" button in the build hangar? Unfortunately you cannot save a design. There is no clear button, but if you hold down right click for a few seconds it'll start turbo-deleting blocks.
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Jan 22, 2015 21:44
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Thor-Stryker posted:If you ever make it to T10, you start to randomly rebuild your robots just to see if your new design is better. Too often, I think I have a problem.
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Jan 22, 2015 23:18
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My, ahem, "artbot" requires way more cpu than I have available, not even sure if i could finish it w/ 1511cpu w/o shrinking it. Only smaller bots can actually fit under it as it is. Sucklebot  That and I don't know how many teats a pig actually has, gotta be accurate. I hope nobody looks at my search history today. This was pretty neat, though completely non-functional... Unless their function was to kill my ranked score, in which they succeeded. 
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Jan 23, 2015 17:35
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SumYungGui posted:I wish they would rework the shields. Not a fan of the stats AND shape being determined by the ranking of the shield. Sometimes a lower rank shield would be the perfect shape but it will end up having terrible protection value. I agree, that needs to be reworked. All shapes should be available at every tier, or at least as you move up in tiers they incrementally become available so at T10 you can choose from any of them. You see tons of T3 shields in T10 because the shape is desirable, but it doesn't survive more than one hit, so what's the point.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:49
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Chard posted:I kind of agree, but I also don't think it would work in practice. It would be really tough to communicate in-game what the shield is. As it is now, if you see a certain shape of shield you know immediately about how much damage it can soak up before breaking and you can play accordingly. If players could assign any tier to any shape it would be unfair to people shooting at you, unless they also added some kind of visual signal, and I don't even know how they'd do that. Might be a bit tough to see, but what about making the shield frame a unique color like blocks? Or somehow integrate that coloring.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:51
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kaxman posted:I recall reading that hoverblades apply all their lift at the connection point. Is this still true? If so, you can probably improve the stability by rotating those hoverblades off the spine of the craft so they attach further out. Correct, all blocks apply their force at the connection point. Same thing as far as weight is concerned.
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Jan 25, 2015 19:42
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Chard posted:SL I noticed that you've got armor blocks attached to the back feet of your T-X1s. Is that mainly cosmetic or do they actually support the gun if the front foot gets blown away? I thought it was only the front one that mattered, I may need to rework my design tonight. 3 points of contact, you just use the front foot for placement. Same concept as treads.
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Jan 26, 2015 20:53
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Thor-Stryker posted:Tesla rope That is a pretty awesome idea, better than adding any sort of conventional weapon. Could be very effective if you're partied with someone and have some comm, but it might be a bit too tough to pull off with pubbies.
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Feb 25, 2015 00:02
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Having the mega as a focus really did change the gameplay for the better. It can suck terribly if you get a rainbow mega, but still. It sure does make grinding RP as a medic quicker. My new low-profile medic hover design allows me to just chill behind the mega completely protected, yet I still have 12 nanos that can hit anything around me so I've got 6 beams going constantly. I don't have one built, but I'm sure plasmas can rake in RP by just shooting in the general direction of the clump of enemies.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:49
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Yea, they are lacking to say the least. As a medic I have no problem zipping over and taking out an enemy medics rotor(s) in seconds, rendering them helpless.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:34
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aparmenideanmonad posted:pancake helium/thruster bot plasma As a plasma hover, those are the most annoying things in the game right now, plasma or smg variant. A ground plasma has no counter to them except luck and/or lovely player who can't avoid a plasma burst. Also, choppers are great because I don't have to put much effort into shooting them down.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:00
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Mega tower. Just as worthless as you'd expect.
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Mar 9, 2015 21:07
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Whoa. At first glance that all sounds pretty awesome
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Mar 12, 2015 16:03
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SumYungGui posted:I see plasma bombers are back with even more aggravating bullshit than they used to have. With exploit-level speeds people are getting through the air it's just loving infuriating to deal with. You'll never catch them, you can't hide from them and they're immune to anything but pure luck with how hard it is to hit something moving that fast combined with the gobs and gobs of hitpoints they have. Pancake thrusterbots are the only thing I will say are "ruining the game", especially when there are 3+ in one match. Once one focuses on me I just go get a drink, just no loving fun at all trying to hit a tiny unpredictable spaz that apparently has perfect aim. Regular bombers with wings are still ok, if not a little too accurate still at max range.
