The Energon Pub

You know between strafe and avoid, I usually see people winning missions more with strafe. Avoid gets plenty of exp and energon but doesn't win battles. Strafe does both.

The question I pose is, when does strafe become useful? I have 2 bots who are pretty much strafers, level 1. One has 2 Firepower and 4 strafe, one has 1 firepower and 3 strafe. However, more often I actually see my bot with 1 firepower and 3 strafe....strafing a LOT more often.

Regardless, both of them never do much damage, even strafing 4 times in a row. I mean sometimes they'll just do 1% damage for every strafe hit. So I ask, when does strafe become useful?

level 4+ to see really good results

My general, off the cuff, nonscientific observation - FP=4+, Stf=6+, minimum to be worth-while. In my opinion it still isn't worthwhile at that point, but Heuristic and Dropshock were fighting armored level-4s and 5s. And of course you still needed courage to back that up last I knew.

Perhaps more important though, IIRC, the mission itself (# opponents) influences the use of strafe. So if you see systematic differences in the performance of your strafers, look also at the courage stats they have and the missions you're sending them into.

Edit: I should also point out that I recently (on a lark) fielded a 7Crg, 10FP, 10Stf bot for a couple days, and she sucked horribly. She was making less than a 1000xp per fight, and not strafing nearly as effectively as my level 6 and level 7 who have lower Firepower and Strafe, but higher Courage (and Strength, Speed, Endurance, etc.).

strafe becomes useful when you do more damage with it than with your other attacks(so high strength blade users really need to make strafe effective)

also it becomes killer when you're outnumbered.

why do bots with no weapons strafe?

I dunno. Air Convoy has 4 strafe but most o fher xp comes from hitting with battle blades.

And btw, I like that InuYasha sig.

Thanks I guess, this sig is.....old.
Anyway, I would just rather an opinion on this since it appears nobody really knows. Would you reccomend getting a Double-Barreled plasma shell shotgun for a strafer? It almost seems as if....they don't strafe as much with that weapon (or punch or kick) but it could be my immagination.

decepticonjon wrote:why do bots with no weapons strafe?

Their guns/bombs/claws/flamethrowers aren't accessible in bot mode.