Rainbow Impreza Tries To Do Stock But Fails Miserably

[Joelu Of Eagleland]

Right, BEFORE WE START;

This is my first time playing stock RA2. The first time I got this game (a year ago, roughly) I went straight onto DSL because I had heard it was just better than the original. Only recently have I decided to try out the Stock game just to see what kinds of robots you can create. I also favor creativity and uniqueness over something that works.

With this in mind, the robots I upload here are probably going to look like they are in need of medical attention (this does not mean a thrashing from EMERGENCY) so I do apologize for not being good at building stuff. After all, I'm still essentially a noob to RA2.


With that out of the way, here's my first robot; the texture is half-arsed and took 5 minutes, the weapon is largely ineffective and despite having steel armor, it still gets ripped apart in seconds. And I love it.



It's name is Protogen, if you couldn't tell. It started its life after I asked myself "What's the closest I can get to making Barberous?" without asking "Is it going to even work?"
I've built lots of robots like this; low chassis, largest wheels the game allows. These kind of robots were all joke robots though; this was the first robot that I made that actually had any means of attack.
It used to look a lot better, but I kept on switching, adding and deleting components after realizing it wasn't winning anything. I tried to make a vertical flywheel weapon but a) it did nothing to harm the other robot and b) I couldn't try anything else as it simply didn't work without being a 60cm disc with 2 pole spikes. The only other thing that would actually spin and hit other robots was a 100mm circular saw. I just kinda chose the lesser of the two evils. Plus, the saw could overturn some robots, so that was a bonus.

My in-game team is Carbon R200 Club, by the way.

This is probably gonna end up being the new "Spinner From The West".

[The Red Blur]

Well, first of all, don't touch the armor options, and then it is stuck on "DSA", which, in stock, is lighter, and stronger, than steel.

[Joelu Of Eagleland]

Well, first of all, don't touch the armor options, and then it is stuck on "DSA", which, in stock, is lighter, and stronger, than steel.

So not choosing armor gives you better armor?

Wasn't aware of that. Until today I have never built something in Stock before, so I always thought choosing armor was important.

...Unless I've misinterpreted what you've said?

[Thrackerzod]

Well, first of all, don't touch the armor options, and then it is stuck on "DSA", which, in stock, is lighter, and stronger, than steel.

So not choosing armor gives you better armor?

Wasn't aware of that. Until today I have never built something in Stock before, so I always thought choosing armor was important.

...Unless I've misinterpreted what you've said?

Nope, you've got it right.  It's a weird bug in the game.  All the Stock AI bots have double-strength armor, too.

As far as the design you're making, I just don't think it's possible to make in Stock effectively.  The only good weapons in stock are razors, maces, iron spikes, and sometimes bear claws, and I don't think any of those would fit given what you're trying to do.

[lloopp D lloopp]

I know basically nothing about stock but nice avatar man

[Bobyasianboy]

Honestly IRL bots aren't really done in stock, it's mainly just unrealistic bots which utilize glitches in the game to make things such as this (stolen from Sage's showcase). IRL building is best done in DSL or Ironforge.

If you do want to continue with it though, you don't need that many batteries, I'd say 1 nifty(the red battery) would do. And yeah, DSA is double the strength of aluminium and the same weight, you always want to use it.

If you want to try unrealistic building, this is a really good guide: http://beetlebros.gametechmods.com/ra2techs.htm#basic

Also, props on making an original skin for it. Not many people do that.

[R1885]

Well, first of all, don't touch the armor options, and then it is stuck on "DSA", which, in stock, is lighter, and stronger, than steel.

So not choosing armor gives you better armor?

Wasn't aware of that. Until today I have never built something in Stock before, so I always thought choosing armor was important.

...Unless I've misinterpreted what you've said?

Nope, you've got it right.  It's a weird bug in the game.  All the Stock AI bots have double-strength armor, too.

