Plans For The Next Playable Build
Hello Robocrafters,
The team is now at full power! Over the last few days, we’ve been working on our internal roadmap for the next few months. But we wanted to let you know our plans for the next big upcoming build!
Changes to Hela’s Basin.
The changes below are still in internal testing so there may be further changes that are not mentioned yet.
We’ve really enjoyed the playtests over the last few weeks but we felt there were a few core points that we needed to address to make the map more enjoyable.
Firstly, we’ve fixed an exploit where players could deal damage to the fusion reactor before taking out the Fusion towers. Thanks for reporting this during the playtests!
We also discovered that the winning team were more likely to stay to defend their base/ last remaining fusion tower if they had the lead. In order to prevent this, we’ve made some changes to make the final push less harsh on the attacking team.
The Automated defence system which would spawn in turrets has now been reclassified to “The Defense System”. Base turrets will now require a player to operate them. There will be two towers at each team's base controlling two huge turrets each.
We’ve removed some cliffs in order to expose the reactor core further so it can be damaged from the sides.
Additional routes have been created which will allow players to drive on top of some of the cliffs.
Bug Squashing and Stopping Crashes
The team has been fixing a bunch of bugs which also relate to some of the crashes that we have seen during the closed alpha playtest.
Optimised loading times
It will soon be much faster loading into the test mode for Hela’s Basin! Our low-spec machine originally took 1:40 to load in, but we’ve seen that decrease down to 0:55. Stronger machines should also see an improvement in load times.
The other test mode map has seen reduced loading times from 0:44 to 0:24.
Major Engine & Wheels Change
We’ve been thinking a lot about how to handle engine and wheel systems in Robocraft. There is a level of complexity in having three individual placeable parts when one could work just as well.
Firstly, we’ve decided that we will remove the physical engine. There are a number of reasons for this. Some players exploited the engine placement to leave their engine on the switch plate! There were also a lot of players who were not quite happy in trying to fit an engine piece onto their build as it took up a lot of space and extra weight.
There were also players who exploited multiple engines as well as using a combination of auto and manual gearing on a single robot to give it more speed than intended, as well as a number of bugs discovered internally that made engines problematic
Additionally, removing engines will remove gears. This means that the ride is more smooth and more futuristic like in early Robocraft, while bringing it more in line with future content.
Our goal is to provide options to give players movement parts which will allow faster movement for heavier robots. The current wheels are designed to carry medium-weight robots. Our next planned part, tank tracks will be designed to carry heavier robots, and it’ll be up to you to decide whether your machine is best suited to use wheels or tank treads.
Wheels will no longer be a separate part, instead, they will be a part of the wheel rig. The two parts were always intended to be used together and their separation led to unnecessary complexity and bugs.
The new wheel block will have a rebalanced CPU cost reflecting the combination of functionalities. Depending on how your vehicle is set up this could result in more, or less, available CPU!
Additionally, we will be removing the small variants of the Lasers and Plasmas so only long variants will remain. We will need to look at rebalancing the stats of these weapons to ensure they fit the roles they were designed for. Having more weapon variants makes it tougher to balance and means any cosmetic variants we add in future will need to be added multiple times.
With these changes, it does bring Robocraft 2’s building system in terms of creating a functional machine somewhat closer to the original game. We know there were some players who were a little scared of the complexity of building in Robocraft 2 in comparison but these changes would make Robocraft 2 a little more familiar to those who played Robocraft 1
But that being said, we still want players who are talented engineers to have the power and tools to create interesting and functional robots. The aim servos, the math and logic blocks, and the powered hinges are staying in as individual parts with no plans to remove them. We want to be amazed at the contraptions and machines you built for maps and special events
Whilst we will be combining wheels, engines and wheel rigs into a single part… We still want to provide you with a choice. Different wheel sizes could for example be introduced and feature different characteristics which also affect acceleration and grip.
Building and overcoming an engineering problem is where we feel Robocraft 2 will really shine for certain players. When we add Aerodynamics, the game will change even further and new engineering problems will rise for the community to tackle! Our goal is not to go down the route of oversimplifying the mechanics of the game. But providing better information so that the building is more satisfying. And this can range from UI changes which show the centre of mass, which direction a wheel or powered joint is turning and features like RGB colour palette, undo and mirror mode.
We know many of you will spend hundreds of hours refining your machines. Making that fun and satisfying is one of our core objectives. Let’s make the building better, not dumb it down!
But whilst we know a huge number of our current players are builders, we do need to make the game fun to play for those who just want to log in, choose a robot and hit play to enter a battle.
The Community Robot Factory 2 - Purchasing Robots For Online Battle
The next update will allow players to use the Robits that they have earned in battle to purchase Robots from the CRF2. We feel that the CRF2 can be a very important part of Robocraft 2 to help new players discover robots and give them an opportunity to play competitively if they are not interested in building.
Building takes a lot of time, and if everyone’s building, there aren’t enough people playing and that affects matchmaking. We need both types of players for Robocraft 2 to become a huge success. We will be rewarding those who do put in the time to build and upload to the CRF2 as well. We’ll share more details on this in the future
Moving from Closed Alpha to open Alpha
We will not have a requirement of entry for the next update. Anyone will be able to try to join an online match. But there will still be a few requirements that need to be met in order to do so.
Matches will still take place during scheduled times
Your ping will be tested before entering, if it is too high you will not be able to play
We’re opening a US server to allow more players from that region to join and will make sure that as many testing times as possible are at a convenient time for those in that region.
Thank you for all of your support at this stage of development! If you want to be kept in the loop for all things Robocraft 2, make sure to follow us on all our socials