How the Robattle really works: the parts and medals you build with, the race to the action line, how hits, criticals and guards are decided, the Medaforce, and what you win. Every number here comes from the game itself.
You play Ikki and his Medabot Metabee. Medabots are robots built from four parts (a head, two arms and legs) around a medal, the robot's mind. They fight in Robattles: teams of up to three per side, with the first Medabot on each team as its leader. Knock out the other leader and you win.
A Robattle isn't turn-based in the usual way. Every Medabot runs along a track towards the middle of the field while it prepares its action, acts when it reaches its line, then walks back home to choose again. Light, fast parts get you more actions; heavy weapons take longer. The Turns and speed page has the exact rule.
When an attack lands, the game cuts to a close-up of the two Medabots, plays the attack, and drains the armour of the part that was hit. A part at 0 armour is destroyed: it can't be used any more, and the Medabot shows its bare frame, the Tinpet, there. Lose the head and the Medabot is out.
Leaders, the command dial, TIME, knockouts and how a battle is decided.
Armour, success and power, attack types, and a browser of every part.
Success, evasion, criticals, which part gets hit, and a damage calculator.
The gauge, when a medal can use it, and all 52 moves.
Mix any head, arms and legs and see the Medabot and its speed.
Winning parts, the experience formula, and levelling up.
The rules on this wiki come from a decompilation of the game: its code was turned back into readable form and each rule was checked by running it next to the original. Some things were only read from the code and haven't been watched in a battle yet. Each page marks which is which:
The pictures are the game's own: the Medabots' battle sprites and screens from real battles, made on your machine from your copy of the game. None of them, and none of the game's data, is part of this wiki's source. See Sources.
Teams line up, everyone picks an action, and the race to the middle begins. The battle ends the moment a leader falls, or when TIME runs out.
Each side fields up to three Medabots. The first Medabot on each team is its leader, marked LEADER on the screen before the battle.
After every action the game checks only the two leaders Checked:
Nothing else counts. Your team can keep fighting with its other two Medabots down, and you can win while losing them. Protecting your leader matters more than anything else.
A Medabot is knocked out when its head is destroyed. Broken arms and legs don't put it out of the battle.
The field fades in and every Medabot on your team chooses its first action in turn (you can press B to go back to the previous one in this opening round). Then the “MEDABOTS ROBATTLE!!” banner appears, TIME comes up, and everyone sets off at once.
Whenever one of your Medabots is back home, the field stops and its command dial comes up. Turn it with left and right:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Medaparts | Choose the head, right arm or left arm to use. The screen shows each part's name, attack type, skill, a head's uses left, why a part can't be used (broken, blocked, out of uses), and a marker on the Medabot it will hit. Down picks Charge MF instead, which fills the Medaforce gauge (“Medaforce gathered!”). |
| MF | Use one of the medal's three Medaforce moves (dashes for moves not learned yet), or Charge MF. See The Medaforce. |
| Status | A full screen with the Medabot drawn large, its medal and level, its four parts and their armour. R shows the other team, L comes back. |
| Aim | Tells you which Medabots this medal prefers to target, by its favourite attack type, e.g. “Targets Medabots who are equipped with "Strike" parts.” See Medals. |
| Rotation | Set up an eight-step action pattern with a “Repetition” point: your version of the patterns opponents follow (How opponents choose). |
| Auto | The Medabot chooses for itself from now on. |
What each key does inside the Status and Rotation screens hasn't been mapped yet Unknown.
When a Medabot reaches its action line it acts. A flash marks it; a targeting reticle flies to its target; the text box names the attack (“Shoot action Chain Gun!”, the attack type then the skill). Then the game cuts to the close-up: black bars close in, the two Medabots appear large, the attack plays, and a panel shows the target's four parts and drains the armour of the one hit. If the part can't act (broken, sealed, out of uses), a mark appears over the Medabot and a message says why.
TIME starts at 40 seconds, or 30 or 20 if you change the Robattle time option (always 40 in a link battle) Checked. It counts down one TIME second every 32 frames, which is a little over half a real second: a 40-second battle lasts about 21 real seconds of running time Worked out. TIME stands still while an attack's close-up plays.
If TIME runs out with both leaders standing, the game judges the battle From the code:
“Time's Up! The winner is …” follows. This has been read from the code but not yet watched in a battle.
A knocked-out Medabot explodes on the field and is taken out of the battle, along with its status effects. If it was a leader, “FUNCTION CEASED!!” comes up and the battle is over: “Leader's function ceased! The winner is …”.
