Some of the grabber/pincher bots use a couple of flamethrowers to try and overheat/melt once they grab onto the other bot, and I could see that working pretty well if the flames can get into any gaps on the underneath of a robot.
Obviously not a main weapon, but could help secure a win, and they look cool.
Some of the grabber/pincher bots use a couple of flamethrowers to try and overheat/melt once they grab onto the other bot, and I could see that working pretty well if the flames can get into any gaps on the underneath of a robot.
Obviously not a main weapon, but could help secure a win, and they look cool.
On a main bot though to me it would seem a dangerous thing to have with all the sparks and such, just a spinner slams you the right way and boom.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Eh, I'm pretty sure they're working with very small tanks of butane/propane so the risk of explosion would be pretty nil, probably just enough to fire the flamethrowers for 30s.
The bigger explosion/fire risk are your batteries, if those get hit they have a good chance of going off.
See I know little about anything other than something with gas explodes, this is why I don't make robots. Well that and lack of skill and money, but also the butane thing.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
See I know little about anything other than something with gas explodes, this is why I don't make robots. Well that and lack of skill and money, but also the butane thing.
Unlike movies/tv, things with flammable gas/liquids in them really don't explode much in real life, they may burn for a while, but the big fireball explosions don't really happen.
See I know little about anything other than something with gas explodes, this is why I don't make robots. Well that and lack of skill and money, but also the butane thing.
Unlike movies/tv, things with flammable gas/liquids in them really don't explode much in real life, they may burn for a while, but the big fireball explosions don't really happen.
Nightmare is an awesome bot, but sort of a flawed design.
It's been eliminated in multiple battles the same way it went out this time, in that it's way too easy to knock it over, and once it is has no way of self-righting.
But they always drive it super aggressively, so it makes for a great show.
The first time that Plan X runs into a spinner its toast. Rex ripped it up and he was struggling just to keep that thing on its feet.
it looks like the panels that got ripped off are mostly decoration. If you look closely you can see it's a pretty normal rectangular bot design under all the spokes and panels.
The start of this video shows it without all the crap bolted on:
The first time that Plan X runs into a spinner its toast. Rex ripped it up and he was struggling just to keep that thing on its feet.
it looks like the panels that got ripped off are mostly decoration. If you look closely you can see it's a pretty normal rectangular bot design under all the spokes and panels.
The start of this video shows it without all the crap bolted on:
Yeah it was still mostly functional, but it did get stuck in one of the buzz saw pits or something as well, I'm just saying a bot with actual force to it is going to mess that bot up.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
The first time that Plan X runs into a spinner its toast. Rex ripped it up and he was struggling just to keep that thing on its feet.
it looks like the panels that got ripped off are mostly decoration. If you look closely you can see it's a pretty normal rectangular bot design under all the spokes and panels.
The start of this video shows it without all the crap bolted on:
Yeah it was still mostly functional, but it did get stuck in one of the buzz saw pits or something as well, I'm just saying a bot with actual force to it is going to mess that bot up.
oh totally, but sometimes it's fun to cheer on the bots that are going for style over anything else.
The first time that Plan X runs into a spinner its toast. Rex ripped it up and he was struggling just to keep that thing on its feet.
it looks like the panels that got ripped off are mostly decoration. If you look closely you can see it's a pretty normal rectangular bot design under all the spokes and panels.
The start of this video shows it without all the crap bolted on:
Yeah it was still mostly functional, but it did get stuck in one of the buzz saw pits or something as well, I'm just saying a bot with actual force to it is going to mess that bot up.
oh totally, but sometimes it's fun to cheer on the bots that are going for style over anything else.
Naturally. I mean nightmare can rip a bot up, but his design is a snore fest.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Nightmare has always been my favorite, but I'm puzzled by why hasn't come up with some solution to the flipping problem? He seemed to get around a lot better upside down with the bowtie blade, I was hoping for a bit there that he might get himself righted again. Maybe that was the plan.
I'm no engineer, but is there no way to work a little lever or something into it's frame to try and flip it back? Maybe it's too heavy..
