Except once, when it fought Steel Meatball. And if that fight was any indication, it will lose again in the finals, and Scrap Daddy will be the champion. Mako 4 had a chance for a revenge win, but GBBS would have to get ridiculously lucky to beat Steel Meatball when it already lost 0-3.
I don't have a problem with the Havok explosion restart rules I used for BBEANS. The free restarts don't make Steel Meatball unbeatable--just look at Iron Spaghetti vs. Ham-mer Sandwich in BBEANS4. And while it looked like Mako 4 had Steel Meatball beaten when Havok interfered, there's no way to know for sure. Steel Meatball already proved it can come back and win even when it's one hit away from death.
1.6 piercing and 1.6 concussion = about 454 DP. Times 10000 HP, divided by 25 kgs equals... 181,696 efficiency. So the Holy Jagged Blade is more than three times as good as regular DSL weapons (which are balanced at 60,000 efficiency).
I guess that's one way to give people incentive to use it. I think you could still do with slightly less damage though.
Not necessarily. There is always a TFace corresponding to each mesh face, but you can have as many or as few TVerts as needed. So if you want, you could just make 3 TVerts at (0,0) (0,1) and (1,0) and make all the TFaces have the same TVerts. That will apply the same image to each face of the object.
OK, you guys have been left in the dark long enough.
Here's what we have so far of the new Race mode.
As you can see, all the necessary programming is worked out. All that's left is to finish the actual arenas and make some AI opponents. You can expect to see more like that modified All Terrain Train
I think I remember Absolute Spike Defense. That one always looked fearsome.
Ultimate Aegis is good too, especially for not using Snapper II's. I'm a bit confused about what it does upside down though. Does it flop around? Spin like a top?
I have The Ultimate Sacrifice and Heroic Sacrifice, but there's still one missing from the set. The LW:
This was a tough design to pull off effectively on a LW. And it's not nearly as good as its big brothers. But it's still good enough to consistently beat almost any HS I pit it against (the one exception: the new Whirlpool in SC4 beta). Obviously, it's not very effective against other wedges (lacking a small wedge of its own) but that's not as big of a deal in the LW class than in MW or HW. And the Sacrifice bots are all primarily HS-killers.
I also had to use plastic armor to fit everything on that I wanted. But again, not as big of a deal with LW's, especially caster-armored LW's.
Quote from: You
But Wait!
you might say.
Quote from: You
What's a popup without a small wedge?
Well, I thought of that, and the first version of Noble Sacrifice actually had one.
This came at the cost of batteries and drive, however. While it was better at getting under some bots, after about a minute and a half of fighting, the weapon would simply quit and the bot would be helpless. It also lacked the driving power to bully around enhanced HS like Tech Support, and just couldn't get under them. So I decided to dump the wedge and upgrade to Z-teks and a Supervolt. Overall I'm happier with the second version.
BUT, you have to be careful, because if you try to use non-standard parts in multiplayer and any of your opponents don't have them installed, then the game will crash. Make sure your friends have all the same parts you do before doing this:
Open ra2.cfg in the Robot Arena 2 folder. Add a new line saying "AllowNonStandardMultiplayer = 1" anywhere in the file.
Edit: Aw, ACAMS beat me to it! Well, redundancy never hurt anybody.
Today we have a few myths suggested to me by Trovaner.
The first one is the myth that your bot is destroyed when the chassis reaches 0 HP. Trovaner thinks that this is not true, that the chassis has a certain fracture value and can go below 0 HP if the fracture damage is not exceeded. I happened to agree with him, but nothing wrong with finding out exactly what that fracture value is and proving it, right?
I had all the necessary tools for this left over from the chassis HP myth, so it wasn't much work to set up. I just used my chassis HP Test bots, and used the F9 Python window to do fixed amounts of damage to them. I started with 50 damage, and kept applying it until the chassis reached 0 HP.
Even though 50 damage meets or exceeds the chassis fracture point and ended up destroying the bot, the chassis clearly went well below 0 HP, confirming that there is a fracture point and that 0 HP does not mean death.
