TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I mean these guys are #1 & #2, and should have been that way from the beginning. Oh, well there's previous rankings and blah blah but I'm looking with my eyes at how they're at a level above everyone else.
No matter who wins in the semi final, they will win in the final. Bite Force beats Bronco? Ghost Raptor beats Bronco? No way, outside of someone attacking the driver in the audience Monica Seles or Abraham Lincoln style.
I'm okay with the Witchdoctor vs Tombstone result. I don't really like the allowance to radically modify bots between fights, because it kind of defeats the purpose of building a unique bot. Modular bots are probably the smart way to go the way wedges used to be, but they sure as hell aren't memorable. The most memorable part of Witchdoctor was Shaman, which wasn't even deployed here.
I'll take unique and flawed over effective and forgettable any day.
Witch Doctor gets a little bit of a pass here due to their major modification, but in general I don't understand what someone could be thinking designing a bot that can't self right (or doesn't need to). Insanity.
I'm guessing that they beefed the armor up just ahead of this match with onsite welding resources, but didn't have time to check for balance issues. Turns out having an extra 30 pounds of steel on the front means it can't rock back to run on the rear wheels while inverted.
edit - Witch Doctor also has some neat photos post-match of the sheared off end of Tombstone's blade, plus the damage they received.
I dig the inter-match modifications. The tension between field-strippable and modular bots vs hyper-specializing is a nice dynamic, and it's definitely prevented people just steam-rolling the fights. Having Witch Doctor come this close to outright killing Tombstone is amazing - if they hadn't been flipped, they'd still have their center spinner and Tombstone would've been weaponless.
The witchdoctor vs tombstone match was pretty excellent. They both got hammered hard nobody should feel bad losing a match like that. All around good matches last night the bronco match was hilarious thats some great images to sell their product.
Witch Doctor gets a little bit of a pass here due to their major modification, but in general I don't understand what someone could be thinking designing a bot that can't self right (or doesn't need to). Insanity.
I'm guessing that they beefed the armor up just ahead of this match with onsite welding resources, but didn't have time to check for balance issues. Turns out having an extra 30 pounds of steel on the front means it can't rock back to run on the rear wheels while inverted.
Yeah I wasn't faulting Witch Doctor, I mostly meant Icewave.
Tombstone really has some impressive build quality,
I can't believe it broke yet another spinning blade.
the forces involved are incredible the violence of it is such that breakage is always a possibility no matter how much quality control they put into it.
I think people are discounting witchdoctors vertical spinner it may not be huge but that thing was hitting with some pretty serious force. As for its armoring vs the weapon on tombstone something like that pretty much is the only way to survive long enough to do any damage is armor at least one facing enough to survive a couple hits.
Some may not realize that the creator of Tombstone has another robot. One far more terrifying than a one equipped with whirling death-blade. It's name: The Great Pumpkin.
We hope to compete in as many robotic combat events as possible (Such as Robogames).
We need everyone to keep watching the show so it can close out with strong ratings and hopefully seal the deal on a second season.
We are not tied to using Bite Force again and are always interested in building new things. For this season, the designs were highly curated by ABC, which lead to some design decisions being made on the basis of what would cater to the producer's wants as opposed to what might be the most destructive/cool. We are hoping to have a little more freedom in what we potentially build for a future season.
I don't like the way Stinger went out. I think its dumb to have little sections that basically count as "Ring Out".
Tombstone vs Witch Doctor
Tombstone looked mortal for the first time and I think they actually got lucky in that win.
Bite Force vs Overhaul
Overhaul and Biteforce looked like they were making out. The decision could have gone either way but push/grabbot v push/grabbot is booooring.
Icewave vs Ghost Raptor
IceWave design flaw was huge.
Bronco/Stinger
Yeah, I wasn't happy with that end to a great fight either. I didn't realize that the corners were open like that until Stinger got dropped into. Such an anticlimactic end to a really good bout.
