BotForge Build Walkthrough

• The wedge. A head-on hit does up to 60% less damage and launches the attacker up the slope. But the bonus only works in the front ~120° arc, so keep your nose on the threat. A side or rear hit is not deflected at all. A front-mounted weapon sticks out past the slope and takes the hits itself. It is a control playstyle, not a win button: a faster flanker, an overhead weapon, or another wedge that gets under first all beat it.
• Gear ratio is a trade. High gear gives more torque (stronger push, quicker acceleration) but a lower top speed. Low gear is faster but pushes softly. Rammer wants high, speedster wants low.
• Invertible keeps you fighting upside-down, at the cost of being 12% less nimble all the time. Worth it for a brawler that gets flipped, skip it on a speed bot.
• A heavier chassis means more health, but it eats budget and slows you down.

Stats to watch:

• Health. Your hit points. It is 2 per kilogram of total weight, capped at 300, so a heavier bot takes more hits to knock out.
• Flip resistance. How well you survive a flipper. It rises when you are low and heavy. A flipper scoops under you, so a wide stance does not help here.
• Footprint. A separate defense: how hard you are to shove or ram over. It rises with a wide, centered wheelbase. If your weight sits outside the wheels it warns TIP RISK.
• Shove power. How hard you win a head-to-head push. It rises with mass and a higher gear ratio.

• Wide wheelbase, hard to tip. Wheels tucked under the middle make a bot easy to flip.
• Bigger wheels raise top speed but lift the center of mass (tippier) and add weight.
• More wheels means backup. Lose one and you keep driving. Fewer wheels are lighter and quicker but fragile.
• Wheels vs Tracks. Wheels are fast and agile but fragile. Tracks are slower and less nimble but tough, and they keep driving after taking damage. Pick tracks for a grinder that expects to get hit.

Stats to watch:

• Top speed. How fast you can move. It rises with bigger wheels, a lower gear, and wheels over tracks.
• Acceleration. How quickly you reach top speed. Lighter bots accelerate faster, so every kilogram you add makes you more sluggish off the line.
• Flip resistance. Watch this drop when you fit bigger wheels: they raise your center of mass. Speed and stability pull against each other.
• Turn rate (tracks only). Tracks turn noticeably slower than wheels, which is the price of their toughness.

• Spinner damage rises with the square of RPM. At half speed it does only a quarter of the damage. The blade glows hotter as it charges, so you can read how dangerous it is.
• Spinners are hit and run. Spin all the way up, land one big hit, back off. A hit sheds its own RPM and it can't spin back up while grinding on someone, so trading constant contact is a trap.
• Arms and flippers are control, not raw damage. Get under, flip, and shove rivals into the arena hazards.
• Compound weapons stack parts for reach plus damage. You can mount one weapon on another, like a spinner on the end of a swinging arm or an extending ram (try the Spinner-on-arm starter bot). The arm reaches the spinner out past your chassis so you strike first, and each part keeps its own key: leave the spinner toggled on so it stays spun up, then just tap the arm or ram to lunge and hit.
• The trade for a compound weapon is weight and power. Every part you add carries its own mass, and a spinner left running keeps draining the battery, so watch your budget and your Sustained run. And because the arena caps how fast a bot can take damage, a compound weapon wins on reach and control, not on stacking extra DPS.
• Do not overdo the weapons. You can bolt on several, but each one needs its own control key, and juggling three or four of them mid-fight is more than most drivers can actually steer and aim at once. They also all pull from the same battery, so the more weapons you run, the faster it drains and the sooner they brown out. One or two weapons you can aim well beat a pile you cannot.
• No weapon one-shots a healthy bot. Landing more hits beats hoping for one giant hit. A weapon pointed the wrong way does nothing.

Stats to watch:

• Weapon DPS. Damage per second at full speed. Around 50 reads as Strong. Remember it falls off fast below full RPM.
• Time to KO. Roughly how many seconds of clean hits it takes to finish a typical bot (it is 100 divided by your DPS). A handy reality check on a weapon.
• Ram damage. How hard you hit by driving into someone. It is your mass times your top speed, so heavy and fast both help.
• One weapon is enough. The arena caps how fast any bot can take damage, so a second weapon adds reach and coverage, not double the DPS.