So, this myth is CONFIRMED.
But we're not done yet--now I wanted to know just what that magical fracture value is. So I re-did the test, this time applying only 40 damage.
No matter how many times I hit Enter, the control board didn't spark. So the fracture is somewhere between 40 and 50.
After a few random trials and errors, I discovered it was 41.
As long as your chassis gets hit for 40 or less damage, you won't die. But if it's 41, you're in trouble.
So what about different bots? Since I already proved that a bigger chassis has more HP, might it have a higher fracture as well? I did the same test on a big chassis to find out.
41 damage is still enough to damage the control board, even with the maximum size chassis. So while size affects HP, it doesn't affect fracture.
The last test I did was with a steel-armored chassis. If size doesn't affect fracture, armor still might.
Nope. 40 damage still doesn't touch the control board, as shown in the picture, and 41 damage was still enough to kill the bot (I'll spare you the screenshot). So neither size nor armor affect the chassis fracture point--it's always 41.
The next myth is a bit more interesting. Trovaner thinks that caster armor does not, in fact, block all damage. I have personal experience in this regard with my Sacrifice popup bots, and know for a fact that casters aren't impenetrable. What intrigued me is the reason Trovaner suggested for this--that damage is calculated for components based on the distance from the point of impact. It seems this is what the instruction booklet says. If it's true, then RA2 is a lot more realistic than I thought. I've also noticed that the 15cm casters work a lot better at blocking damage than the 10cm ones, and the titanium half sheets in DSL never work perfectly at preventing damage, so there seems to be support for this myth. However, it might also be due to weapons slipping between cracks or temporarily overlapping and penetrating the mesh of such armors. This explanation also seems plausible, as I've never seen anything penetrate caster/half sheet armor unless it was moving very fast.
Time to find out the truth. I made a test bot with cinder blocks from Firebeetle's component pack as front armor, which form a solid wall with no cracks for weapons to slip through. Then I used a slow bot with Firebeetle's energy spike weapons, which do high damage with frequency, so they will keep doing damage even when they're not moving. This eliminates both movement and cracks from the equation, so if damage is indeed calculated based on distance from point of impact, then we should see the test bot's chassis get damaged as I hold the energy spikes against the cinder blocks. If not, then nothing should happen.
No matter how long I stay in this position, the test bot's chassis remains at full health. I even backed up for a few rams, and still nothing.
I'm not quite ready to call it busted, though the myth is definitely on thin ice. Next I tried using the plus.damage command in the Python window to directly damage the cinder blocks. Since they are attached right to the chassis, I should see a decrease in armor integrity as the cinder blocks are damaged.
100 damage yields nothing. Let's bump it up a notch.
10000 damage exceeds the cinder blocks' total hitpoints of 5000. And still, the chassis is at full health. But we're not quite done... time to overdo it just to make sure! This time I targeted the control board instead of the cinder blocks, since apparently it has infinite HP. It's still attached right to the chassis, so if damage is based on distance from point of impact, the chassis should still get hurt.
If several billion damage to the control board won't scratch the chassis, nothing will. This myth is BUSTED. "Invincible" armor may not be impenetrable, but, regrettably, it's not because of any advanced damage calculation.
A lot of people seem to be wondering this, so I'll just say it: Making replicas bigger/smaller will be part of making them their proper weight classes.
Regarding Razer, I actually did curve the claw a bit more, but that thing is a bear to edit. So many vertexes, and in no order whatsoever. It's at least better than it was.
I'd also like to update the side panels to Razer's newer, smoother look, but those would be even worse to try and edit.
Anyways, here's some battle shots of the new Nightmare.
Visual improvements include a visible weapon motor, a better-looking disc, triangular braces on the side, and the UGO logo on the right arm is no longer mirrored. Technical improvements include greater power and greater stability.
Incidentally, working on Nightmare's teeth gave me a new idea for balancing weapons. Nightmare's teeth have low HP (600) but high fracture (1400). So as long as they don't take too many big hits, they won't fall off even after reaching 0 HP. But if you hit them really hard and break 1400 damage, they will snap off. A lot more like real life. I'm considering rebalancing the stock teeth in this way.