I have mixed feelings on the hazards. I like the wall screws, the hammers seem useless, I'd never seen the floor flipper until tonight, and I like that the saws can add a little randomness to the fight without seeming like major momentum swingers but they are too inconsistent. You could talk me out of the saws but I'd hate to see the screws go.
I think the walls should have more environmental weapons! The floor saws and such are dumb, and having spots your bot can get stuck on on the walls is also dumb.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
The hammers are actually in control of each team. If you look closely, there's a red dot under one set and a blue dot under the other set. It's also worth noting that in the big weight classes the hammers don't do much, but as you get down into the lighter robots they can cause issues.
Perhaps team controlled but with recharging times. Like, the longer you wait, the bigger hazard you can deploy. Perhaps Saws are level one, but wait 30 seconds, and you can put up the ramp, a minute and you can use the floor spikes. It'd give a interesting play for the bots, they'd have to be more cautious, and then rush in when the other team used their weapons.
FTC: honk.
FTC: HONK.
PAX Prime 2014 Resistance Tournament Winner
Honestly the MIT fight shouldn't have been hard to judge, they weren't aggressive at all until the very end and that made for a mostly lame kissing match.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I remember the good 'ol days, when spinners weren't very popular.
Oh well. It's still nice to see you again.
The biggest problem with Robot wars back in the day was that it wound up being infested with wedge flippers who for the most part weren't particularly interesting to watch because they were effectively the same bot just with a different paint job.
That having been said, 4 bots stood out in my mind for their solid designs
It doesn't look like much, but when Chaos 2 was first unleashed it was an utter nightmare; it was incredibly fast and nimble and it's Co2 flipper hurled robots into the air. Matches ended in seconds as this thing through it's oposition clean out of the ring.
Statistically the best bot in robot wars history, razer was well designed and with rare exception amply capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on anyone unfortunate enough to be in the arena with it.
The orginal Stinger was an interesting bot; with al of it's mechanisms inside of it's wheel casings, it presented a comparatively tiny target that was extremely durable if not actually hard hitting; to the best of my knowledge they were never actually imobilized.
Not neccesarily the most powerful bot, Pussycat was still a solid design that infuriated flippers; no matter how it landed this bot would have at least two of it's wheels on the ground and thus still able to fight. Yes, it is technically a "spinnerbot" but it's spinner was a comparatively small grinder and not some 50 lbs monstrosity going at 4000 RPM.
The strange thing about UK robot combat competitions is their arenas are built for portability and ease of construction rather than absolute impenetrability, so their walls are much thinner. A properly mounted 6mm wall will definitely stop a robot sailing through the air, but the energy involved from shrapnel is just too much for it. This results in some odd engineering choices for robots in the UK; for example, a number of those robots quite obviously have around 1/8" to 1/4" aluminum (metric equivalent) as their exterior armor. In the US, you stop seeing that as a primary armor when you go above 12lbs, and it's almost unheard of for anything but top and baseplates to be made of materials like that in heavier weight classes.
This does, however, mean that UK flippers can be astoundingly more powerful than US flippers due to the reduced need for armor, and can have more redundancy built into in their electrical and mechanical systems.
I don't like the way Stinger went out. I think its dumb to have little sections that basically count as "Ring Out".
Bots like Bronco aren't likely ever going to straight up 'knock out' another bot, and nearly everyone runs a configuration that can either drive upside down or right itself. If there were no true out of bounds area, a bot like Bronco would essentially be hosed against a bot like Tombstone. Tombstone is too well built to notice or care about being thrown a few measly feet in the air, and gives no fucks about driving upside down. Even if Bronco were driven super aggressively, Tombstone is likely to get a few big shots in and could win the match based just on the eye-appeal of making some big hits with flashy sparks. Even instantly shrugging off Bronco's fips can be viewed as Tombstone "winning". So without a few spots to ring out the other bot, lifters & flippers are at a serious disadvantage against spinners.
I don't like the way Stinger went out. I think its dumb to have little sections that basically count as "Ring Out".