• It only protects where it physically covers, and only at the right height. A plate floated high or sunk as a deep skirt misses ground-level hits. Armor the side you lead with.
• Armor breaks. Enough hits knock a plate off and expose the chassis behind it.
• Its weight does not add health. It shields your core, it does not make the core tougher. Over-armor and you are just slow.
• Hazards ignore armor. The arena saws and launchers still punish a pure turtle, so armor alone does not win.

Stats to watch:

• Knockback resist. How easily you get shoved around. It rises with total mass, and armor is mass, so a well-armored bot holds its ground better.
• Health. Watch that adding armor does not raise this. Health comes from chassis weight, not armor. Armor shields your core, it does not grow it.
• Collision radius. Your physical size. A bigger bot is an easier target to land hits on.

• Purely cosmetic. Color, finish, patterns, wheel styles, decals, and underglow change nothing about the fight and touch none of your Stats.
• Quick win: add a name sticker and a color scheme so you can find your bot at a glance.

• Recharge refills, the weapon drains. Drain faster than recharge and you brown out: the spinner winds down right when you need it.
• Match batteries to the weapon's appetite. A hungry, fast spinner needs lots of recharge or a big reserve. A light weapon barely needs any.
• Power costs weight, which is weight you can't spend on weapon, armor, or speed. The budget game again.

Stats to watch:

• Battery. Your energy reserve for firing weapons. Around 200 reads as Strong.
• Recharge. How fast that reserve refills, in units per second. This is what keeps a weapon fed during a long fight.
• Sustained run. How long your weapons can fire nonstop before browning out. It reads unlimited when your recharge keeps up with the drain. A few seconds means your weapon dies mid-fight. This is the single most common mistake.

Which cell for which weapon:

• Spinner: recharge wins. A spinner draws about half its own weight in power every second at full speed (a 9 kg blade pulls about 4.5/s, an 18 kg blade about 9/s). To spin nonstop, your recharge has to keep up with that draw. Standard (4.5/s) keeps a blade up to about 9 kg spinning forever; a bigger or hungrier spinner wants Fast-Charge (10/s). If the Sustained run stat does not read "unlimited," your recharge is losing the race and the spinner will brown out mid-fight.
• Hammer, flipper, ram: reserve wins. These fire in short bursts and recover between swings, so what matters is having enough stored power for several hits, not a fast trickle. Pick Capacitor (125) or Heavy (95) and let it refill between strikes. A hammer is the hungriest weapon while it is actually swinging, but only for that split second.
• Wedge or pure rammer: go Light. Driving never uses the battery, only weapons do. If your bot wins by shape and shoving, a Light 2 kg cell frees up weight for armor and speed.
• Capacitor is a trap for spinners. Its giant reserve is tempting, but 3/s recharge cannot feed a spinner for long. It is built for one big hammer blow, not a weapon you hold the trigger on.
• Need more of both? Stack cells. Power adds up: two Standards give 100 reserve and 9/s recharge. Add cells until Sustained run reads "unlimited" at a weight you can afford.

• One brain, four views. Rules is the bottom rung of a ladder: Rules → Easy Blocks → Blocks → Code. Build with Rules cards, then slide up to see the exact blocks, and then the real JavaScript, that your rules wrote. It is the same brain the whole way up, so it is a gentle on-ramp from clicking menus to writing real code.
• What your bot can sense. Where the enemy is (ahead, to the left or right, behind, close, or far), how much health you have left, whether you are flipped over, and how charged your spinner is.
• What your bot can do. Drive (forward, slow, back, or stop), turn (left, right, or straight), fire your weapons, or stop your weapons.
• Rules run top to bottom, and the lower one wins. Put your "always" rules (like "always drive forward") up top and your "when the enemy is..." rules below them, so aiming and reacting override the default.
• Combine two conditions with AND or OR. "When the enemy is close and my spinner is charged, fire" holds your shot until it will actually hurt. "When I am badly hurt or flipped, back away" reacts to either one.
• Stop my weapons is its own action. Use it to save battery (stop firing when no one is in front) or to stop hurting yourself (stop the spinner while you are flipped).
• A good brain is usually small. Aim at the enemy, fire when it is in front, back off when hurt. Three or four solid rules beat a tangle of twenty. Add one rule at a time and test after each.
• You do not have to use a brain at all. You can drive your bot yourself with the keys. The brain is for bots that fight on their own, which is how tournament and unattended matches run.