Up, down, it doesn't matter which way the burst motors fire, it's still a popup in my book. Just like the direction of a flipper--Firestorm-style or Toro-style--doesn't matter; they're still both flippers.
Has the skin issue been fixed? I don't know, I guess I'll post some quick comments just in case not.
There are 2 problems with that gmf.
1) The *MATERIAL_REF at the end of the samurai object is 1, which refers to the material with ref number of 1. You want the textured skin, which is ref number 0.
2) The object doesn't have any TVerts or TFaces, so even if you were using a texture, it wouldn't display properly. TVerts are two-dimensional coordinates between 0 and 1 that map out the object's different faces on a bitmap. 0,0 is the lower left corner. The number is a percent, so 0.5,0.5 is the middle. It's a lot like skinning a bot.
TFaces are like mesh faces, they link up three TVerts to make a triangle. There is one TFace for each mesh face, and generally you want them to correspond to the mesh faces in shape and size.
Look at a ram plate or something to see how the TVerts and TFaces are formatted.
The problem is, with your chassis constantly rotating, you can't use normal drive. When your chassis is upside down, the game will think your bot is upside down and your controls will get reversed. So it will be nearly impossible to drive unless you use crawler-type wheels.
For the weapon motors, you can just use modded powerful servos.
It's no big deal if you post pictures of TF and Jubjub bird. I made a video featuring the new Tempus Fugit a long time ago (just after BBEANS3) as a promotional thing, per Starcore's request. That's why I had the new TF on my computer in the first place. It was an earlier version that still needed AI tweaking, which is why the srimech is all wrong.
And the new Jubjub Bird is basically the same as my other showcased LW Flaying Mantis. I just used one hammer instead of two, and used the extra weight for caster armor.
Looks nice. You can't replicate Roadbloack's chassis exactly, but you can at least slope the back slightly to give the suggestion of roundness. That would make it look a bit more accurate.
Doesn't the real Barberous have support poles sticking out in the front and back to stabilize it? Might help with fighting capability. Otherwise it looks great.
Aw, I bet you're not done forever with stock. There have been times I thought I was done with stock, but eventually I get a new idea and start building again.
Is that new Forkie good? It doesn't look like the razors have much reach, and the wedge looks too steep (the small wedge, not the chassis wedge, I realize the chassis has to be sort of steep for the casters). I think the middle Snapper would be much better upside down. But if it works, I'm not going to complain.
If you can get controlled movement out of a crawler design, then it's perfectly OK for BBEANS.
Going back to your bots. Gyro is pretty bad right now, but you can easily make it decent (maybe even good) with that 38 extra kgs. That's 32 kgs for two stabilizing snow plows, and 6 for extenders to attach them. Change those 90 angle connectors to 20 cm extenders. Experiment, I'm sure there's a way to get some side plows on, which will greatly help with stability.
Bullet is good, except for the fact that it's not invertible. There has to be another way to attach the drive motors so you don't have to angle them down like that.
This is actually only the second HW HS with tribars I've made. Ever. The first one was made several years ago and had a huge chassis with no stacking, plus it had axle flails, so it doesn't count as "generic HS". I like original bots (don't we all) so I've not made any generic HS's until now.
Thanks to Sage's advanced Snapper loading video for inspiring me to make this bot. I built it with only 2 20 cm extenders holding on the weapons, and the drive is attached directly to the rear attach point.
It's called New Look! Same Great Taste! because that's what it is... the same thing we've seen before, wrapped up in a different package. DSA, invertible, 2 supervolts, 4 HP Z-teks for weapons and 2 for drive. The only difference is that it uses razor tips instead of maces or iron spikes. I haven't seen that recently. 48 razor tips in fact, plus one extra in the front for ramming (I had 9 extra kgs).
I didn't post any battleshots because NLSGT is pretty much just as good as any other HS. It's a bit more maneuverable thanks to its wide wheel base, though that also makes the wheels prone to falling off when fighting other HS (they rarely get hit when fighting non-HS though).
Show Posts