Some other bots in the past have added little arms that poke out to right a bot.
But I think the nightmare guys just like to put every bit of weight allowance possible towards the weapon at the expense of all else. Offense or nothing I guess.
Some other bots in the past have added little arms that poke out to right a bot.
But I think the nightmare guys just like to put every bit of weight allowance possible towards the weapon at the expense of all else. Offense or nothing I guess.
I remember seeing Nightmare right itself in the past using the disk (I think anyway). Problem is that it's a roll of the dice at best to try to get it back on it's wheels that way.
I think if they could redesign it to a horizontal spinner, so the gyroscopic forces of the disk would work to keep it level, it'd have a lot better results. The problem is that it would lose it's iconic look if they did that.
The other thing they could do is a complete redesign, basically upscale the last version of Backlash so it could run inverted. Still run into issues if it got knocked on it's side though.
Some of the issues with Nightmare are that it is still very much a legacy robot; aside from the electrical improvements, up-armoring, and the new disk, it's remained static as far as its root design weaknesses go. A lot of vertical disks like it now run drives with a second pair of wheels jutting out the rear of a vaguely rectangular chassis, or the entire robot is basically reduced to a wide but narrow rectangle with wheels that have ground contact inverted (think of it as a flattened-out Nightmare lacking the tail).
I actually thought the Bite Force vs Warhead match was a perfect showcase of the versatility of a modular robot, plus excellent driving. When you're up against a spinning weapon, under no circumstances do you ever let them get up to speed (see: the shattered hulk of Razorback). Without that weapon fully ramped up, Warhead has no good way to combat lifting or pushing. In addition, the ability to remove the upper jaw to make weight available for the chassis-mounted armor plate on Bite Force gave them enough durability to take harder hits.
The next episode is going to most likely have an excellent match since Tombstone is going to be in one of the battles. For fans of the old Robot Wars shows, there's an interesting bit of information that usually gets overlooked: the arena walls in the UK are MUCH thinner (~6mm lexan). US arenas tend to be 1.25 inch (31.75mm) to 1.5 inch (38.1mm) thick lexan, and that has an effect on rules surrounding spinning weapons (like maximum tip speed). In short: if you thought Hypnodisk was fun to watch, be sure to catch Tombstone's match.
As far as some of the rules go, I've seen it mentioned you can have four transmitters total and as always, all of your robots have to stay within the 250 lb total weight limit. Interesting upcoming changes point toward the elimination of the "no powered flight" rule and a case-by-case examination of untethered projectile weapons (still probably no gunpowder though, and most likely a limit on muzzle velocity; they'll definitely be limited to the stopping power of the arena walls).
Man I missed the original airing of this and tried to watch it OnDemand but ABC just butchered it with commercials. Like I think from the start of the Plan X fight to the start of the next fight they had 4 different breaks, all of which were about twice as long as a broadcast commercial break. We couldn't finish the rest of the show. I have the rest of the series getting recorded now but it sucks that ABC is making the viewing experience so miserable for people catching up.
All in all I enjoyed what I saw, with ICEWAVE being the best fight that we got to catch. I really hope we get to see some of the repair action in between bouts. What was the schedule like in real time for the tournament? Did all the bouts go down in the same day or were some of the rounds spread across a few days.
See I know little about anything other than something with gas explodes, this is why I don't make robots. Well that and lack of skill and money, but also the butane thing.
Unlike movies/tv, things with flammable gas/liquids in them really don't explode much in real life, they may burn for a while, but the big fireball explosions don't really happen.
One of the bigger issues typically with flame weapons would be something piercing their pressure vessel that holds the flammable gas. Its not so much the fire that would cause problems it is more the gas rupturing out fast regardless of it being on fire that could potentially be nasty. But as others have said the LI ion batteries these things use probably are as big of a danger or more so if punctured or severely damaged. It would be different if they were allowed to use things like napalm but the flame weapons they currently are allowed while neat on camera are not that dangerous. As was said their biggest use is either on disposable bots where you almost hope something ruptures the tank and makes it like a lil mini bomb to do some damage or a grabber/lifter bot to try to apply flame between cracks to overheat motors/electronics. The physical damage they can do to things as armored as battle bots is minimal.
