Stock RA2 Component Stats

The purpose of this page is for really serious RA2 players that want to know exactly how good the components are for maximum effectiveness in your bot building. And make no mistake, some components are better than others. These numbers were discovered by decompiling the Components.cfz and looking at the text files, so they are exact.

Note that "Stock" refers to the vanilla, unmodded game--custom component stats (such as from DSL) are not included here.

Electricity

The following are the exact numbers for the amount of electricity batteries can put out and motors consume. For maximum power to your components, the batteries' output should be equal to or greater than the motors' input. The total power of a battery refers to how long it lasts. Once this power is mostly depleted, your motors will only spin very slowly (but they will never stop completely because batteries lose power on an exponential scale, not a linear scale, and total power will never reach 0).

It should be noted that, due to a programming glitch, all spin motors drain 100 power no matter what the number in the txt file is. So even though, for example, the game says that the HP Z-tek drains twice as much electricity as the normal Z-tek, they both actually drain only 100. In addition, burst motors drain only about 62.5% of the number in the txt file. HOWEVER, it is still a good idea to fully power your burst motors! If you only power them at the 62.5% level, they will only fire at full power for the first shot or two and quickly slow down afterwards.

All weapons have the default 1000 hitpoints, except for razor tips, which have 500.

"Normals" means whether the component has damage normals, meaning it can only do damage in certain directions (for example, pole spikes only do damage with the tip, but maces can do damage in any direction). It has been observed that weapons with normals will do less damage than weapons without them, even with the normal weapons hitting in exactly the right direction. Weapons with normals (particularly axe heads, 30cm pole spikes and pointy tips) are still good on some rammers and hammers, and bear claws have been successfully used on spinners, but most players avoid these weapons.

Damage is controlled by two numbers in the txt file called piercing and concussion. There are subtle relationships between these two numbers: concussion-focused weapons attached statically (not moving) to the chassis are stronger than either concussion or piercing-focused spinning weapons or piercing-focused static weapons. Piercing-focused weapons attached to a spinner are stronger than concussion-focused spinning weapons or piercing-focused static weapons. In simple terms, this means it is best to use concussion-focused weapons on rammers and piercing-focused weapons on spinners. It's a bit more complicated than that, and there are probably other differences that have not yet been investigated, but for most purposes piercing and concussion are combined into one overall damage value called damage potential.

Damage potential is calculated according to the formula:

where P is piercing and C is concussion. Damage potential is defined as the amount of damage a 10 kg weapon on a 100 cm extender attached to a DDT burst motor at max power will do when it hits a bot's chassis. Actual damage in-game will vary depending on the speed the weapon is traveling at (more speed=higher damage), the weight (more weight=less speed=lower damage; RA2 does not use mass in damage calculations), and what it is hitting (hitting other components does more damage), so it is merely a relative measure of power compared to other weapons.

To give an accurate view of what weapons are the best, I've calculated a fourth value called efficiency which takes into account hitpoints and mass. This is calculated by the formula:

where E is efficiency, D is damage potential, H is hitpoints, and M is mass. The weapons with the highest efficiency are the best.