Bots like Bronco aren't likely ever going to straight up 'knock out' another bot, and nearly everyone runs a configuration that can either drive upside down or right itself. If there were no true out of bounds area, a bot like Bronco would essentially be hosed against a bot like Tombstone. Tombstone is too well built to notice or care about being thrown a few measly feet in the air, and gives no fucks about driving upside down. Even if Bronco were driven super aggressively, Tombstone is likely to get a few big shots in and could win the match based just on the eye-appeal of making some big hits with flashy sparks. Even instantly shrugging off Bronco's fips can be viewed as Tombstone "winning". So without a few spots to ring out the other bot, lifters & flippers are at a serious disadvantage against spinners.
I disagree with this, since it ignores one of the worst things that can happen to a spinner bot: hard impacts on the weapon.
Like, smacking into a robot with that lawn mower blade isn't going to cause too many problems, but if bronco was able to get Tombstone airborne (not challenging for a flipper as powerful as that one) odds are pretty good that the blade is going to hit the ground first and that can easily be enough to either snap the blade (which simultaneously wrecks the handling and offensive capabilities of it) or damage the motor (causing the the thing to stop spinning).
That having been said, a simple pit trap (common in these competitions) would have been a good choice for people interested in winning by virtue of ring out or good driving.
The one thing I keep seeing and I wonder if its against the rules not to or something, is when a bot is clearly fucked people will still hit it which could flip it over and put it back in the fight. Is that just out of wanting it to be a real competition? Or is it a rule you have to keep going even when it appears over?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
The one thing I keep seeing and I wonder if its against the rules not to or something, is when a bot is clearly fucked people will still hit it which could flip it over and put it back in the fight. Is that just out of wanting it to be a real competition? Or is it a rule you have to keep going even when it appears over?
The biggest example of that this tournament is that Stinger's driver is very much a sportsman, so unless his robot is on the edge of functionality he'll keep the match going. Other reasons you might keep hitting a robot is to rack up aggression points (it varies from competition to competition, but here's a fairly good overview of Judging Guidelines). In this specific season, no robots are allowed to tap out of a fight. For robots that go up against Tombstone, that means they'll keep getting hit until they can no longer exhibit controlled movement.
I don't like the way Stinger went out. I think its dumb to have little sections that basically count as "Ring Out".
Bots like Bronco aren't likely ever going to straight up 'knock out' another bot, and nearly everyone runs a configuration that can either drive upside down or right itself. If there were no true out of bounds area, a bot like Bronco would essentially be hosed against a bot like Tombstone. Tombstone is too well built to notice or care about being thrown a few measly feet in the air, and gives no fucks about driving upside down. Even if Bronco were driven super aggressively, Tombstone is likely to get a few big shots in and could win the match based just on the eye-appeal of making some big hits with flashy sparks. Even instantly shrugging off Bronco's fips can be viewed as Tombstone "winning". So without a few spots to ring out the other bot, lifters & flippers are at a serious disadvantage against spinners.
And that's exactly my problem. I don't like arenas giving specific types of bots a specific way to win with no chance for the opponent to recover. Find a way to win either through judges decision or disabling the other bot with your weapon.
"If you look carefully, you'll see that Witch Doctor's weapon stopped working after the second to last hit. Repeated charges at Tombstone's weapon tweaked our weapon rail enough to jam against the disk. When the next hit flips Witch Doctor over, the jammed weapon disk acts like a kickstand, and without the motor torque to push us backwards onto the rear wheels we were sitting ducks."
I remember the good 'ol days, when spinners weren't very popular.
Oh well. It's still nice to see you again.
The biggest problem with Robot wars back in the day was that it wound up being infested with wedge flippers who for the most part weren't particularly interesting to watch because they were effectively the same bot just with a different paint job.
That having been said, 4 bots stood out in my mind for their solid designs
It doesn't look like much, but when Chaos 2 was first unleashed it was an utter nightmare; it was incredibly fast and nimble and it's Co2 flipper hurled robots into the air. Matches ended in seconds as this thing through it's oposition clean out of the ring.
Statistically the best bot in robot wars history, razer was well designed and with rare exception amply capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on anyone unfortunate enough to be in the arena with it.
