We have some pretty big news to share very shortly but first you may be wondering who on earth has hijacked the Robocraft announcements section. I’m ReelBigKris, the new community manager on Robocraft.
I’ve been within the games Industry for around 16 years working across retail, content creation, publishing and development. It’s an honor to be a part of the studio and I’ll do my very best to help the team hear the communities voice to improve the game further.
Last week we revealed that we’ll be removing boosts from Robocraft to address some balancing issues, you can read the full details of this announcement by clicking the link below:
We were planning to launch these changes this week, however we are going to hold these back to release with RoboPass! A major update coming before Christmas.
Here's one of the custom spawn effects that will be part of RoboPass:
Do stay tuned for next week as we’ll have some more news to share. Until then... Build, Drive, Fight!
Hey there Robocrafters! Earlier in the week we challenged you to create some new starter Robots for us as we felt the current roster of Robots that new players receive when they first create a Robocraft account were fun to look at but not that great in a battle scenario. What we really wanted was Robots that were both FUN and FUNctional. So the challenge was set!
You accepted the challenge as we were inundated with some really cool and crazy looking Robots. You can see all the submissions by searching for "SB01" in the Factory. We were only looking for five and these will be added to the game on Monday, December 3rd, replacing the current starter Robots.
So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are the five our judging panel selected:
SB01 Robot by Addrion
SB01 ARMORED CRAY by Smilemachine
SB01 T-34 by FacuSQ
SB01 Blue Falcon by Accorlei
SB01 Vanguard by Meme_Turtle
Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone that participated in the competition. If you enjoyed this and would like us to do more of them, please let us know in the comments below. Also, do you have a favourite? Again, let us know in the comments.
To see all submitted Robots, simply search for "SB01" in the Factory in-game.
Planned Maintenance:
In order for us to add these to Robocraft, we will need to take the game offline for a brief period in order to update the game. We will have maintenance at 10:00 (UTC) on Monday, December 3rd for a period of two hours. We don't expect the game to be offline that long, but just in case we hit any snags when deploying the update.
Dear Robocraft Community, First off, thank you to everyone that recently re-joined the community and all newcomers since we released the Infinity update. We’re really pleased that, on the whole, you liked the new direction.
We have something really special lined up for Christmas; another really huge update with loads of new content and some awesome new features. We will release details about it in a week or so, so keep an eye on the blog for more info on that.
Many of you in the community have given us feedback since the Infinity Update and we have been gathering this feedback and wanted to let you know of some plans.
Boosts be gone!
Boosts are a game mechanic in Robocraft; they are a set of percentages that are applied to a Robot's health, speed, and damage when building. Some new players don't find the Boost system as intuitive as we'd like and a majority of the community seem to want us to remove the Boosts, as they encourage min/max build behavior such as 'block spamming' and so we have decided that next week we will release an update with both Damage and Health Boosts removed. Speed Boost will remain (under the hood only) as adding more Thrusters will still make you go faster. The Boosts HUD will be removed from the game as it will no longer be needed. We will also rebalance both weapon damage and Nano healing to compensate for the removal of Boosts; we'll let you know in advance as to what these changes will be.
CPU Progression
Something we’d like to introduce in future but haven’t yet planned in is CPU progression akin to previous versions of Robocraft. Here’s how it might work:
New players will start with a max CPU of 750
Players earn 25 CPU each time they Level Up
Players reach the max CPU of 2000 by Level 50
Tier 1 will have a CPU cap of 1000, so any Robot larger than that will be Tier 2
Tier 2 will have a cap of 1250, Tier 3, 1500 and Tier 4 1750
The CPU caps are there to prevent new users having to fight Robots much bigger than they can build themselves and to provide a level playing field for competitive play
Please give us your thoughts and feedback on this.
Physics and Long Term Diversity
CPU progression will provide some diversity with each Tier feeling quite different to the next, with Robots getting bigger as you go up the Tiers; but we’d love to provide more diversity in future by adding some more realistic physics into the game.
Here’s the idea: F=ma
F = ma, Newton's famous second law of motion denotes that heavy things accelerate and decelerate more slowly, which reduces their ability to change direction.