Each time one of your Medabots acts with a part or a Medaforce move, the game counts a use of that attack type. Every 8 uses, its success with that attack type goes up by 1, to at most 100 From the code. A sprite for the attack type shows when it happens. Medals at level 100 don't grow this way, and nothing grows in link battles.
Story battles are fixed. Random encounters choose among the current area's four battles with a roll from 0 to 100 Checked:
Unless the battle fixes them, each enemy's head, arms and legs are then re-rolled from four candidate parts with the same 40 / 30 / 20 / 10 odds, so the same opponent can show up with mixed parts.
There are no turns. Every Medabot races along the battle track, and the fastest act most. Speed is a single number, the delay, worked out again every frame.
Each Medabot starts at its side's home and moves towards the middle while it charges the action it chose. When it reaches its action line it joins a queue, and Medabots act in the order they arrive. After acting it cools down, walking back home facing away from the fight, and chooses again when it gets there Checked.
From home to the line is 64 pixels each way. While a Medabot walks home it is facing away, which matters for a few skills (Destroy only hits a Medabot facing away).
Every frame a Medabot moves (32 − delay) ÷ 16 pixels; fractions carry over to the next frame Checked. A delay of 0 moves 2 pixels a frame, the fastest possible; the slowest, 31, moves a sixteenth of a pixel.
The delay starts at 0 every frame and goes through these steps, in this order Checked:
| Change | When |
|---|---|
| + 6 | the chosen action uses the head |
| + the arm's charge time | the action uses an arm, on the way out |
| + the arm's cooldown time | the action uses an arm, on the way home |
| + 12 | the action uses no head or arm |
| + 6 | the legs are destroyed |
| + terrain penalty | by leg type and battle field (Legs and terrain) |
| + status strength | slowed: Bind, or Drain Chrg's target |
| − medal level ÷ 10 | always |
| − legs' propulsion ÷ 20 | always |
| − status strength | sped up: Boost Chrg, Drain Chrg's user, the Charge Medaforce move |
| − the part's power | for each intact head or arm with the Accel Chrg skill |
Additions stop at 255 and subtractions at 0, step by step, and the total is then capped at 31. A destroyed part chosen for the action adds nothing. Divisions round down.
What it means. Level and propulsion are the only things that always make you faster, and both are small: a level-50 medal takes off 5, legs with 60 propulsion take off 3. Arm charge and cooldown times, and the terrain, usually matter more. Heads are a fixed +6 either way.
Putting the two rules together, a 64-pixel trip takes 1,024 ÷ (32 − delay) frames, rounded up. At 32 frames to a TIME second:
A Medabot is four parts: head, right arm, left arm and legs. Each Medabot model comes with its own four, but you can mix them freely.
Every part has armour, starting full at each battle. Damage comes off one part at a time. A part at 0 armour is destroyed: it can't be used, its skill stops working, and the Medabot shows its bare frame, the Tinpet, in its place (a male or female Tinpet, depending on the head) Checked.
An action, like an arm, but with a limited number of uses per battle. Using it adds a fixed 6 to the delay. Losing it ends the Medabot's battle.
An action with unlimited uses. Its charge time slows the Medabot on the way to the line, its cooldown time on the way back.
The same as the right arm. Which arm gets hit is random, so it's worth spreading your best attacks.
No action. Five stats instead: propulsion, evasion, defence, fighting success and shooting success, plus the leg type.
Heads and arms have a skill (what using it does: see Skills), an attack type, success (accuracy) and power (damage). A few more numbers sit behind each part:
Every head and arm has one of eight attack types. The first four are attacks; types are either fighting or shooting, which decides which leg stat helps their success and which power bonus they get Checked.
Sword and hammer parts are Strike or Berserk; guns and missiles are Shoot or Aim Shot.
Every medal has a set bonus. A Medabot gets it once for each of its four parts that comes from its own set, and it adds to the Medabot's success and to its evasion and guard rolls. A full matching set gets it four times Checked.
All 120 Medabot models as they look in battle, each built from its four parts. Pick one to see its parts, or mix parts in the builder.
Choose any head, arms and legs. The sprite is put together the way the battle screen places the four pieces; tick a part as broken to see the Tinpet underneath. Speeds use the rules on Turns and speed Worked out.
