RA2: Retooled

[cephalopod]

Kinda contradicts itself Nar, if the motor is attaching to the baseplate but passing through it IS caster armour, so you just wouldn't be allowed to use the pass through

[Reier]

hes not saying "oh you shouldn't use it as caster armor" he's saying its programmed that you cannot physically attach it to the chassis like pistons in IF

[Naryar]

no what i am saying is that we COULD use a baseplate attachment version of it, but yet ban the use of this motor AS caster armor.

After all, multiextenders aren't banned in dsl, despite their possible use as caster armor...

[Mr. AS]

Hey fams. I'm back from my month-long finals-induced mod progress hiatus. Here's some tribars.




It varies from the smallest 10 kg tribar that's slightly smaller than the stock tribar, to the giant 50 kg tribar for your SHW+ needs. Two things you'll notice are that they're off-white/gold-ish and that it has a damage value. Basically anything that isn't a motor or battery will do damage. Generally, they will do less damage than most weapons and have higher HP. The off-whiteness happened on complete accident, and I liked how it looked. Unless everybody hates on it harder than the new Ghostbusters trailer, that's probably how it's going to stay.

The collision mesh was also changed from it's usual stock/ironforge counterparts.

Yep, it actually matches the visual mesh instead of only covering one bar (stock) or the center (ironforge). I was tempted to just jack the tribar from ironforge and call it a day, but I decided not to.
It's slightly finicky because of the way RA2 handles collisions with more than about 8 vertexes, but it well on high velocity spinners. Just don't rely on it too hard if you make a stiltbot or anything.

Since rule of 7 is no longer a thing, You can make cool spiderweb/snowflake designs with the tribars.



btw, this

hes not saying "oh you shouldn't use it as caster armor" he's saying its programmed that you cannot physically attach it to the chassis like pistons in IF

is indeed the case with the zteks I posted earlier. It would be bulky and hard to use if it were attachable to the baseplate anyway.

I'm probably going to get this finished over the summer if everything goes as planned, and that my HDD and external harddrive don't both commit seppuku at the same time again, or I don't catch a severe case of terminal procrastination or whatever. Yes, I'm aware that RA3 will have been out for a few months when this is finished, but I have plans in mind to make this mod unique from other mods. I have to get through making all the kinda-mundane components before I can Make RA2 Great Again^tm.

Next post will be about sledgehammers. This isn't the part where I MaRGA, but sledgehammers will have a bit more variety beyond having a set of styles.

[Naryar]

dope

[Mr. AS]

New hammers. Weights are listed next to each hammer.



Instead of having all the hammers follow the same archetype of "high HP, low DP (damage)", there are now two types of hammer available with different stats that affect how you use them.

The hammers on top are your typical Sledgehammers, and functions basically the same way you'd expect a sledgehammer to. High HP and low DP. Only difference being that it also has 2 frequency added to it so that your average Dark-July type sledgehammer rammers are more interesting to watch push things around the arena. It's less than the 5 frequency that sawblades have.

The hammers on the bottom are called Slamhammers. They lack the 2 frequency that sledgehammers have, and have much higher DP than sledgehammers, at the cost of having less HP. The DP/HP Ratio on these things is 1.5 compared to sledgehammers having 0.5. Slamhammers are made to be used in place of sledgehammers on your high-speed, high-damage, high-testosterone spinners.

[Naryar]

Interesting. Slamhammers still look pretty tough visuals-wise, make make them look more fragile ?

[MassimoV]

Neat stuff, looks pretty cool

[Sage]

Really liking this mod. Let me know if you want an extra hand.

[TommyProductionsInc]

I like how this mod looks so far! Will the AI be typical stock or DSL standard or IRL?

[Mr. AS]

Slamhammers are fragile, but they're not "literally glass" fragile like razors are. (edit: I could throw some cracks on there though)

AI will likely be mostly IRL like ironforge so that newbies don't get overwhelmed and quit after building thier first bot.

Whipped up some burst motors. These aren't all of the burst motors, obviously. I'm planning for burst motors to range from 10 to 120 kg. These ones are 30kg for the smallest one and 80kg for the large snapper2.



Snapper2's and Snapper1's. The Snapper1's are the smaller semi-circular burst motors, while the snapper2 you know and love has been updated for the mod with an extended and centered axle. Each motor has all the appropriate attachment points you need in order to build 99% of bot designs.