We’d like to inject some more realistic physics into the game by making Mass (and the way you distribute that mass) much more important. Weapons and hardware tend to be heavy too, so Robots packing a bigger punch will tend to be less agile. Robots packing lots of health will be less agile also. Smaller, lighter, more nimble Robots may emerge, unable to defend a point but be very good in many other roles. Essentially we want to push diversity by making physics matter more in your builds.
Adding this comes at a cost though - time and resource. This work will take a long time so we’re mentioning this early on to get an understanding from you in the community as to how important to Robocraft you think this is. Based on your feedback, we can put more devs on it if it's something that you feel is more important than more game modes for example. Please jump on the forums, on our social media spaces (Facebook / Twitter) if you like (or hate) this idea and then we’ll get an idea of how much dev time we should spend making it happen versus doing other things.
If you're a regular visitor to the Robocraft Hub here on Steam, you will have seen that with the recent Infinity Update, we updated the Robocraft branding too; replacing the old orange branding with a cooler looking blue hue and exciting new key art. One thing we didn't do though was update the game screenshots on the Steam page. With the art team currently focused on creating awesome new things that are coming to Robocraft soon™, we don't have the bandwidth to capture new screenshots. So, we thought we'd call on you, our wonderful and incredibly creative community to assist in updating our assets.
Simply upload your best Robocraft screenshots to Steam; we'll pick our favourites and use them to promote the game right here on the Steam Store. In recognition for your hard work, we're also going to add the Robocrafter's name to any of the images we select.
What are we looking for? Here are a few bullets to give you an idea as to the kind of screenshots we're looking for.
Exciting battle scenes with lots of action
Examples of Robots being built in Edit Mode
Robots in Garage Bays
Custom Mothership bays being used
TOP TIP: Turn the in-game HUD off/on by pressing the "=/+" key
Submission Criteria: There are a few 'rules' that you must adhere to or your images may not be selected.
Uploaded screenshots must be 1920 x 1080 in dimension
No photoshopping permitted
Game graphics settings must be 'Fantastic' - there's no point in capturing images if they aren't the best they can be
There's no set deadline, so keep the cool screenshots coming and we'll regularly dip in and update the Store Page with ones we like.
You can check out the most recent screenshots that have been uploaded here. Don't forget to hit the thumbs-up on any screenshots you love.
How to submit your screenshots If you're unsure how to upload screenshots to Steam, check out this handy guide.
What about the trailer? Now I know there will be some of you saying "What about the trailer? That needs updating too!" You're right it does and it has been. The amazing RoboCrew Community worked on a new version of the trailer that completely blew us away. We were so impressed with their work that we asked them if we could adopt it as our official one; they said yes! We'll be adding the new trailer to the game in a future update and we will be using it here on Steam, the official Robocraft website and on our YouTube channel - so keep an eye out for that.
Hey there Robocrafters, It's been ages since we hosted a Robocraft Artbot competition and there are many of you out there in the community who love a design-based challenge. So, how do you fancy designing some new Starter Robots for Robocraft? These are the Robots that new players receive when creating a new account.
We know that the current starter Robots look like they're fun to play, but they're not as competitive as some of the opponents they go up against. What's the point in having a cool looking Robot if it gets destroyed within seconds? So we want to update them with some community-created Robots?
We're looking for five fabulous looking Robots that also play well in battle - this competition is about putting the FUN in Function.
If you to participate in the competition, you haven't got long as the competition ends at 23:59 (UTC) on Wednesday, November 28th. So get busy building and uploading your creations to the Factory!