Legs carry no attack, but they're in every calculation: how fast you move, how well you hit, and how well you dodge and guard.
| Stat | What it does |
|---|---|
| Propulsion | Speed: takes propulsion ÷ 20 off the delay. Half of it is also added to the damage of Berserk attacks. |
| Evasion | Added to the target's value in an evasion roll. |
| Defence | Added to the target's value in a guard roll. |
| Fighting success | Added to the success of Strike, Berserk, Defend and Heal parts. |
| Shooting success | Added to the success of Shoot, Aim Shot, Support and Interrupt parts. |
All five are halved when the legs are destroyed From the code.
Every pair of legs has one of seven types. Two of them can be targeted: Anti-Air parts prefer Air (flying) Medabots and Anti-Sea parts prefer Sea (swimming) ones. Against those leg types they get 16 times the part's success added to their success Checked. The Type Crash Medaforce move looks for an opponent with the same leg type as its user.
Each Robattle is fought on one of eleven fields. Every leg type has a speed penalty on each, added to the delay (lower is faster; 0 is no penalty) Checked. Every leg type has fields it's good on:
Field names are the game's own. The eleventh field's name reads “saibar” in the game's data.
The medal is the Medabot's mind. It sets how well the Medabot uses each attack type, which opponents it goes after, its set bonus, and its Medaforce moves, and it's the part that levels up.
A medal's experience to its next level counts down as it earns experience. When it runs out the medal goes up a level and needs (new level + 1) × 100 more. Anything left over is lost, so one big win never gives two levels From the code.
Its rank is how many of its four rank levels it has reached (listed in the table below; 255 can't be reached).
An opponent's success for each attack type is its medal type's base success × (level ÷ 2), kept between 1 and 100. At levels 0 and 1 the base is used as it is Checked. Your own medals go through one more setup step that hasn't been mapped yet Unknown.
Two medals are named just “?” and “!” in the game's data. Medals that share a type (the last four) also share their success values.
Every attack goes through the same steps: the attacker's success, the target's roll to dodge or guard, a check for a critical, which part is hit, and the damage.
The attacker's success is the sum of Checked:
Then, depending on the attack: the part's success again if it doubles success (Break and Press, or the Gravity Form status); 16 × the part's success for Anti-Air or Anti-Sea against their leg types; the team's bonus from Scout; minus the Movement status and the target's Conceal penalty. It never goes below 0.
The target answers with an evasion roll or a guard roll (the attack decides which). Both start from the same value Checked:
If the attacker's success is more than the target value multiplied by 2 for Aim Shot, 4 for Strike, or 8 for every other type, the attack is a critical: the target can neither dodge nor guard, and its value counts as 0 Checked. Aim Shot crits far more easily than anything else. Two skills, against two particular leg types, only need to beat the target value itself.
Otherwise, on an evasion roll, the target value comes off the success. If nothing is left, the attack misses, unless it can't miss (Missile and Napalm parts, or the Bomb Form status). What's left becomes the basis of the damage.
On a guard roll, a target value over 31 means the target guards: the value comes off the success. How the guard then plays out isn't fully mapped yet Unknown; on screen, a guarded hit can land on a different part.
Attacking leaves you exposed until you act again: after a Strike or Berserk attack you can't guard, after Berserk or Aim Shot you can't evade. A target that can do neither only gets the critical check. The Stop, Can't Evade and Can't Defend statuses do the same.
The part hit is random, from a table with one row for each combination of intact parts. A random number from 0 to 7 picks one of eight entries, so the odds are in eighths. Broken parts drop out of the odds Checked:
With everything intact, the legs are hit most often and the head least. Parts that aim (like guns preferring a favourite target) use the same odds. Heal and repair skills pick their own part.
All divisions round down Checked. The minimum chip means even a weak hit does something. Defence here is the Medabot's own defence value (raised by Iron Wall), not the legs' defence stat, which only helps the guard roll.
If the damage is less than the part's armour, the part takes all of it. Otherwise the part takes exactly what armour it has left and is destroyed, and the rest is overflow. Overflow carries on to another random part only when the attacking part has carry-over, or the attacker has the Bomb Form status (which adds 10 to it each time). It keeps going until nothing is left Checked.
Every hit also fills the target's Medaforce gauge by 20 (The Medaforce).
Pick the parts and medals, or type the numbers. The calculator goes through every pair of random rolls (64 combinations) and the minimum chip, so the odds are exact for the rules above Worked out.