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Mar 15, 2015 02:21
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Some sort of dynamic weight based on other movement types like you suggested isn't a bad idea. I'm not sure how they would implement it, but perhaps thrusters could just be a secondary movement type- you can't just have them alone. That could be exploited easy enough by slapping a hover somewhere on there though. More weight would be good, but that would also heavily impact regular flyers.
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Mar 15, 2015 02:42
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:That sounds like it'd do it, but plasmas have a weird tendency to just one shot ground vehicles, I think their AOE effect needs to be altered. I think that is more from people not protecting their bots properly from the topside, there are a lot of exposed seats out there. It is certainly a more advantageous position to be attacking from.
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Mar 15, 2015 03:33
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The effect a rudder has on handling will persist even after it is destroyed yes.
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Mar 20, 2015 19:59
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OG17 posted:You're going the wrong way with this. Drones are annoying because they're innately difficult targets and it's a lot harder to damage them than it is for them to damage others. So just make it so you need wings/rotors/etc to create a stable firing platform in the air. Reduced accuracy means drones can continue existing as skirmishers but they'll have to put themselves more in harm's way for it, making them easier targets and setting their current strengths into line. No reason to burden everyone with bigger thruster footprints, less armor, worse shields, speed caps, or whatever - especially when you consider how it'd cripple non-drone aircraft, which have it hard enough already. They're currently quick enough to fly in behind a group/individual and get within spitting distance, get a shot off and zoom away. Sure they would have to pick their battles a bit carefully, but it wouldn't remove the annoying part of them. A ground plasma would still be fodder for them because of how slow they (plasma weapons) track. Make it so that without rotors/wings/etc they have next to no accuracy at all... perhaps. I have a feeling that would be exploited in some fashion though. The "traditional" thrusterbots without t11 shields are still drat annoying, just not as bad. They'll at least go down quicker if you get a lucky shot to land. Honestly I can see why it is a difficult thing to fix, they need to get rid of thrusterbots without nerfing the hell out of normal aircraft. Making thrusters weaker is a pretty big nerf for normal aircraft. Thor-Stryker's idea on spacing seems good though, the only real downside to that being it limits the design options quite a bit. Perhaps make weapon accuracy and vehicle control degrade exponentially above a certain speed. That doesn't really fix the spaz movement though, plus they can slow themselves quickly enough to get a good shot off, so that wouldn't affect plasma thrusterbots much. SMGs would have to take it slower, but again, they have the ability to avoid damage very easily. Penalize via weight for having thrusters make up >x% of total bot weight. Thrusters do not have a static thrust value, but can only provide a maximum thrust relative to vehicle weight, capped at x. .... It seems like something that might require a re-thinking of the entire physics behind it. Every other mode of movement seems to be subject to "normal" physics, but thrusterbots are basically UFOs operating in a vacuum with anti-gravity capabilities.
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Mar 25, 2015 21:39
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OG17 posted:These are nonsense rules and you'd accomplish the same goals by downgrading their ranged offense. As much as they may be defined by maneuverability, and I'm not denying that, you can't just dismiss the speed aspect. As much as they can just dance around, they can make low altitude flyovers faster than any traditional aircraft. It's the combination of maneuverability and speed that makes them what they are. I don't think nor expect that plasma can/will fully counter air, but if a traditional aircraft comes anywhere near as close as a drone normally does then 4 times out of 5 I will shoot them out of the air. quote:"flank shoot run" applies to a ton of stuff, including hovers, That's hardly comparable when discussing drones.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:45
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CaptainSarcastic posted:I was posting from my phone at the time, and it seemed like you were defending the current state of affairs regarding thrustersticks. If that is not the case then I apologize. Haha, poo poo, I didn't even think about what overclock cycles would do to them. And with the home base shield providing healing, they have zero reason to ever die unless they're a terrible player.