See I know little about anything other than something with gas explodes, this is why I don't make robots. Well that and lack of skill and money, but also the butane thing.
Unlike movies/tv, things with flammable gas/liquids in them really don't explode much in real life, they may burn for a while, but the big fireball explosions don't really happen.
Individual results may vary.
This is pretty much a great demonstration of about the best case scenario for exploding flame. A mini bot with minimal armor being hit by really high power nasty vertical spinner. It catastrophically ruptured the containment on the mini bot and it erupted into a brief second of flame and the mini bot was DOA but pretty much did not do anything to the spinner. The flames mounted on the main bots you can bet have their gas tanks mounted deep in the armor where if you managed to get to them the bots a total loss anyway.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
I'm p excited for the return of this in 2015. Advances in technology should result in vast improvements in control and the efficacy of weapons and much more infrequent instances of straight design failures or light damage resulting in a glorified shoving match.
I'm guessing electricity weapons are banned? Back during the old shows I always dreamt of a bot that like fires a harpoon into other bots and sends electric current down the line to overload them, as impractical as I realize it is.
I know EMP weapons are specifically disallowed which I found amusing. Pretty sure electrical weapons are banned in general though although really I am not sure how useful they would be with most bots it would be like hitting a faraday cage anyway.
Ya electrical weapons are banned, just too much danger for the crews after a fight is over. you couldn't ever be sure that some piece of armor, or a cable lying around was still charged.
Entanglement weapons would be the ideal thing, but that's why they are banned, it would lead to every bot just throwing out nets/steal cables and that would be real boring.
As it turns out, due to the overwhelmingly good ratings for the first episode ABC will be re-airing it tonight at 9/8 central. Also worth knowing about: most of the teams have Facebook pages where they're putting up behind-the-scenes type stuff, like Icewave's entire set of build photos for its drive train and weapon. Most of those Facebook pages in turn point to the team's dedicated sites, where even more delicious engineering-nougat is to be found. Plus, many but not all of the robots are now posted on BattleBots' website under the Robots section.
There's also been some further details on why the show is set up in its current format, where there is a brief bio piece on the builders rather than being more technically focused. Here's a quote from one of the creators of the show on all of that to a poster on reddit:
HI Sepheroth998 - This is Greg the co-founder of BB and EP of the show. I’ve been browsing this Subreddit (and all the comments elsewhere on social media. I’ve also forwarded the link to the other EPs—we’re listening.
There are many answers to the many comments on the thread, but the bottom line is this: We’re on ABC.
The show many hardcore fans seem to want would never be on ABC. It would more likely be on something like Discovery Science—and a small cable network would never have the budget to produce the show we want. Because we’re on ABC we can’t make a predominantly science / tech / engineering focused show. We would lose a huge chunk of the audience and never get a season 2.
We have to appeal to a wider range of people, hence the sports casters, tale of the tape, background packages, etc. Wall-2-wall robot fighting and would fatigue a majority of the audience and the show would fail. So we need to walk the line between fights and filler.
Do we have too much filler? I definitely think so. I’m actually agreeing with many of the comments I’m seeing. But I’m a tech/robot geek (probably like most of the Reddit posters). And we can’t make the show just for people like us, we need to go broader. In the end it’s all about balance.
That said, more tech and real robot analysis is coming. Bobak Ferdowsi is a real robot engineer and he will be doing breakdowns of many of the robots in future episodes. And we’re learning—more importantly our production partner Whalerock is learning, and season 2 will most likely incorporate many of the suggestions we’re reading from fans, and the balance will be a better mix of fights and relevant talk.
So please stick with us and keep the faith. At worst use the fast forward button on your DVR : ) (or better yet just Mute and get a snack)
And we did try and get Grant on the show—just didn’t work out this time around.
