In War Robots: Frontiers you take the helm of a 15-meter-tall combat walker to fight for fame and fortune. Ahead of you is a vast battlefield and a team of six enemy Pilots. Challenge them together with your team, brawl over beacons, rack up damage using the best weaponry the future has to offer, and win with tactics or brute force!
Learn more about the combat mechanics of War Robots: Frontiers with this Developer Spotlight written by Shredder-Blitz (Community Manager) and Baz (Lead Level Designer).
THE LAY OF THE LAND
The bedrock game mode of War Robots: Frontiers is Beacon Rush. Two teams set out from opposite sides of the map and fight for strategic points. Every captured beacon becomes a beachhead where you can deploy your next Robot to press the attack. As either team hold their controlled territory, they accumulate victory points. With enough points, one team will instantly win the match.
Our goal was to make the destruction of each Robot a major event in the course of battle, so there will be no respawns (at least not in Beacon Rush). Once you’ve annihilated your target, it won’t be coming back. However, each player fields a squad of five Robots and one special Alpha unit. This makes more room for team strategy and turns each match into a ceaseless festival of Robot destruction. There will always be something to shoot at!
SUPER-SIZED DOESN'T MEAN SUPER-SLOW
War Robots: Frontiers rewards fast reactions and encourages you to always be on the move. A well-placed hit to a weak spot can instantly send an enemy Robot to the scrapyard (especially if someone has already done some work on their armor). However, even though you’re aiming at a four-storey tall giant on two legs, hitting it can prove to be a challenge. Each Robot is equipped with jet thrusters that allow dashing and jumping, and most of them run at a formidable speed.
Faster gameplay means a higher skill cap—this is exactly what we aimed for when balancing the game. You will find that most weapons require very precise aiming to be effective. At the same time, we have left room for more strategic playstyles. Robot abilities are a powerful tool, especially those installed on the Alphas. When used at the right time, you have the chance to turn the tide of battle singlehandedly. Of course, it’s better to be both a good marksman and a smart planner.
CHOOSE YOUR COMBAT STYLE
On the Frontier, there are no pre-arranged Robot builds. Your walkers arrive in parts—torso, legs, shoulders, weapons, and modules. There are plenty of possible combinations, and replacing even a single component can change the way a Robot works in battle.
If you go with items of the same brand, your final setup will feel intuitive and familiar. Bulwark, for example, lives up to its fortified name and features additional armor on the torso, legs, and shoulders. At the same time, it doesn’t have to be a walking shield for its squad. Opt for more fuel-efficient legs, maybe change one of its shoulders, slap a Stealth module on top, and your bot may just as well become a sneaky beacon runner that doesn’t shy away from a duel against a heavier opponent.
There are multiple roles you could try to fill, such as brawler (close-range fighter), sniper, support, or scout. However, you don’t have to adhere to one particular role—-by combining different parts, modules, and close/mid/long-range weapons, you can discover some interesting hybrids. Whichever playstyle you prefer, Frontiers will have you covered. We want to encourage you to experiment with your builds as freely as possible.
WREAK HAVOC
We want to convey the feel of piloting an unstoppable metal behemoth, and destructible objects on the map serve exactly that purpose. When missiles start flying, you will see that certain buildings around the map take damage. As they crumble down, new tactical decisions become available and the dynamics of the fight change.
Early in development, we agreed on three types of destructibles on the map:
- Cosmetic: This destructible type reminds you what a huge and dangerous machine is now under your control. Most surfaces you shoot or tackle give you some kind of visual response. Shattering glass, crumbling stones or exploding vehicles—you name it.
- Cover: This destructible type was different at first, with half-height obstacles serving as cover because Robots COULD crouch. Those are now gone, replaced with full-height objects that can take a shot or two for you if you manage your positioning correctly.
- Path Blockers: The final and probably the most interesting destructible type provides you with shortcuts during the match. Players who know the map well can use big destructible structures to their advantage, either opening a faster way to the other side of the map or using the structures for cover instead.
The Cover type was the most difficult to implement, and it changed its purpose as development progressed. Early on, cover could only be crushed by Alphas, making ordinary Robots much less mobile by comparison. At some point, we gave the Dash and the Jetpack abilities to every walker in the game, which brought us to the point where cover simply didn’t deliver fun—-they felt like annoying obstacles. The technical art team reworked them and now you can rush right through, destroying the objects with the weight of your Robot.
Later, we also introduced cover which looks like part of a larger structure. For example, here’s one of the landmarks of the Crash Site map—a giant glass dome:
It can hide an ambush if most of its structure is left intact. Consider such terrain features as you plan your next move, or just wreck everything that’s not too durable for the sheer fun of it!
In the next Development Spotlight, we’ll do an in-depth rundown of Robot customization. There’s a lot to cover, so be sure to tune in next week!
