Switch Plates in Multiplayer

Hello Robocrafters,

Yesterday we unveiled the Battle Gate. Today we’re passing through the giant force field to see what’s inside…

Five switch plates! The Hela’s Basin map will be a 5 VS 5 map. Quick play and ranking will be 5 vs 5. Special events and custom maps may feature more or fewer players/ uneven teams/ PVE.

You are most likely already familiar with the Switch Plates as they are already present in the current Design & Test demo, but there is some further information that we wanted to share regarding their use and their expected future features.

Unlike Robocraft 1, you do not choose a robot before entering a battle, instead, the matchmaker chooses a map randomly and then you must select your robot. The key reason for this is that it allows the maps to be more varied. Gravity, atmosphere and map features can change much more wildly so players can choose the right robot for the job once they know what map they are in.

In Hela’s Basin, each player spawns at their own personal Switch plate and will be able to choose a robot to spawn from their ‘My Robot’ List. Later on, players will be able to purchase a robot from the CRF2 using Robits or Galaxy Cash. These will appear in ‘My Robots’ but will never be editable by the player.

Switch Plates gives you two options, E to respawn the robot, and F to choose a different robot. The recall has changed so you can instantly recall without delay back to the battle gate in front of your switch plate at any time. But if you or your robot has taken any damage, recall is prevented on a cooldown of ten seconds.

During our first closed multiplayer tests, Players will need to bring in their own robots as CRF purchasing Robots will not yet be enabled. You’ll be able to switch out your robot at any time but there is a 60-second cooldown each time you switch a robot.

The Switch Plates will have cosmetic variants in the future, but this will come sometime in early 2023.