Major Balance Changes. Playtest Soon!
Updated: Apr 21
Today we’re releasing an update which contains a bunch of improvements and balance changes that are designed to address some of the user feedback we’ve been receiving.
Archetypes
We have rebalanced Thrusters, Lasers, Plasma and Airium with the aim of creating soft counters between the following three matchups:
Laser Ground vs. Plasma Air
Laser Ground should win in one-to-one contests vs Plasma Air more often than not. We have balanced this matchup as a ‘soft counter’ so strong Plasma Air builds controlled by great pilots vs. lesser Laser Ground opponents can still win in this matchup.
Plasma Ground vs Laser Ground
Plasma Ground should win in one-to-one contests vs. Laser Ground more often than not. Again, this is a soft counter so won’t always be the case. We found in tests that poorly protected Pilot seats are particularly vulnerable to being drilled by accurate laser fire, but the new Plasma are pretty devastating to important parts like Wheels (which we found were often the first parts to come off under fire from Plasma). What we enjoyed was that there were sometimes strategies for targeting alternative weak spots (not just aiming at the gun turret all the time) which paid off.
Plasma Air vs Plasma Ground
Finally, since air has an advantage in this match being able to more reliably hit their ground target then the Air will often win. Of course, a hit from Plasma on a flier can be pretty devastating and so it’s not a clear-cut thing.
Details of the Changes
Laser
Projectile VFX have been made easier to see to help you track air targets and lead them properly
Projectile velocity has been significantly increased
Projectile damage per shot has been significantly reduced
Laser accuracy is now perfect
Laser recharge time has been increased from 0.5s to 0.6s per shot (to make this easier to set delays of 0.1 increments over 6 guns to get a nice cycle)
Plasma
Reduced length of the barrel (reverting to old Short Plasma model) to help reduce destabilizing of fliers when aiming
Reduced recoil force significantly, also to help reduce destabilizing of fliers
Damage per shot increased by 16%
Thrusters & Antigrav
Force per CPU increased by ~25% (after subtracting force required to carry its own weight)
Connection health of Thrusters and Antigrav reduced
IMPORTANT NOTE: You’ll need to edit the tweakable stats on your existing thrusters to benefit from these changes. CRF robots will not be changed so you’ll need to re-upload a new robot (after tweaking the stats) for others to see these changes
Airium
Bond Strength reduced by 14%
Pilot Seat
Seat connection health increased by 300% (this was done to reduce random de-seating under fire from Plasma)
Other balance changes
QMG damage increased by 50%
Crystal Health reduced by the same amount the Laser damage was increased by
Bug Fixes & Other Changes
More fixes to the lobby with the goal of having more matches start with 10 players
Potential fixes for some crashes that could happen when players disconnect and reconnect
Wheel dust VFX is less obstructive when your camera is closer
Camera adjustments to centre Robocraft a little better
Default camera zoom level is further out when entering Robocraft
Lowered the ceiling in Iana Chaos by 25% to keep flyers a little closer to the action
Steam Playtest
We’re hoping that if this weekend's multiplayer tests go well that we will do a Steam Playtest soon. We now have 30,000+ players who have signed up for the Steam Playtest and so when we’re ready to do that they will all receive notifications via Steam to be invited to play Robocraft 2, many for the first time. Some of them are from regions where we do not yet have servers, but the majority are from Europe and North America and so we should see a few new players joining during that test. Please be nice and let them win ;)