The orginal Stinger was an interesting bot; with al of it's mechanisms inside of it's wheel casings, it presented a comparatively tiny target that was extremely durable if not actually hard hitting; to the best of my knowledge they were never actually imobilized.
Not neccesarily the most powerful bot, Pussycat was still a solid design that infuriated flippers; no matter how it landed this bot would have at least two of it's wheels on the ground and thus still able to fight. Yes, it is technically a "spinnerbot" but it's spinner was a comparatively small grinder and not some 50 lbs monstrosity going at 4000 RPM.
I liked the wedge & flipper era of Robot Wars. Yes, it can be fun to watch the carnage caused by spinners (and shell spinners in particular), but the underlying driver skill for wedges, flippers, crushers and the old hammer / pick bots was much higher. You had to out drive the competition to get them pinned into a position where you could either disable or overturn them. There was a lot more room for hobbyists too, because wedge & flipper bots were not only simple to make, they didn't need a lot of really expensive materials. Some of the better wedges were largely made of polycarbon & steel.
Spinners, by contrast, are expensive to make, and more about the strength of your materials than driver skill. Point spinner at opponent (or steer entire robot at opponent with a shell spinner), rev spinner up, hope your titanium reinforced arm / shell / motor holds out. Duels between two spinners last all of five seconds and are a coin toss: one spinner's blade will break, and the one with a still functional weapon at the end wins. Yes, a good hit from a spinner looks spectacular, but so does a clean ram from a good wedge that catapults a robot through the air, a pick strike that hits a critical internal power source that then starts exploding or a crusher that successfully clamps onto a robot and begins squeezing it into a mangled heap.
In fact, I would argue that the introduction of spinners (most of which would tear-up a wedge) created the most boring robots that ever saw the arena: bricks. literally just an armored chunk of metal designed to break spinners by virtue of their density. Watching two bricks shove against each other was much duller than even the worst wedge duels.
I remember the good 'ol days, when spinners weren't very popular.
Oh well. It's still nice to see you again.
The biggest problem with Robot wars back in the day was that it wound up being infested with wedge flippers who for the most part weren't particularly interesting to watch because they were effectively the same bot just with a different paint job.
That having been said, 4 bots stood out in my mind for their solid designs
It doesn't look like much, but when Chaos 2 was first unleashed it was an utter nightmare; it was incredibly fast and nimble and it's Co2 flipper hurled robots into the air. Matches ended in seconds as this thing through it's oposition clean out of the ring.
Statistically the best bot in robot wars history, razer was well designed and with rare exception amply capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on anyone unfortunate enough to be in the arena with it.
The orginal Stinger was an interesting bot; with al of it's mechanisms inside of it's wheel casings, it presented a comparatively tiny target that was extremely durable if not actually hard hitting; to the best of my knowledge they were never actually imobilized.
Not neccesarily the most powerful bot, Pussycat was still a solid design that infuriated flippers; no matter how it landed this bot would have at least two of it's wheels on the ground and thus still able to fight. Yes, it is technically a "spinnerbot" but it's spinner was a comparatively small grinder and not some 50 lbs monstrosity going at 4000 RPM.
I liked the wedge & flipper era of Robot Wars. Yes, it can be fun to watch the carnage caused by spinners (and shell spinners in particular), but the underlying driver skill for wedges, flippers, crushers and the old hammer / pick bots was much higher. You had to out drive the competition to get them pinned into a position where you could either disable or overturn them. There was a lot more room for hobbyists too, because wedge & flipper bots were not only simple to make, they didn't need a lot of really expensive materials. Some of the better wedges were largely made of polycarbon & steel.
Spinners, by contrast, are expensive to make, and more about the strength of your materials than driver skill. Point spinner at opponent (or steer entire robot at opponent with a shell spinner), rev spinner up, hope your titanium reinforced arm / shell / motor holds out. Duels between two spinners last all of five seconds and are a coin toss: one spinner's blade will break, and the one with a still functional weapon at the end wins. Yes, a good hit from a spinner looks spectacular, but so does a clean ram from a good wedge that catapults a robot through the air, a pick strike that hits a critical internal power source that then starts exploding or a crusher that successfully clamps onto a robot and begins squeezing it into a mangled heap.