A part's skill is what using it does. There are 60: plain attacks, attacks with an extra effect, special actions, and passive skills that work just by being intact.
| Kind | Skills | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Attacks | 20 | The attack on Hitting and damage, nothing else. |
| Attacks with an effect | 18 | The attack plus something of their own: a status, a trap, a push. |
| Special | 17 | No attack: repairs, revives, team effects, stealing. |
| Passive | 5 | Can't be used. CancelOptic, CancelBomb, CancelGrav, Accel Chrg and Strengthen work just by being intact. |
Six attacking skills come in pairs with a boost. Three passive skills on the target each cancel one of them, and three pairs of Medaforce moves give the same boost, or the same protection, as a status Checked:
| Boost | From skills | Or the status from | Cancelled by passive | Or the status from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| power counts twice | Laser, Beam | Optic Form | CancelOptic | Absorb Optic |
| never misses | Missile, Napalm | Bomb Form | CancelBomb | Absorb Bomb |
| success counts twice | Break, Press | Gravity Form | CancelGrav | Absorb Gravity |
When a Medabot chooses its action, every part's target is worked out in advance, so choosing a part also chooses whom it hits From the code.
If nobody fits, the conditions are relaxed step by step until any Medabot on that side will do. A Medabot under Chaos hits a random Medabot other than itself, allies included.
A part can't be used when a status has sealed it, when it's a head with no uses left, when it's destroyed, or when its skill says no From the code. The skill's own conditions:
| Skills | Can't be used when |
|---|---|
| Defence, Full Block, Half Block | fewer than two of its team are still in the battle |
| Grap Trap / Shot Trap | no opponent has an intact Strike or Berserk / Shoot or Aim Shot part |
| Break Form | there's no trap on its own team |
| Stability | the target has no harmful status |
| Recovery / Repair / Reactivate | the target part is undamaged or destroyed / isn't destroyed / the target isn't knocked out |
| AutoRecover, Boost Chrg | the target already has a helpful status, or a Stability part |
| Drain Chrg, Impair, Confusion, No Escape, No Defense | the target already has a harmful status, or a Stability part |
| Rapid Chrg | its target is itself |
| Use Drain / Forcedrain | the target's head has no uses left / the target has no Medaforce |
| Team Form / TeamAttack | nobody on its team has an intact TeamAttack part / Team Form hasn't been set |
Most special skills first work out a success value like an attack's (part, set bonus, random 0–7, the medal's success for the type, the legs' success), minus the Movement status, then take 32 off. At 0 the skill fails: “Action failed!”. From what's left From the code:
A special skill that works counts as a hit for its team (which matters if TIME runs out).
A Medabot can carry one helpful and one harmful status at a time. They wear off with TIME.
Each status has a time left and a strength. Once per TIME second, the time left drops by 4; at 0 the status ends From the code. A status attack sets the time from its success, and the strength from its damage. A special skill uses its value and strength (Skills), each from 1 to 99, so a status lasts at most about 25 TIME seconds Worked out.
A status attack only gives its status if the attack hit, and the target's head still works. Statuses can't land on a Medabot with an intact Stability part, or on a team made immune by a Cancel Medaforce move.
| Status | From | Effect | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Movement | Bug, Virus | the Medabot's success is lowered by the strength | damage × 2 |
| Stop | Thunder, Freeze | can't evade or guard; lasts damage ÷ 8 | none |
| Bind | Wave, Hold | slower: the strength is added to its delay | damage ÷ 4 |
| Flow | Fire, Melt | every TIME second the hit part loses the strength in armour, then the next parts, but never below 1 | damage ÷ 2 |
| Slowed | Drain Chrg | slower, like Bind | its strength |
| Can't Use | Impair, the Useless move | one part can't be used | |
| Chaos | Confusion, the Chaos move | chooses its own action (you get no menu), and its attacks can hit anyone, allies included | |
| Can't Evade | No Escape | can't evade | |
| Can't Defend | No Defense | can't guard | |
| Continuous Repair (helpful) | AutoRecover | every TIME second the first damaged part gains the strength in armour, then the next | its strength |
| Faster (helpful) | Boost Chrg, Drain Chrg's user, the Charge move | the strength comes off its delay | its strength |
The names Movement, Stop, Bind and Flow are the game's own; which attacks give which was read from the code. Stability clears a harmful status from an ally; Status Restore clears the whole team's.
Some parts don't attack at all: they take a stance, either to step in front of an attack on a teammate or to throw an attack back.