Email me anytime Greg
Sorry for the wall of text and maybe some crappy formatting, but they are listening and reading this subreddit. I have renewed faith in the show!
edit: more behind-the-scenes stuff: a short bit of Bite Force returning to the pit after its round with Warhead:
Man I missed the original airing of this and tried to watch it OnDemand but ABC just butchered it with commercials. Like I think from the start of the Plan X fight to the start of the next fight they had 4 different breaks, all of which were about twice as long as a broadcast commercial break. We couldn't finish the rest of the show. I have the rest of the series getting recorded now but it sucks that ABC is making the viewing experience so miserable for people catching up.
All in all I enjoyed what I saw, with ICEWAVE being the best fight that we got to catch. I really hope we get to see some of the repair action in between bouts. What was the schedule like in real time for the tournament? Did all the bouts go down in the same day or were some of the rounds spread across a few days.
If you go to abcs website you can log in with your comcast email and watch without commercials
Finally caught up with the first episode - I thought they required every robot to have weapons to avoid the wedge > all syndrome? "Bite" Force is a wedge in all but name with a flipper it barely used until the Warhead was basically dead. I did like most of the other fights though.
Finally caught up with the first episode - I thought they required every robot to have weapons to avoid the wedge > all syndrome? "Bite" Force is a wedge in all but name with a flipper it barely used until the Warhead was basically dead. I did like most of the other fights though.
It looked to me like Bite Force was predominately designed to be a grappler, grabbing other bots with it's claw, then lifting and dragging them to assorted hazards for actual damage, but they added the heavily armored wedge against Warhead to deal with the weapon.
Finally caught up with the first episode - I thought they required every robot to have weapons to avoid the wedge > all syndrome? "Bite" Force is a wedge in all but name with a flipper it barely used until the Warhead was basically dead. I did like most of the other fights though.
It looked to me like Bite Force was predominately designed to be a grappler, grabbing other bots with it's claw, then lifting and dragging them to assorted hazards for actual damage, but they added the heavily armored wedge against Warhead to deal with the weapon.
You can still have a wedge-shaped armor piece as long as you have a real weapon to go along with it. As you saw with Icewave vs Razorback, wedges are not an instant win vs a spinning weapon.
So if that was legal they should have let it strand. A robot design/fight contest should reward creativity. If it was illegal it should be a dq. This hgalf assed thing is kinda lame.
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pleasepaypreacher.net
Obviously not a main weapon, but could help secure a win, and they look cool.
On a main bot though to me it would seem a dangerous thing to have with all the sparks and such, just a spinner slams you the right way and boom.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The bigger explosion/fire risk are your batteries, if those get hit they have a good chance of going off.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Unlike movies/tv, things with flammable gas/liquids in them really don't explode much in real life, they may burn for a while, but the big fireball explosions don't really happen.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's been eliminated in multiple battles the same way it went out this time, in that it's way too easy to knock it over, and once it is has no way of self-righting.
But they always drive it super aggressively, so it makes for a great show.
pleasepaypreacher.net
it looks like the panels that got ripped off are mostly decoration. If you look closely you can see it's a pretty normal rectangular bot design under all the spokes and panels.
The start of this video shows it without all the crap bolted on:
Yeah it was still mostly functional, but it did get stuck in one of the buzz saw pits or something as well, I'm just saying a bot with actual force to it is going to mess that bot up.
pleasepaypreacher.net
oh totally, but sometimes it's fun to cheer on the bots that are going for style over anything else.
Naturally. I mean nightmare can rip a bot up, but his design is a snore fest.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I'm no engineer, but is there no way to work a little lever or something into it's frame to try and flip it back? Maybe it's too heavy..
But I think the nightmare guys just like to put every bit of weight allowance possible towards the weapon at the expense of all else. Offense or nothing I guess.
I remember seeing Nightmare right itself in the past using the disk (I think anyway). Problem is that it's a roll of the dice at best to try to get it back on it's wheels that way.
