Thruster Stick

Thruster Stick
Spotted as	Unknown
Role

A Thruster Stick is a complex bot that uses thrusters, Aerofoils and/or helium to fly.

Overview

Renowned for being hard to control, and often losing stability if not balanced and designed correctly, thruster sticks are one of the hardest bots to build and fly.

Strategy

Fly around in unpredictable ways, their redundancy keeps them up unless someone can land a few precise shots. You generally want to fly at a medium height and when attacking an enemy make full use of your agility to dodge as many of their shots as possible while also shooting them. Their main strength comes in numbers, speed, and the ability to hover mid-air like a helicopter while retaining its agility and upward firing clearance. A group of them can single out an enemy and take him down quickly before this help arrives. Their low total armour value allows them to be healed quickly.

Build

• Find where you want your rudders placed first, 2 in the front and back each, anterior or posterior, guarantee easy and bug free flight. As they act in a small way like a turning axis, the front ones should be higher than the ones in the back, so that yawing to the right exposes belly (guns) to the right.

Sidenote: If you can place your thrusters right, you can make a thruster stick that doesn't require rudders/aerofoils. But this requires a lot of build thought and time.

• Place your thrusters as tightly packed as possible, left and right facing (yaw) first. The front yaw thruster(s) should be lower compared to the ones in the back, again to roll left when yawing right and ensure you show the belly to the enemy whilst turning towards him. Pitch (up down) after, make sure to have them far in the front though they can be sidemounted. Forward (and if desired backwards) thrusters come last as they dont need a special position. Keep in mind that if all forward thrusters are too high above the centre of mass the stick will passively pitch down when accelerating.
• Place guns and shields
• When building the actual craft, make sure to connect parts to the chassis individually so they are not lost in pairs (see triforcing for help on how to do that). Especially similar thrusters should be mounted separately so you don't lose crucial components in clusters. Losing too many thrusters on one side of your thruster stick can really damage your overall control and maneuverability.
• Use leftover CPU to replace your heaviest blocks with tx1 blocks, especially in the upper front and upper back OR add helium, spread out in the front and along the spine, frequent practice mode runs are advised.

Note: Don't be mistaken by Airplanes trying hard to be a thruster stick. The placement of the rudders/aerofoils is one of the main differences between them. "Real" thruster sticks use rudders/aerofoils in patterns trying not to interfere with the movement, see rudders on blue and yellow on picture. This is generally harder to balance out rather than attempting to mimic the controls on an airplane, but can prove to be a challenge worth taking because with success it can greatly improve your thruster sticks performance.

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  Showing ventral (pink), dorsal (orange), lateral (red) steering rudders for planes and stabilisation, drone rudders, blue anterior, yellow posterior, facing up, down, right, left.
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  rough layout schematic, low front yawing, high front rudder, reverse in the back.
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  Frontpart of a beginner TS, note the tightly packed thrusters of a veteran tetris player.

Flight

Flying this bot will make the build seem like nothing. You need to know that none of the controls you placed will always function as they are at the beginning. If you are in flight sideways, your nose up and down thrusters will instead be used for turning. But as always; practice. Even though T10 thrusters are six times as tough as T10 cubes, it costs 19 CPU for each one and they have 18 times the visible surface. You may be fast, but you're not invincible.

Pros

• Fast
• A more agile version of bomber and interceptor
• Very maneuverable
• One of the best bots for 1v1 situations. Worry only when facing gunbeds or another thruster sticks.

Cons

• Massive ground fire.
• As with any flying bot. Rails can be very difficult to deal with.
• Can be somewhat hard to control.
• Hard to build efficiently.
• Semi high cost