Botball Garage

This area of the game is where you can build your own bots and teams to compete in the game, instead of simply taking the premade random teams the computer picks for you. Using the garage is very different from the main Botball experience, almost as much as playing a separate game.

Getting started
When you click on The Garage button from the main interface, you enter an area with five circular platforms. Each of these platforms is meant for one of the bots in your five-member botball team. You begin using the Garage by clicking on one of these platforms, which begins editing the corresponding bot.

Picking modules

The first step to edit a bot is to pick its pieces. When you start editing a bot, a list of modules will appear in the lower edge of the screen; these will be head modules, body modules, arm modules, motion modules OR weapon modules. You can change from one module type to another by clicking on the dummy icon on the lower right.

When you click on one of these modules, it appears on the selected platform (“floating” on position) and its stats are displayed on a panel to the right of the screen. You can check these stats to see just how strong, weak, cheap or expensive the module is. Check the stats section to see a detailed description of each stat and how they work in the game; then, you can check the Modules section to see the stats and cost of each module.

Each module has a ‘cost’, expressed in points, which defines how strong the bot is. An average bot module costs 5 points; stronger modules are more expensive, while cheaper ones are less effective. An average bot should ideally cost around 20 to 30 points, so you must pick your five modules wisely to find a good balance between economy and effectiveness.

Editing your bot

Once you have picked the five modules, your bot is complete; you can now see the bot’s full stats on the right-side panel, indicating how effective it is on areas of play such as accuracy, speed, attack/defense, etc. You can now fiddle around by replacing modules and experimenting with different combinations until the overall stats look the way you want them to.

Of course, a bot that’s good at everything is impossible unless you’re willing to spend some serious points on it, and anyway your team cannot play if it costs more than 125 points, so again, you should be careful with how much point value you give to a single bot.

Once you are satisfied with your bot’s module combination, you can save it by clicking on the OK button. You can now load this bot by using the “load” icon on the lower edge of the screen.

Building a team

Now that you have finished your first bot, you can repeat the bot-building process, once for each of the remaining four platforms. Once you have built all five bots, the game adds up their point costs and displays the total: if this total is below 125 points, you should tune up or replace some of the modules of your weakest bots. If the total is above 125 points, you must tune down or replace some of the modules in your stronger bots. See tuning for more details.

Editing your team

After finishing your team, you may edit it by changing the team’s color or assigning predesigned Decals and stamps to your players.

To change the team’s color, simply click on the Color button on the left side; to assign your team a Decal design, click on the Decals button and scroll through the available designs, clicking OK when you’ve found a design you like. You can also leave your bots without a stamped design if you wish.

Wrap it up

When you have a five-bot team costing exactly 125 points, with the color and decal design you like, you can save that team by clicking OK. Now, every time you use the Garage you may load that whole team by clicking on the “load” button; and even better, you may also play online using that very team!