Most burst motors will have a regular and a large version that weighs 2 times as much but is also twice as powerful. In addition, the maxspeed of burst motors has been severely cut down in favor of giving them more torque and initial speed. For reference, the snapper2 (40kg) is almost as powerful as the ironforge beta (20kg, but is effectively 40kg due to everything's weight being halved). While it is not as powerful, it does have initial speed where as the ironforge beta does not.

By the time I post the next update on the mod's progress, RA3 will have been out for a week or so. I'm intending on posting some more out-there and unique components.

PS sage I'll keep you in mind if I need help with making cool skins or something.

[MassimoV]

lol they look wooden

red spin motor looks Scottish

[Badger]

Maybe the larger bursts should be more than 2x as powerful? To make up for the fact that they're huge as well as heavier.

[Mr. AS]

By the time I post the next update on the mod's progress, RA3 will have been out for a week or so.

Well, that was a disappointment. Played RA3 for a grand total of a whole hour when I was expecting to blow a week away on it. 

I was going to go on this spiel about "hey guys check out these components that'll be in the mod that RA3 doesn't have!", but it doesn't seem that RA3 even has chassis wedges, let alone any of the parts in this post.



Here's the 4 vanilla cheatbot2 parts, sized down significantly so that they're actually usable. Weights have been altered slightly as well.



Flamethrowers, cannons and magnets will be available in "armored" versions as well, which have more HP and damage than the cheatbot2 parts.  Armored cannons and magnets are still WIP, but you get the idea. Flames, projectiles and magnetic force come out the front. Although they suffer a weight-based efficiency penalty for being part-cheatbot part-not. For example, a 70kg armored flamethrower would have the efficiency of a regular 40kg component, since it is part flamethrower.
(btw, check out that new flame particle texture. Pretty neat huh?)



The hovercraft's attachment point has been edited so that you can no longer use it as caster armor. It also comes in two versions, floating and non-floating. Floating hovercrafts function exactly how you'd regularly expect them to, while non-floating hovercrafts will remain on the ground instead of constantly floating. Due to the hovercraft's hard-coded properties, anything using a hovercraft cannot be flipped, regardless of whether or not you're using a floating or non-floating hovercraft. This makes non-floating hovercrafts useful for non-invertible robots, at the cost of some weight (right now floating hovercrafts are 50 and non-floating hovercrafts are 30). And yes, you can use wheels with non-floating hovercrafts.



The main drawbacks to hovercrafts are reduced fall speed, and slower movement overall. I think being unable to be inverted should be worth it for taller robots, however.

But yeah, regardless of RA3's current state, the main feature of the [NAME REDACTED] mod will be in it's wider variety of components. This is compared to DSL's absolutely gigantic selection of parts at the expense of usability of each part, and ironforges hyperbalancing at the expense of component selection. I hope to land somewhere in the middle with this. Really haven't seen cannons, hovercrafts or magnets get much love in TC mods before.

what is this trite AS, these will ruin the metagame and upset out razor-fetishizing overlords. gtfo kys fgt

Here's the thing though, these components will be part of a completely different metagame than the rest of the components shown so far. Magnets, cannons, hovers, thrusters, 24k gold, a goddamn giant car, you name it. Cheatbot2 (called "extreme mode" in-game, but it's cheatbot2) will feature components that are considered to either be unusual to see in real life, or difficult to balance. When balancing updates occur, it will usually be concerning cheatbot2 components.

TL;DR, Cheatbot2 will be alot more fleshed out than being a dumping ground for replica parts (DSL) or being barely used at all (ironforge). I fully expect encourage two different metagames to emerge, with non-cheatbot2 mainly being for real-life robots and cheatbot2 being for competitive DSL-S stuff and wierd unique artbots.

Up next: more CB2 stuff; fun with variables

[DeadGenocide]

Those flamethrowers look straight up badass, unlike the normal flamethrowers.

[Badger]

Love the whole ethos and direction of this mod.

[J]

Did.... Did you just turn those clubs into flamethrowers?

****ing hell, that's brilliant.

[09090901]

The new flame texture looks great.

[Naryar]

looks like this mod will carve itself a worthy place along with ironforge

i fully expect a new set of ra2 showcases.

[Badnik96]

RA3 may have been a dud out of the gate, but RA2 is definitely in good hands. Keep it up man.