A whole heap of changes! Rail Cannons, SMGs, Jammers, Receivers and more! news - Robocraft

GAME CHANGER ALERT!

We have made a whole heap of changes which are part of a 3 phase process to improve the combat so it is more strategic, more tactical, and to ensure that your Robot design matters more.

Here is a full list of the changes that we've made:

Major Armor and Damage Changes:

• 5 new armor levels added inbetween the existing 5
• Users with black armor will still have the highest level armor in game.
• Delta between lowest and highest level armor massively increased, so L5 was 2.5x tougher than LSC, and now L10 will be 10x tougher than LSC.
• Damages of weapons have been reworked to match armor at same levels trying to maintain the current average time it takes to kill a Robot + 25%
• Movement, Hardware and Special cube armor has been reduced a little making shooting off of components more of a valid tactic, especially for SMG's when up close

Armour HP
LCC L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 L10
50 88 136 203 291 402 533 676 820 948 1043

Laser Cannon becomes the SMG (Subatomic Machine Gun):

• Designed to behave more like a sci-fi machine gun
• Fire-rate doubled, so it goes up to 10 shots per second with 8 SMG's
• Range as far as you can see
• Damage is reduced by around 40% at long range
• Accuracy gets poor quickly when you hold down the trigger
• Pulsing the trigger every couple of seconds gets you good accuracy, but less DPS
• View range for all weapons is the same now, so if a Plasma Bomber can see you, you can also see them
• Zoom has been increased slightly, i.e. 15%
• Damage between each level has been increased, so you really notice when you level up a weapon

SMG DMG (point blank)
L1 L1S L2 L2S L3 L3S L4 L4S L5 L5S
55 126 256 473 809 1296 1954 2780 3735 4740

Plasma Cannon becomes Plasma Launcher:

• Designed to behave like a sci-fi grenade \ rocket launcher
• New ‘shrapnel' based damage model- Shrapnel has ‘occlusion' so blasts spread, but layers of armor help protect you
• Blast radii increased significantly, so area of effect is more useful
• Plasma damage should be much more predictable now, so less sudden one-shot kills when you thought you had protected your Pilot Seat with tons of black armor

Rail Cannon:

• Designed to behave like a sci-fi sniper rifle
• Hold down the trigger to charge each Cannon one at a time
• Each cannon takes around 2 seconds to charge
• Charge up to a maximum of 6 cannons
• Release the trigger and all ‘charged' cannons will fire
• Each cannon fires with a slight timing offset so you can drag and create a line if you wish, or focus all damage on one point
• Rails are perfectly accurate at infinite range if you hold still
• Rails lose their accuracy when you move, so keeping pretty still is critical when firing
• Rail Cannons have been designed to be different tactically to other weapons, but not more powerful
• Early access release to premium users, and then 3 days later all users
• Match-making has been changed to ensure that an even spread of weapon types is made on each team to maintain fairness between teams
• So if there are 2 Rails in battle, there will be one on each team

Match-Making:

• Changes designed to make MM fairer
• Multiple Platoons are split between teams, so you don't get 2 on one team and 0 on the other
• Weapon types are match-made, so the MM system attempts to put an even amount of SMG, Plasma and Rail on each team
• In future we'll take Wheels, Hovers and Fliers into account in the MM too, but that is not handled at present
• Changes to the MM and queue system to reduce the waiting times for mid-high Tier Robots

Robot Ranking and Tier Changes:

• This is a huge change, it's just changes to the numbers under the hood but it will make a big difference
• Robot Ranking now increases semi-exponentially as you progress through Tiers
• This means it will be impossible to get a single L5S SMG into a low tier match, or even a single L10 armor cube, reducing ‘griefing' of low Tier users
• It should also prevent inexperienced users jumping Tier too quickly before they are ready
• This change allowed us to make the increase in power of a cube (like an SMG or Armor) much larger as you level up without ruining the game for users in low Tiers
• This change also ensures a more steady progression through the Tiers
• Please be aware, it will likely make some Robot designs jump up or down Tier depending on the design
• This should also create a scenario where, if your Robot design is good within a Tier, you notice you win more, and when you start your journey in a new Tier you find it tough at first, so each new Tier represents a new challenge

Other Changes:

• View range for all weapon types is now the same
• View range is maximum, i.e. at the clipping plane when zoomed in for all weapons
• CPU of Enemy Radar increased for L2 and L3
• BUG FIX: Fixed a bunch of bugs with the chat widget, i.e. stuff like the game locking up if you receive an invite whilst chatting
• Depth of Field (i.e. blurry in distance) effect removed so High GFX settings do not have blurriness in distance
• Anti-aliasing added at high GFX settings instead

We have also recently released the new Radar and Jammer cubes. Here is some useful information about both cubes:

Radar receiver:

• Allows you to receive the signal from the Enemy radars of your team mates.
• So if an ally steams into battle on the front line, the enemies his radar picks up will appear on your HUD map.
• 5x Levels available, so L1-5
• Higher Powered receivers have a greater range.
• The range is the distance between you and an ally to pick up their Radar signal.
• If your Allies radar is shot off, the enemies will disappear from your map.

Radar Jammer:

• Will "jam" the signal of your enemies Radar.
• Jamming effectively makes you disappear from your enemies radar intermittently.
• 5x Levels of Jammer with increasing Jamming Power.
• More jamming power means you are invisible for longer and only appear on the enemies map for short periods of time.
• More jammers on your Robot also stack up to give you more jamming power.
• Higher level Enemy Radar need higher level Jammers to disrupt their signal.

WARNING! There are A LOT of changes here so, although we have tested it a lot, there may be some new balance issues. Please give us your feedback on the game forums and we will aim to address issues quickly.