Parts with Defence, Full Block or Half Block take a guarding stance (they need at least one teammate still in the battle). The stance works out a success value like an attack's and takes 32 off; at 0 the stance fails. Its threshold is From the code:
When a teammate is attacked, a guardian in the stance whose stance part still has armour steps in front of the attack (if several are, the last one found). It becomes the target and its stance part takes the hit, which can't be evaded or guarded. Then:
| Skill | What the threshold does |
|---|---|
| Defence | the threshold comes off the damage, like defence |
| Full Block | the attack's extra effect is cancelled |
| Half Block | damage below the threshold is stopped |
A guardian under the Can't Defend status doesn't step in, and attackers with the Anti-Protection Medaforce move ignore guardians altogether.
A staged battle: a second opponent, Armorparadeen, was added with its Defence head, and Metabee was set to attack Brass.
A part with CntrAttk takes the counterattack stance; its threshold is the part's power. While it holds, attacks on the Medabot hit the stance part (they can't be evaded or guarded), and when the damage is over the threshold the attack is turned round: the attacker becomes the target, and its own attacking part takes the hit From the code.
On screen, “COUNTERATTACK” rises over the defender in flames and the attack plays back towards the attacker. A guardian with the Protector Medaforce move counterattacks the same way, on a coin flip.
A staged battle: Brass was replaced by Banisher, whose parts all have CntrAttk. Counterattacks have been watched, but not compared frame by frame with the original.
Grap Trap, Shot Trap and Attack Clr lay a trap on the opposing team; setting the same trap again reinforces it with half the values. When a Medabot of that team attacks From the code:
The medal's special moves. Fill the gauge to 80 and a medal can use one of its three Medaforce moves, if it has reached the level for it.
A staged battle: Brass was given the KUWAGATA medal at level 80 and an always-full gauge.
A full gauge (80), and a medal level of at least 10 for the first move, 30 for the second, 60 for the third Checked. Early in the story, opponents can't use the Medaforce at all, so the first rivals never do. The Force Bind skill switches the Medaforce off for everyone (or back on).
From the code. The Medaforce moves haven't been compared frame by frame with the original yet From the code.
Opponents don't think: they follow an eight-step pattern written into each battle, the same thing you set up with Rotation.
Every opponent has an action pattern of eight steps, one per decision, and a step it loops back to after the eighth Checked. Each step is one of:
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| Fallback | no decision: use the fallback (below) |
| Head / right arm / left arm | use that part if it can be used; otherwise the fallback |
| Nothing | do nothing this time |
| Medaforce 1 / 2 / 3 | use that Medaforce move if it can; otherwise the fallback |
With a full Medaforce gauge, half the time a random Medaforce move (falling back to a lower move when the medal's level is too low). Otherwise it tries its parts in a random order and uses the first that can be used, or does nothing.
A Medabot under Chaos always uses the fallback, and so does one of yours: you get no menu.
Win and you get experience for every Medabot that fought, and usually one of your opponent's parts.
After a win you get one of your opponents' parts (some story battles turn this off) From the code:
So breaking arms and legs, not just the head, is how you collect new parts. Destroying all six arms and legs of a three-Medabot team gives a 61-in-101 chance of something new Worked out.
Each of your Medabots in the battle earns From the code:
Checked once against the game: winning the first story battle after one TIME second gave 237 = 8 (one opponent, level 0) + 224 (Brass's four parts, 56 each) + 5. That's the screenshot above Checked. Long battles pay, and so do strong parts: most of a win's experience is usually the opponents' parts.
Not settled yet Unknown: whether “the opponents' levels ÷ 3” is their total divided by 3, and exactly whose level the average is compared with. The calculator below takes the total, and your Medabot's own level.
The medal needs (new level + 1) × 100 experience for each level, and leftover experience is lost, so a win gives at most one level From the code. At levels 10, 30 and 60 it masters its first, second and third Medaforce move. A medal at level 100 is done.
Every Medabot, part, skill, medal and Medaforce move, with the page that explains it.
Where the rules, numbers and pictures on this wiki come from, and what isn't known yet.
Every rule comes from the Medabots: Metabee decompilation in this repository: the game's code turned back into readable form, function by function. A rule marked Checked was rewritten and run side by side with the original code over real battles, with no differences. The 60 attacking skills were each staged in a battle and checked the same way. From the code means it was read from the code, and often seen on screen, but not compared step by step.
Part, medal, skill and Medaforce tables, names, leg types and terrains are read from your own copy of the game by the wiki's build script. They're never part of the wiki's source: they're built into public/data/ and public/images/.