cupid's rocket volley bots!

[cupid_the_conqueror]

[MarvinMan]

Cool.

Are the missiles launched at different angles, or do they spread out naturally?

Perhaps you could make a version with a couple of big guided missiles next. Or go the other way and make a belt fed version to rapid-fire several dozen missiles.

[cupid_the_conqueror]

I was manually changing the angle as I fired it, but they have a little bit of natural spread due to the fact they they have slightly different launch distances.

I could make this design fire MUCH MUCH faster, but I felt the slower firing was better so you could adjust the volley as you fire it (as I do in the video)

A belt feed would be very tricky.  A mag feed on the other hand would be bulky but easy to do. Simply have a stack of them connected together with pistions on the bottom, after the top one fires move the pistons up and keep firing until empty.

[MarvinMan]

Knowing how effective a single hit would be, a full-auto mode is probably overkill.

Even this much armour couldn't take a direct hit:

[cupid_the_conqueror]

yea I am kinda surprised nobody has got a dumb fire rocket bot yet into the ACL league. Grenades seem to be far more effective then plasma cannons.

[MarvinMan]

I suppose it's a case of missiles being harder to use and having a limited ammunition supply. Once you've managed to sucessfully aim and fire a missile, you then have to try and detonate it at the right time without getting caught in the blast. Protecting the missiles and launch system is also a problem.

Now we have a hard part limit, that makes missiles even more impractical as you're looking at an absolute minimum of 2 parts per shot.

[PressureLine]

Knowing how effective a single hit would be, a full-auto mode is probably overkill.

Even this much armour couldn't take a direct hit:

[cupid_the_conqueror]

darnit pressureline! quit teasing me and put the BP up already so I can splice the crap out of it!

[Sleeping_Owl]

yea I am kinda surprised nobody has got a dumb fire rocket bot yet into the ACL league

Last time I played rawbots, dumb fire rocket was almost useless in real fight because nobody had a turret with good aim and miss with a rocket is too "expensive".
A proper guided missile is too big for most designs, but you can check my Nest in ACL, it has land missiles.

[z26]

A bot with guided missiles is a bit pointless.  Since a guided missile by definition can steer and accelerate itself, having an actual body to carry it is a bunch of parts that serve no purpose the missile itself cannot serve.  You'd better have an explosive swarm instead (maybe with one or more bots dedicated to target detection)

A dumb fire rocket on the other hand needs another vehicule to carry the ammo around and aim it (and in ballistic designs also accelerate it)

[cupid_the_conqueror]

yea I am kinda surprised nobody has got a dumb fire rocket bot yet into the ACL league

Last time I played rawbots, dumb fire rocket was almost useless in real fight because nobody had a turret with good aim and miss with a rocket is too "expensive".
A proper guided missile is too big for most designs, but you can check my Nest in ACL, it has land missiles.

HOLY SHIT ITS OWL! also, I was working on a bot that could do ballistic calcs to fire accurate rockets at long range targets, but the way the physics bends with the fps makes it impossible as the projectiles flight distorts based on game performance. The only thing is that it aims at a target "part" so it would be useless in ACL

[MarvinMan]

Welcome back, Owl!

Rockets could possibly be easier to use than aiming a cannon in some cases. With rockets, you should be able to get a very high velocity so gravity isn't a problem, and the massive damage and area of effect make pinpoint accuracy less important. Some of the ACL maps are so tight that anything fired along a line of sight to the target is likely to do damage.

I would expect that any swarm would overwhelm (or even be ignored by) the targeting system of most bots, so a swarm of guided missile style bots could be devastating if the attack was properly coordinated.