I think if they could redesign it to a horizontal spinner, so the gyroscopic forces of the disk would work to keep it level, it'd have a lot better results. The problem is that it would lose it's iconic look if they did that.
The other thing they could do is a complete redesign, basically upscale the last version of Backlash so it could run inverted. Still run into issues if it got knocked on it's side though.
I actually thought the Bite Force vs Warhead match was a perfect showcase of the versatility of a modular robot, plus excellent driving. When you're up against a spinning weapon, under no circumstances do you ever let them get up to speed (see: the shattered hulk of Razorback). Without that weapon fully ramped up, Warhead has no good way to combat lifting or pushing. In addition, the ability to remove the upper jaw to make weight available for the chassis-mounted armor plate on Bite Force gave them enough durability to take harder hits.
The next episode is going to most likely have an excellent match since Tombstone is going to be in one of the battles. For fans of the old Robot Wars shows, there's an interesting bit of information that usually gets overlooked: the arena walls in the UK are MUCH thinner (~6mm lexan). US arenas tend to be 1.25 inch (31.75mm) to 1.5 inch (38.1mm) thick lexan, and that has an effect on rules surrounding spinning weapons (like maximum tip speed). In short: if you thought Hypnodisk was fun to watch, be sure to catch Tombstone's match.
As far as some of the rules go, I've seen it mentioned you can have four transmitters total and as always, all of your robots have to stay within the 250 lb total weight limit. Interesting upcoming changes point toward the elimination of the "no powered flight" rule and a case-by-case examination of untethered projectile weapons (still probably no gunpowder though, and most likely a limit on muzzle velocity; they'll definitely be limited to the stopping power of the arena walls).
All in all I enjoyed what I saw, with ICEWAVE being the best fight that we got to catch. I really hope we get to see some of the repair action in between bouts. What was the schedule like in real time for the tournament? Did all the bouts go down in the same day or were some of the rounds spread across a few days.
One of the bigger issues typically with flame weapons would be something piercing their pressure vessel that holds the flammable gas. Its not so much the fire that would cause problems it is more the gas rupturing out fast regardless of it being on fire that could potentially be nasty. But as others have said the LI ion batteries these things use probably are as big of a danger or more so if punctured or severely damaged. It would be different if they were allowed to use things like napalm but the flame weapons they currently are allowed while neat on camera are not that dangerous. As was said their biggest use is either on disposable bots where you almost hope something ruptures the tank and makes it like a lil mini bomb to do some damage or a grabber/lifter bot to try to apply flame between cracks to overheat motors/electronics. The physical damage they can do to things as armored as battle bots is minimal.
This is pretty much a great demonstration of about the best case scenario for exploding flame. A mini bot with minimal armor being hit by really high power nasty vertical spinner. It catastrophically ruptured the containment on the mini bot and it erupted into a brief second of flame and the mini bot was DOA but pretty much did not do anything to the spinner. The flames mounted on the main bots you can bet have their gas tanks mounted deep in the armor where if you managed to get to them the bots a total loss anyway.
Entanglement weapons would be the ideal thing, but that's why they are banned, it would lead to every bot just throwing out nets/steal cables and that would be real boring.
There's also been some further details on why the show is set up in its current format, where there is a brief bio piece on the builders rather than being more technically focused. Here's a quote from one of the creators of the show on all of that to a poster on reddit:
edit: more behind-the-scenes stuff: a short bit of Bite Force returning to the pit after its round with Warhead:
If you go to abcs website you can log in with your comcast email and watch without commercials
It looked to me like Bite Force was predominately designed to be a grappler, grabbing other bots with it's claw, then lifting and dragging them to assorted hazards for actual damage, but they added the heavily armored wedge against Warhead to deal with the weapon.
You can still have a wedge-shaped armor piece as long as you have a real weapon to go along with it. As you saw with Icewave vs Razorback, wedges are not an instant win vs a spinning weapon.
Still nice to see this back on tv again
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
That was brilliant in a dick kind of way.
Why isn't it on here yet?
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
And then the fight was meh
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+