In fact, I would argue that the introduction of spinners (most of which would tear-up a wedge) created the most boring robots that ever saw the arena: bricks. literally just an armored chunk of metal designed to break spinners by virtue of their density. Watching two bricks shove against each other was much duller than even the worst wedge duels.
I definitely agree that the advent of brushless motors and lithium batteries is what kicked off the brick vs spinner arms race. There's another side to that though, because a lot of teams found new inexpensive ways to make very competitive spinners. For example, large drums are typically fairly complex to produce since they require both mills and lathes plus some rather sophisticated setups to machine the major components. The compromise: eggbeaters
You can make large, inexpensive weapons using a single tool (a mill) that only have relatively minimal downsides.
Posts
No matter who wins in the semi final, they will win in the final. Bite Force beats Bronco? Ghost Raptor beats Bronco? No way, outside of someone attacking the driver in the audience Monica Seles or Abraham Lincoln style.
I'll take unique and flawed over effective and forgettable any day.
For sure, I wish they could re-seed at this point.
I also hope that next season they have multiple weight classes and cover a ton of fights every ep.
I'm guessing that they beefed the armor up just ahead of this match with onsite welding resources, but didn't have time to check for balance issues. Turns out having an extra 30 pounds of steel on the front means it can't rock back to run on the rear wheels while inverted.
edit - Witch Doctor also has some neat photos post-match of the sheared off end of Tombstone's blade, plus the damage they received.
Yeah I wasn't faulting Witch Doctor, I mostly meant Icewave.
BEHOLD its incredible malice!
Tombstone vs Witch Doctor
Bite Force vs Overhaul
Icewave vs Ghost Raptor
One quote I found interesting:
Just let the 2 robots battle it out until one stops moving, no need to add stupid saws,screws,hammers,etc. to the arena.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The hammers im sure have a guy controlling them.
The hammers are actually in control of each team. If you look closely, there's a red dot under one set and a blue dot under the other set. It's also worth noting that in the big weight classes the hammers don't do much, but as you get down into the lighter robots they can cause issues.
FTC: HONK.
PAX Prime 2014 Resistance Tournament Winner
pleasepaypreacher.net
I remember the good 'ol days, when spinners weren't very popular.
Oh well. It's still nice to see you again.
The biggest problem with Robot wars back in the day was that it wound up being infested with wedge flippers who for the most part weren't particularly interesting to watch because they were effectively the same bot just with a different paint job.
That having been said, 4 bots stood out in my mind for their solid designs
It doesn't look like much, but when Chaos 2 was first unleashed it was an utter nightmare; it was incredibly fast and nimble and it's Co2 flipper hurled robots into the air. Matches ended in seconds as this thing through it's oposition clean out of the ring.
Statistically the best bot in robot wars history, razer was well designed and with rare exception amply capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on anyone unfortunate enough to be in the arena with it.
The orginal Stinger was an interesting bot; with al of it's mechanisms inside of it's wheel casings, it presented a comparatively tiny target that was extremely durable if not actually hard hitting; to the best of my knowledge they were never actually imobilized.
Not neccesarily the most powerful bot, Pussycat was still a solid design that infuriated flippers; no matter how it landed this bot would have at least two of it's wheels on the ground and thus still able to fight. Yes, it is technically a "spinnerbot" but it's spinner was a comparatively small grinder and not some 50 lbs monstrosity going at 4000 RPM.
This does, however, mean that UK flippers can be astoundingly more powerful than US flippers due to the reduced need for armor, and can have more redundancy built into in their electrical and mechanical systems.