RULES:
Design a Robot that you believe new players coming to Robocraft would have fun with in battle
The Robots must have form AND function - we want lovely looking Robots that can withstand a barrage of plasma or a well-placed rail
Diversity - we want a range of different movement and weapon types - we're not looking for 5 mech or 5 wheeled vehicles
Starter parts only - Robots with only T0 and T1 parts will be accepted (so no cosmetics or special parts)
Tier 1 only - Submitted Robots should fit within the Tier 1 band
Robots must be uploaded to the Factory in-game
The names of the uploaded Robots must start with "SB01" - so we can filter the search results quickly and find all submissions
All robots must be uploaded by 23:59 (UTC) on Wednesday 28th November 2018
Winners will be announced on social media after the competition has closed
PRIZES:
We will pick 5 winners
The winning Robots will be added to Robocraft as Starter Robots for new players
We will add the creator's name to the Robot (we reserve the right to chose a different name if required)
Fixed a bug which failed to display the inventory of some base and cosmetic parts even though they were unlocked on the Tech Tree
T2 Laser health has been corrected to 15,795
Pilot Seat description has been updated
Corrected text on some flag descriptions
Corrected energy consumption tooltip information on T3 (110) and T4 (175) Nano Weapons
Gold chaingun tooltip has been updated to match the base part variant
OTHER CHANGES:
Filtering by Tier in the Factory will now display Robots uploaded prior to the Infinity Update
UPDATE 27/11/18:
We have introduced CPU banding by Tier for all AI-controlled Robots to avoid new players being matched against high CPU 'blockspam' Robots
UPDATE 28/11/18:
Today's hotfix was to improve the early game experience for new players. We have adjusted the XP rewards to ensure that XP is always rewarded when actively participating in a battle.
UPDATE 29/11/18:
Fixed a bug that prevented XP from being earned in build mode
Mortar placement fixed - they can no longer be placed on the side or below a Robot
Fixed some incorrect/missing text strings
T5 Lasers and variants now have the correct health
In-air Rail weapon crosshair accuracy corrected
Fixed an issue with 21:9 aspect ratio displays not seeing the 'continue' button on the battle summary screen
Cosmetic wing/rudder parts weight now match their base part
Fixed a bug which caused the clan list to be cut short if it was opened while in the lobby queue
Bubble Blower render limit decreased in-battle to prevent possible lag/clash exploiting by players
OTHER CHANGES:
Updated the images on all bundles in the Item Shop to show all parts in the bundle
New robots uploaded to the CRF will now be available for 24 months instead of 6 months
BALANCE CHANGES:
T4 Chaingun energy consumption is now 2,350 per second from 1,882.5
T4 Chaingun cooldown between shots is now 0.1 from 0.08333
T5 Chaingun energy consumption is now 2450 per second from 1882.5
T5 Chaingun cooldown between shots is now 0.085 from 0.07142
BALANCE CHANGES UPDATE 22/11/18:
We have introduced some Tier banding to matchmaking in order to improve queue times.
Players level 75 and above may be matched with players whose Robot Tier is either 1 greater or 1 less than their selected Robot Tier.
Players up to level 75 may be matched with players whose Robot Tier is up to 2 greater or 2 less than their selected Robot Tier.
We have decreased the wait time before AI-controlled robots start to populate Tier 1 battles
As stated, all of these changes have been designed to reduce the time spent waiting to battle. We will monitor queue times, and player feedback and may make further changes to improve the playing experience.
Please note, maintenance was not required for these changes to be applied.
HOTFIX UPDATE 23/11/18:
This hotfix addressed an issue that was preventing some players on IPv6 from logging into the game.
Infinity Cube System - once you unlock a part on the Tech Tree or purchase a cosmetic, you can use it as many times as you like
Tiers have returned to Robocraft
New Tier 3 and Tier 4 Campaigns
New Custom mothership skins (purchasable from the Item Shop when in rotation)
More colors for all players - Premium players have 32 colors; free players have 10
New Ops room Tab
New Quickplay system - opt in or out of TDM and Battle Arena game modes
New Item Shop for cosmetic items and custom mothership skins
New Robot Ranking system tied to Tiers
Infinity Factory (CRF)
New Strut parts added to the game
New weapon projectile effects
New weapon projectile hit effects
Edit mode HUD updated to display shortcut commands
Robot voting system at the end of the battle
New 'incomplete parts' system that alerts a player when they only have the left version of something so they are less confused when using the mirror function in edit mode
HUD can be turned off in mothership and edit mode with ‘=’ button
New Feedback/Support/FAQ buttons
Improvements to matchmaking - players now matched by Robot Tier
Please note: As previously mentioned, the Infinity Update is Robocraft’s single biggest update. As such, players should expect some issues. By working with us and reporting issues and bugs through our support system, we can fix them as quickly as possible. You can report issues by contacting our support team at: https://support.freejamgames.com/hc/en-us