As far as the design you're making, I just don't think it's possible to make in Stock effectively.  The only good weapons in stock are razors, maces, iron spikes, and sometimes bear claws, and I don't think any of those would fit given what you're trying to do.

Single sided ice picks, small axes, short pole spikes, and pointy tips are also good if you can work around the normals.

[Badger]

Honestly IRL bots aren't really done in stock, it's mainly just unrealistic bots which utilize glitches in the game to make things such as https://gametechmods.com/uploads/images/36536screenshot_4.png]this[/url] (stolen from Sage's showcase). IRL building is best done in DSL or Ironforge.

If you do want to continue with it though, you don't need that many batteries, I'd say 1 nifty(the red battery) would do. And yeah, DSA is double the strength of aluminium and the same weight, you always want to use it.

If you want to try unrealistic building, this is a really good guide: http://beetlebros.gametechmods.com/ra2techs.htm#basic

Also, props on making an original skin for it. Not many people do that.

^ the image he tried to link

[Badnik96]

At least you made an effort on the skin. If you resize your bmp file to 512x512 or 1024x1024 (or any file that's a multiple of 64) then you can get higher-quality skins in game. This should keep the text from looking as blurry as it does.

I don't really see the point of the rear wheels, so just get rid of them entirely. Also, every wheel in RA2 stock has the same grip, so we generally use the lightest ones (shiny hubs) unless we need the extra size.

[Reier]

building on what boby said if you want to do a more realistic approach you may want to try the DSL or ironforge mods, most of the glitches prevalent in stock RA2 are banned there and you get more components to boot.

[RedAce]

As far as the design you're making, I just don't think it's possible to make in Stock effectively.

But yeah.  I like what you tried to do with a more IRL approach in stock, which is fine.  But if if you do want to look at some advanced tips and tricks for making an extremely good bot, I would highly recommend you look at Sage's Tutorial Thread.  He's made a bunch of tutorials for Stacking and Axle loading and whatnot that I find extremely useful, even to this very day.

[Joelu Of Eagleland]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I'll make sure to have a look at the different guides and tutorials; see what I can learn from them.

I made another robot, as Protogen was fun but rather bad (I may enter it in N00B WARZ V because it is my first robot built in Stock after all) and I wanted to be victorious for once in in battles.

I edited all the different images into one, it's probably more efficient. Picture quality got obliterated, though. 


*The blue text above "WINGS OF FIRE" says "When driver and machine become one, they are unstoppable. Or something else some Initial D character said."

This robot began it's life after I was dicking around on the computers at my school at lunchtime (yes the age in my profile is false, I assumed you had to be a certain age to join the fourms so I basically thought "If I put in a big number, I won't have any problems." My age is 15.) because I got Robot Arena 2 to run successfully. I wanted to make a robot with ridiculously large and not even slightly sensible weaponry, so I made a robot called "UTOPIA OF F**K STUPID", put two powerful motors outside of the robot then put massive tri-bars with razor tips spinning vertically. I then slowly added everything else into the robot (which is what a bad builder does, I know. This design wasn't serious in the first place) and the end result was... Something that looked like it would work?! I emailed the robot to myself so I could use it at home and tweaked it from there, doing things like adding front wheels, replacing the tri-bars with discs and adding a hammer because Grog, The Warrior kept on hitting Wings of Fire before I could hit him with the discs, which pissed me off. Eventually, after spending a fairly long time making a texture for the robot (longer than Protogen anyway) I finished up with what you see here; something that's probably going to give me negative rep for having so many flaws.

One major flaw with this; IT'S RIDICULOUSLY SLOW. And to think, I improved this one's speed. UTOPIA OF F**K STUPID struggled to turn at all. Maybe it's the two Z-Tec motors devouring my batteries, of which there are many in the robot. Oh, and yes, the weapons are weak, but each one is so powerful it's capable of holding it's own with just 1 disc. I won one of the single player events after losing 1 disc and the crappy rage hammer in round 2 of a 4 round tournament (wow give me a gold star) and to me, that spells out; "It works."