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Mar 26, 2015 13:21
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OG17 posted:Hitting twice does a little more damage than one T10 plasma. Miss a shot from tracking or the crazy random timing or whatever and you hit like T7.5ish plasma (or one T11 smg shot) from a huge gun that (mistakenly?) has armor like T10 plasma. Costs 300 CPU too, 50 more than T11 smgs. Has anyone tried this yet? I'll be building one tonight, 12m RP ready. I'm not sure how many I can actually fit though, haven't played mega enough to unlock the bigger garage. The mechanics sure sound interesting though, I wonder what the reasoning for going that direction was.
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Mar 27, 2015 21:31
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First impression... I'm digging it. Well, the mechanics at least. We'll see about damage, haven't finished building the bot yet. The secondary shots, while randomly timed, are close enough together to not really matter imo. What it lets you do though is lead targets, which will be fantastic. Quick video below showing what it looks like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPKxeuX1qc
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Mar 27, 2015 23:21
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TX1 SMGs tear these things apart. You fight the same type of mega, but if any decent normal bot has TX1 SMGs, you'll have little to shoot with most of the time. A T10 shielded, 4x TX1 stick can take a gun out in 2 seconds, survive a full volley to the face and be able to fly away for a quick heal. Coming from someone who does a lot of disarming, I feel like I'm getting disarmed a lot faster than mega SMGs. I think part of it has to do with constant vs periodic damage. When you're fighting a SMG mega, everyone needs to dance in and out if you're anywhere near it's line of fire. With plasma, they can just sit there and unload for a few seconds. That's normally where plasmas would duck in and out, but these things aren't exactly nimble. Obviously placement is more limited with plasmas too, puts everything right on top. Also it feels very weak. I can hit a group dead-on and maybe I'll do on average 10% damage to any of them. Sometimes everything lines up and/or the enemy bot is bad and you'll tear through someone, but not that often. Overall I'm doing about the same to less damage in a typical match than my T10 plasma. Aiming seems very off too, I'm always short compared to my T10. Going back and forth takes a bit of adjusting to. bimmian fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 01:06
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RosaParksOfDip posted:You uhh... repeated yourself with that entire last paragraph. A stray ctrl+v gone unnoticed.
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Mar 28, 2015 02:32
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Yup
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Mar 29, 2015 03:38
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CaptainSarcastic posted:It seems really streaky. I've had the same 7 T10 bots in my stable for weeks now, and my results really seem to depend more on the team I am saddled with than my own gameplay. Sometimes I luck out and get several good teams in a row, and other times it is a frustrating slog just to get the daily victory bonus with a single bot. Since my bots aren't changing, the only variables are my teammates and the balance with the other team. It's certainly luck of the draw. I'm not sure how they actually match up, but there are certainly times where team balance is so off it results in one team getting absolutely steamrolled. Sometimes it's just a matter of stupid people going rambo or taking 5 different routes, but there are times when the enemy bots just outclass most of your team and you can't do anything to really change the outcome. Also a lot of people are bad at dps. It's odd that I often feel I make a bigger difference in a match playing my plasma hover than playing my medic. Plus there are times, like last night, where most every game I had 4-5 medics on my team. In that case, having competent dps makes a huge difference.
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Apr 1, 2015 14:28
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Welp, finding something else to do for the time being.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:22
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Yea that likely won't do anything substantial.
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Apr 2, 2015 16:59
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OG17 posted:Why does madorc exist and why am I giving it money? You mean one person spends a lot of time tweaking it and then posts it online. 95% of the time it is one of two designs. If you're spinning in circles then of course they won't track, but if you keep the guns pointed in the same general direction (very feasible) then feel free to flail about in any other direction. You need only a momentary pause to let them line up, or if you're good, just roll one way or the other to compensate. If you can manage to avoid getting hit by a plasma shot from a drone at max render distance and/or at the ceiling, while behind you and/or you're fighting other bots, then you're a better player than everyone else, grats. Sure you should be on the lookout after the first volley, but I think the point was that they can reposition themselves fast enough to stay ahead of any return fire, easily sneak behind enemy lines and rain down shots with very little risk. They're barely visible unless you see exactly where the shot originates from. A railgun at least has to stay stationary to be effective. Railgun's are pretty decent now imo, I certainly can't just ignore them like I did before, but their weakness is they have to be (mostly) stationary if they're going to take multiple shots with any accuracy and before they get return fire.
