Common Terms
Seal Clubber/Overtiering
A term sometimes seen in Robocraft's ingame chat, referring to the practice of attaining a higher tier, unlocking its items, and then bringing them into a lower tier, particularly Tier 1, usually in an effort to quickly increase one's player level (and thereby CPU) through an abnormally high number of kills and assists per match. The term, however, applies more to the effect this strategy has on the other players in the match. They are the seals, the overtiered player is the clubber.
Glass Cannon
A glass cannon is any robot or archetype that has good damage output (usually from Overtier weapon), but handles incoming damage poorly. Satellites and the helium chair, are classic examples of a glass cannon.
Nerf
To decrease the potential of a certain object in the game.
Buff
To increase the potential of certain objects in the game.
OP
Overpowered
UP
Underpowered
LoS
Stands for Line of Sight. Used to describe what players can see in their current environment. E.I. Player one is on Hill1's , while Player2 in on the bottom of the hill. In a way, it is possible for Player1 To see Player2, while player2 can not see Player one.
Render Distance
The distance the fog is at, and the distance at which the game stops loading graphical elements, namely other bots. Bots beyond this distance cannot be seen and must be targeted indirectly.
It is worth noting that the clipping plane is flat and perpendicular to your LoS, which means that you can actually see further in your "peripheral vision", away from the aiming reticle.
Statistical
DpS
Dps stands for "damage per second". This is useful to calaute the damage a weapon can to in a certain amount of time.
HpS
HpS stands for "health per second" used for regenerating health weapons.
CoM
Center of Mass
CoL
Center of Lift
CoT
Center of Thrust
Splash Damage
Splash damage is used for weapons that do damage to an area.
- Alpha damage: the area that the weapon does damage to first.
- Beta damage: the secondary area that the damage is dealt to.
AoE
Splash damage: The combined area of the Alpha and Beta damage. AoE stands for "Area Of Effect"
Away From Keyboard
A player is AFK or Away from Keyboard when they are not paying attention to the game or unable to control or provide input to a connected game session. This may be intentional or unintentional by the player.
Intentional AFK
High durability bots mean that going AFK can be a valid waiting strategy while defending or capping a base (Classic), or waiting for your team to form up and move out. Intentional AFKing is against the Robocraft Fair play expectations and is a reportable offense which can result in being banned. Until then, shoot them.
Unintentional AFK
A player may be fairly interrupted in their gaming session and have to abandon a game without being able to log out. Shoot them. Other possibilities is that the player may be typing a message, this also causes AFK like symptoms.
AFK Counter Strategies
Because most AFKers are intentionally AFKing, most intentional AFKers either use thrusters/helium tanks to reach high, hard to reach altitudes. However, some AFK crafts may be designed to climb walls. The most effective way to deal with AFK bots is either a plasma bomber (kills quickly) or an interceptor (can attack any type of target).
Important Note
Before proceeding to kill an AFK craft that looks like a helium chair or a design specifically meant to be able to reach convenient places for the player to go away from the keyboard without being of much use to the team (typically a pilot seat attached to helium tanks/thrusters shielded by electroplates), take an up-close screenshot of the bot so that you will be able to report them as RP mining techniques are against the fair play expectations.
Speeders and Flyers
Speeders and, fast aircraft are very effective against AFK players, as their high mobility and speed mean they can find them and shoot them. Especially in the case of intentional AFK defenders who take the first minutes of a match to check Facebook or yell at the cat.
Anti-AFK Game Mechanics
After a certain amount of time, the game will automatically boot a player from a session if no movement key has been pressed in that time. Note well that firing a gun doesn't negate the autoboot, so even if all your movable parts have been shot off, be sure to hit a movement key every once in a while to make sure you stay in the session. You will also have to do this to wait out a match in the rare occasion of falling through the terrain, but the escape key and self-destructing is generally preferred in that case, since the repair-cost penalty that formerly made RP-loss possible above Tier 4 no longer exists.
One-Shot
A One-Shot is a term used by players referring to kills made with only one shot. The most common type of one shot is death by plasma launcher and Rail Cannons
Causes
Robots count as destroyed when the cube underneath their Pilot Seat is destroyed - thus disconnecting it from the rest of the robot - or if all functional cubes (Movement cubes and Hardware weapons) of a robot are destroyed. One-Shotting a robot by means of the latter is generally not possible unless the target has only one of such functional cube.
Tap Firing
Overview
Tap Firing is a strategy for SMG users which is essentially semi-automatic mode for these automatic weapons. Done right, it will give the player 100% accuracy with every shot, converting an otherwise spray-and-pray weapon into a low powered, unscoped sniper rifle by sacrificing its high rate of fire for better accuracy, netting more damage at long distances.
Instructions
It's simple: tap the fire button, wait for the reticle to reset, and repeat. 2-3 shots per second is possible using this strategy and in some cases it can out-DPS a sniper rifle on a like-tiered bot.
Obsolete
S-type
Originally the game only had five versions of each weapon, denoted as levels. "Shield Type" variants were later added to fill the gaps between them. Shield types were identified by their yellow fins, a simple and easy marker that cut down on programming time and saved valuable data footprint by having a shared render. These were later retconned into ten distinct tiers but retained the yellow fins on the even-numbered tiers.