To everyone else, it probably spells out; "That's not going to work against anything that isn't the Stock AI." I kinda think the same.

[090901]

HACHIROKU DRIFTU?

[Gauche Suede]

To everyone else, it probably spells out; "That's not going to work against anything that isn't the Stock AI." I kinda think the same.

Well then go get Starcore V3 so that you can be sure if it works against non-Stock AIs.

[FOTEPX]

HACHIROKU DRIFTU?

kawaii hachiroku needs to be a robot now.

[Badger]

I think your building style would work a lot better in DSL or Ironforge, but who am I to say what mod you should play.

As for the bot, the tiny wheels on axles arent doing much and can be removed, and the rear wheels can be changed to shinies (try to get them on ztecs or HP ztecs). Angle and square connectors waste weight, so in general you should never use them, and use round extenders instead. Make sure you use the red ones.

One large battery is more efficient than lots of smaller batteries. I think 2 blacks will be more than enough for your bot, 1 if you remove the hammer which isnt doing much (as bots should be hit away by the discs first).

All that,combined with shrinking the chassis should give you weight for more razor/iron spam on the discs to make them even more damaging. You might also want to consider swapping the hammer for a wedge, by moving the DDT. Good luck!

Edit: also build to the weight limit, and use iron spikes or razor tips on the discs. Irons, razors and maces are the only weapon types ever used (with a few rare exceptions).

[Joelu Of Eagleland]

Eyyyy. Made another thingy. I've been making a fair few robots in Stock now; I'm learning what works and what doesn't. I made a robot recently that I was gonna showcase here, but decided against it as it's not particularly good. Plus it looks like an odd fusion between Terrorhurtz/Beta and Dead Metal.

The robot I have made here is something I am actually quite proud of. As in, I actually got this to work in the Middleweight class. And I built it up to the weight limit, so that's a plus.

A downside for it is that the weaponry, as with Wings of Fire, is easy to knock off, but this thing has blinding speed; it's one of the fastest robots I've ever made. It's invertable and also very damaging. That, and the disc constantly flicks opponents over, so the stock AI have got nothing on this.

(Apart from Tornado who smashes it like it's lego

The support beams are probably lego anyway)



I CAN EXPLAIN THE NAME GIVE ME A MOMENT

It's supposed to be some nickname from a racing game that said game gave me near the end. The game tries desperately hard to give you something that sounds cool and when I saw "Tempest Atomic Bomb" I thought it was perfect for a name or nickname, even if it made little sense.

I'm well aware that there are glaring weaknesses with this design (trust me, if I could do a reverse Adam Clark and cover up the motors, I would) but I just like these slightly crappy yet competent robots that can win fights and be unique while they're at it. Sorry if it looks like something someone's done before; I'm not sure what designs other people have made.

Actually, now that I look at it, it looks more like a PulverizeR recreation. Or a less crappy Daisy Chopper.

[Badger]

You don't need all those angle connectors. Baseplate anchors have multiple angled versions, and you can use control+mouse to move components up and down on the baseplate, allowing you to put the anchors on top of each other.

[Joelu Of Eagleland]

You don't need all those angle connectors. Baseplate anchors have multiple angled versions, and you can use control+mouse to move components up and down on the baseplate, allowing you to put the anchors on top of each other.

That didn't work for me for whatever reason, but OK. I remember trying that first but the baseplate anchor always came up as the semi-transparent red thingy, making me assume that you had to put it on the baseplate.

[The Red Blur]

You don't need all those angle connectors. Baseplate anchors have multiple angled versions, and you can use control+mouse to move components up and down on the baseplate, allowing you to put the anchors on top of each other.

That didn't work for me for whatever reason, but OK. I remember trying that first but the baseplate anchor always came up as the semi-transparent red thingy, making me assume that you had to put it on the baseplate.

You do, but you sorta don't. As Badger said, if you hold Ctrl, and move the mouse downwards, any component you are holding should float upwards.