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Apr 2, 2015 22:02
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OG17 posted:It doesn't matter who designs a drone, uncontrolled movement isn't a goal. If you're keeping guns on target you're not flailing, moving evasively doesn't mean you're out of control. A single plasma shot isn't "outsniping a railgun over time" and still assumes sitting targets. There's no need to defend childish strawmen belittling the ability of players who win without honor or whatever. People get way too sore about these things, they're actively being fixed. I'll accept that "flailing" isn't the best word to use, but "moving evasively" is a bit of an understatement. My hover moves evasively, up and down, in and out of cover to avoid enemy fire. The enemy knows I'm behind that rock, I'll come out one side or the other. A drone is capable of moving very unpredictably while still in what appears to be total control. Controlled flailing if you will. I don't think a drone can outsnipe a rail by any means, hitting a single target with plasma while at max range is still a matter of luck. A drone lobbing shots into a group from max range can still do some serious splash damage though. I suppose my point was they can still do damage from long distance without anywhere near the risk a rail faces, even if each hit is less dangerous. Though, In my very limited time playing a normal plasma flyer, you can one shot so many bots because they are so poorly protected from air damage. I don't really think fixing this is a priority for them. That being said, they're not done adding weapons or features, and spending time balancing at this point is somewhat pointless because you'll have to do it over and over except with more variables. It's more a question of "is this a type of bot we want to have in the game?". If the answer is no, then at least tell the playerbase you're not happy with the current situation. quote:Rails are huge, lose accuracy when moving or aiming, draw a big line showing their location and what they're looking at, shoot another big line from their location, take a second between shots and twelve to reload, don't shoot as far as they see, generally favor vulnerable bot designs, and are a lot better at supportive fire than at killing. Freejam is terrified of rails being good. Not that they shouldn't be careful, but it's overkill right now. Rails are tricky to balance, snipers always are. Right now they will one-shot any T10 weapon. A good player can take out 4-6 enemy guns before needing a reload.... so long as they're not targeted right away. Obviously the problem at that point is staying alive. And the positioning required to get a good line of sight to make those shots pretty much requires being a walker, which means a likely vulnerable design. But, they should be far enough out of range that a (ground) plasma bot is unlikely to land more than 2-3 hits, maybe 0 while they zero in on the first volley. SMG fire at that range isn't/shouldn't be accurate enough to do any real damage before they can hide. I agree they're in an odd spot at the moment and I have no idea how they'll make them more competitive without becoming too powerful. They need some sort of active defense. But, I typically have zero qualms ragging on players who jump on any FOTM bandwagon.
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Apr 3, 2015 00:13
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Depending on how many medics there are and how grouped up they are, I'll either go straight for the medics or simply try to hit as many bots as I can with splash. Most medics just auto-heal, so if you can damage a bunch of bots around them, they will just keep changing targets and be really ineffective. They won't be able to keep up with the damage and you'll end up with a bunch of crippled bots.
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Apr 3, 2015 14:13
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:I hold down autoheal while moving since it heals more people more effectively (less cut off on the heals with top and bottom nano repairers) then I go and focus heal badly damaged bots. I constantly have to do battlefield triage or rush off to heal a wounded bot or evaluate the odds of the bot in the distance surviving long enough to be healed. Healing the mega is the lowest priority since it has the lowest return on firepower per healing vs how quickly I can get anything else to pop back up. Yea I do the same for the most part. Typically once my autoheal starts targeting more than 2 bots then I'll focus on the bots with the best chance of actually helping / staying alive.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:01
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