Bots like Bronco aren't likely ever going to straight up 'knock out' another bot, and nearly everyone runs a configuration that can either drive upside down or right itself. If there were no true out of bounds area, a bot like Bronco would essentially be hosed against a bot like Tombstone. Tombstone is too well built to notice or care about being thrown a few measly feet in the air, and gives no fucks about driving upside down. Even if Bronco were driven super aggressively, Tombstone is likely to get a few big shots in and could win the match based just on the eye-appeal of making some big hits with flashy sparks. Even instantly shrugging off Bronco's fips can be viewed as Tombstone "winning". So without a few spots to ring out the other bot, lifters & flippers are at a serious disadvantage against spinners.
I disagree with this, since it ignores one of the worst things that can happen to a spinner bot: hard impacts on the weapon.
Like, smacking into a robot with that lawn mower blade isn't going to cause too many problems, but if bronco was able to get Tombstone airborne (not challenging for a flipper as powerful as that one) odds are pretty good that the blade is going to hit the ground first and that can easily be enough to either snap the blade (which simultaneously wrecks the handling and offensive capabilities of it) or damage the motor (causing the the thing to stop spinning).
That having been said, a simple pit trap (common in these competitions) would have been a good choice for people interested in winning by virtue of ring out or good driving.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The biggest example of that this tournament is that Stinger's driver is very much a sportsman, so unless his robot is on the edge of functionality he'll keep the match going. Other reasons you might keep hitting a robot is to rack up aggression points (it varies from competition to competition, but here's a fairly good overview of Judging Guidelines). In this specific season, no robots are allowed to tap out of a fight. For robots that go up against Tombstone, that means they'll keep getting hit until they can no longer exhibit controlled movement.
Obviously you can dick around or go full beast mode, depending on your preference.
And that's exactly my problem. I don't like arenas giving specific types of bots a specific way to win with no chance for the opponent to recover. Find a way to win either through judges decision or disabling the other bot with your weapon.
"If you look carefully, you'll see that Witch Doctor's weapon stopped working after the second to last hit. Repeated charges at Tombstone's weapon tweaked our weapon rail enough to jam against the disk. When the next hit flips Witch Doctor over, the jammed weapon disk acts like a kickstand, and without the motor torque to push us backwards onto the rear wheels we were sitting ducks."
Witchdoctor's post
Edit: Further down, Ray Billings talks about the damage Witchdoctor did to Tombstone beyond the breaking blade.
I liked the wedge & flipper era of Robot Wars. Yes, it can be fun to watch the carnage caused by spinners (and shell spinners in particular), but the underlying driver skill for wedges, flippers, crushers and the old hammer / pick bots was much higher. You had to out drive the competition to get them pinned into a position where you could either disable or overturn them. There was a lot more room for hobbyists too, because wedge & flipper bots were not only simple to make, they didn't need a lot of really expensive materials. Some of the better wedges were largely made of polycarbon & steel.
Spinners, by contrast, are expensive to make, and more about the strength of your materials than driver skill. Point spinner at opponent (or steer entire robot at opponent with a shell spinner), rev spinner up, hope your titanium reinforced arm / shell / motor holds out. Duels between two spinners last all of five seconds and are a coin toss: one spinner's blade will break, and the one with a still functional weapon at the end wins. Yes, a good hit from a spinner looks spectacular, but so does a clean ram from a good wedge that catapults a robot through the air, a pick strike that hits a critical internal power source that then starts exploding or a crusher that successfully clamps onto a robot and begins squeezing it into a mangled heap.
In fact, I would argue that the introduction of spinners (most of which would tear-up a wedge) created the most boring robots that ever saw the arena: bricks. literally just an armored chunk of metal designed to break spinners by virtue of their density. Watching two bricks shove against each other was much duller than even the worst wedge duels.
pleasepaypreacher.net
And as seen last episode, a good dozer attachment almost universally gives spinners a hard time.
I definitely agree that the advent of brushless motors and lithium batteries is what kicked off the brick vs spinner arms race. There's another side to that though, because a lot of teams found new inexpensive ways to make very competitive spinners. For example, large drums are typically fairly complex to produce since they require both mills and lathes plus some rather sophisticated setups to machine the major components. The compromise: eggbeaters
You can make large, inexpensive weapons using a single tool (a mill) that only have relatively minimal downsides.
pleasepaypreacher.net