CREATUREFEST JULY 2025

[knux400]

Welcome back to robot combat! Today's match is going to be against Sabertooth and Mammoth of Metalmash 2059. Presumably this is the year the game takes place in? I don't know, you tell me! This game is extremely light on lore.
 

"Again with the football player getup? I know I saw new armor available in the shop!"

But first, let's address the third and final component of a combat robot- the chassis.

The chassis is the main body of a combat robot. You'll never see one in the arena, since they're always covered by armor, but the chassis is the functional part underneath that makes robots tick. Here's the chassis we've been using for the first three matches:
 

"Uncool. How would you like it if I removed your skin and posted a picture of you online?"

And here's the chassis we'll be upgrading to:
 

"Who wrote this shop description? Bot Arena has an N in it. And a space, I think."

As you can see, the new chassis, while more expensive, has a higher maximum weight load. It also has a higher self weight, which is important when considering the weight of your overall team. Different arenas have different weight limits that your team must stay within, but since we only have the one robot, it's basically never going to be an issue for us. The important part is the increased capacity for armor and weapons.

"Wait. Is that a new robot??"
"No, it's-"
"After all I did for you, you're going to throw me in the garbage?!? Just like that?!?"
"Schmoo, listen-"
"You cold-hearted, no-good, sniveling-"
"SCHMOO!"
"What?"
"I was going to remove your memory chip and transplant it into the new chassis. You're not going anywhere."
"...Oh. That makes sense. Why didn't you tell me?"
"...I was going to, before you cut me off..."

ANYWAY, we can see from the inventory screen above that Schmoo's old chassis had a carrying capacity of 11, while her new one has a carrying capacity of 14. This is a small improvement, but it's enough for Schmoo to have some armor/weapon combinations she couldn't before, like the Overwatch and the Torrika, for instance.

With that out of the way, let's talk weapons. Mammoth only has a DT-01, so they're not too much of an issue, but Sabertooth very much is. They're wielding the Darsij A101-1, a medium-caliber machine gun with a much higher damage output than anything Schmoo has available to her. This is our first instance of the opponent robots having access to weapons that we don't.
 

"...I want ten."

Unfortunately, this weapon's firing range covers both close-range and medium-range targets. Even with the pneumatic hammer from earlier, Sabertooth would still be able to retaliate, and their machine gun does more damage anyway. We also can't exploit their maximum firing distance, since the DT-02 only has a maximum firing distance of 140 units, and 10 units is just too narrow a margin to reliably maintain. Besides, Mammoth can do the same to us with their DT-01, which has a maximum firing distance of 150 units.

So we can't win by going for melee, and we can't win by staying at range. What can we do? Well... I hate to say it, but we're going to have to cheat.

"Okay so all that stuff I said earlier? Taking it back. You are a worthless flesh sack."
"Wouldn't that be taking it forward again? You already took it back when I told you about the brain transplant."
"Shut."
 

"So it's all code... That honestly doesn't surprise me too much."
"Yeah, a human would probably have an existential crisis or something seeing this, but I imagine you're pretty much fine."

To be fair, this game was never designed to be played this way- it expects you to be using two or more robots. I feel like I can cheat a little bit, occasionally, as long as I don't do it too often. Anyway, by editing the ActionScript files of the game itself, I can edit pretty much anything about the game. Weapons, armor, even the enemy encounters! But I'm going to keep things as reasonable as possible. What I'm going to do is create a new weapon for Schmoo to use, one that allows her to win this specific matchup without being unreasonable compared to other weapons available to us. Behold, the Raptor DT-03...
 

"You just... took the DT-02 and upped some numbers."
"Literally yes."

Now obviously, I could just make this weapon deal a million damage and cover the entire arena, but that wouldn't be any fun. I've only slightly increased the maximum range, and given it 10 more damage per shot to keep it on par with other weapons at this stage in the game. It still does significantly less damage than the Darsij, and the weight increase means that Schmoo will have to go back to using the Overwatch R200 rather than using the shiny new armor we just unlocked. Rest assured I'm doing my best not to make this too easy on myself, and I promise I will only do this when absolutely necessary. I tested several different weapon/armor configurations rigorously, but Sabertooth just does too much damage for Schmoo to properly respond- even if she could take out Sabertooth in a one-on-one confrontation, she wouldn't have enough health left over to deal with Mammoth. She needs a situation where she can deal damage safely.

With all that said and done, let's watch the battle! Skip to 2:31 for the winning match.
 

Yes I'm a dummy and forgot to equip the DT-03 until the third attempt. Give me a break they use the exact same sprite