Pain Train was finished close to filming, Chomp was done within like two days of filming. Plus of course a bot with it's weapon up is insanely dangerous and they might not have a good testing zone. Should be able to drive them around at least a little to practice though, even with the weapon disabled..
Atom 95 looks like it could be a winner but it's got a boneheaded design flaw. A lot of vertical spinners that can't self right have protruding back wheels so they can drive inverted. Atom 95 has neither and has been KO'd twice in the same way as a result.
Kinda surprised Smee didn't make any changes after their first match. The two drive systems don't have enough juice or traction to envelope another bot (lots of new teams have trouble with traction/acceleration on the box floor), and that's probably hard to change, but they could put weaker springs on the back of their plate links at least.
Yeah that's what I've been waiting for. Mammoth has been in the minors for the most part, Huge was probably one of the few (maybe the only) big timers they have a real shot against. If a perennial fuckup can wreck their shit they're DOA in the tournament.
Lesson: if you're knocked out, think very carefully before asking your opponent to flip you back over. Mammoth was probably fixable since they have a full extra frame and it's all off the shelf pipe, but they asked Will to hit them again and their batteries caught fire and they mentioned not having replacements at all.
I can't believe that Skorpios just kept going in after Tombstone. They were so close to losing a tire. Tombstone couldn't drive, they could have stayed away. Good fight
Ray Billings is not one I would expect sour grapes from.
The rule is controlled translational movement, not controlled wobbling back and forth in the corner. If the opponent can just sit six feet away and you can never touch them you're knocked out.
Edit: Scorpios
was super close to getting their head ripped off again, they dropped their saw into Tombstone's blade at full spin at least twice. Hope they've got an extra angle grinder, because Harbor Freight discontinued the one they used last time they got beheadded.
Super ballsy to keep going at it like that and not take the knockout.
Tombstone
will probably still get in. Fromm the ranks showed last week or the week before, there'll probably be a couple 1-2 robots get in, 32 is just a big fraction of the field and a lot of rookies and potatoes this year. Tombstone or Huge as a 31 or 32 seed would be a terrifying bracket breaker.
Maybe just the editing but it definitely seemed like they started counting him out way earlier than did other bots in the past. Skorpios was still hitting him when the count was going on, so maybe he felt annoyed because he didn't get a chance to prove he could move or not.
It was a while since the wheel broke off. Scorpios staying on the attack actually delayed it if anything, because the judges need to see a lack of movement and give the driver a warning before the countdown. Unless a robot is actually destroyed they usually won't get counted out while they're still engaged. Same thing happened in the Ribbot fight, they clearly had a knockout but kept pressing the attack to the point of almost getting KOd themselves. There was a fight last week where they actually stopped a countdown and restarted because the opponent reengaged and it wasn't clear if they were rolling from the impact of their wheels were turning again.
Like Ray said, he felt he was showing movement and even shouted so at the ref, but it has to be translational movement, spinning in place is a KO by the rules.
I think it's more Ray's used to things being a lot more clear, even when he loses its usually big.
You can tell this season's had a lot of scraping the barrel for contestants; the last two episodes' lineups weren't super exciting. I find myself missing Minotaur.
Yeah, travel restrictions to the US locked out 90+% of the international contestants, and a fair few US based ones either couldn't afford to come or decided not to risk it. A lot of robots that would have been on the backup list or stuck in mostly non-televised fights are getting significant screen time.
That said, I love that there are a couple scrub-bots running the table. Jackpot's been very fun to watch. The bracket of 32 will mostly sort itself out and we should get a bunch of great fights from it.
I don't even mind seeing joke bots or kid's bots.
I'd rather they get lots of teams in and show lots of fights. If they were only showing the A tier I think they'd keep ratcheting up the reality show factor to fill time and that would be... not good.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Most of those rookie bots aren't rookie builders, either. Battlebots has a higher emphasis on damaging primary weapons than most of the sport, so it's not easy to walk into even if you're a legend in the sport - just ask Hal Rucker.
Witch Doctor story is a good show of how the sport community is:
So, the reason their weapon kept unbalancing is that it's tool steel, which is softer than everyone's armor. They're basically trying to break boards with a toy plastic hammer.
They sourced a piece of AR500, but on short notice they could only get a massive 600lb sheet. They borrowed Scorponok's truck to haul it, stayed a night in another builder's home, and then Team Chomp used their shop to machine the part.
1-2 isn't a lockout, but there's probably not going to be more than one or two at the bottom seeds, and with Tombstone, Huge, and Witchdoctor all at 1-2, gotta say I wouldn't want to be Witch Doctor. Huge lost one bullshit fight and one gimmick for the cameras, Tombstone lost two brutal slugfests, but Witch Doctor lost two fights to a weapon that breaks when it hits something.
Team Witch Doctor seems pretty smart, could they have not seen this coming? Changing your weapon to a kind of steel that's softer than the kind of armor tougher bots use and probably their weapons too seems ill advised.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised when they said tool steel I kind of sputtered, that's not the kind of thing you hear from a big name. Every major name in the field has some grade of AR steel armor or better.
Team Whyachi can go eat a bowl of dicks, they should have been disqualified for that, "I'm not holding him I'm just sitting here," shit.
Clever solution and they got the win, but the selection committee is what counts and the selection committee wants blood for the blood god. 2-2 spinners got in last year over 3-1 potatoes.
Finally watched this. Hydra should have gotten DQ'd when they ignored the ref multiple times.
Witch Doctor story is a good show of how the sport community is:
So, the reason their weapon kept unbalancing is that it's tool steel, which is softer than everyone's armor. They're basically trying to break boards with a toy plastic hammer.
They sourced a piece of AR500, but on short notice they could only get a massive 600lb sheet. They borrowed Scorponok's truck to haul it, stayed a night in another builder's home, and then Team Chomp used their shop to machine the part.
1-2 isn't a lockout, but there's probably not going to be more than one or two at the bottom seeds, and with Tombstone, Huge, and Witchdoctor all at 1-2, gotta say I wouldn't want to be Witch Doctor. Huge lost one bullshit fight and one gimmick for the cameras, Tombstone lost two brutal slugfests, but Witch Doctor lost two fights to a weapon that breaks when it hits something.
All I could think of when listening to the Witch Doctor story is "of course Chomp's team has a water jet cutter onsite, lol"
edit: hmm, she did say "at the shop", so perhaps it's nearby but not onsite
Also, did anyone else spot this during the Witch Doctor fight? I didn't think any of the floor hazards were present/active anymore. Someone misclick a button? Heh.
They've still got the kill saws, but they're only active for the last minute of the fight IIRC.
But they do seem to be using them a lot less than they used to. Not sure if it's because the bots are destructive and active enough that they don't need the box weapons for an exciting fight, or if they just don't want to have to replace the box weapons multiple times a day now that the bots are far more likely to damage the box then the box is to damage them.
All the hazards from the old days (the shovers on either side of the screws, the floor panels that raise up or angle, and the spikes) are still included in the box, but I have no idea why they're included, since it's a newly built box each year and they never reference them and almost never trigger them.
Witch Doctor story is a good show of how the sport community is:
So, the reason their weapon kept unbalancing is that it's tool steel, which is softer than everyone's armor. They're basically trying to break boards with a toy plastic hammer.
They sourced a piece of AR500, but on short notice they could only get a massive 600lb sheet. They borrowed Scorponok's truck to haul it, stayed a night in another builder's home, and then Team Chomp used their shop to machine the part.
1-2 isn't a lockout, but there's probably not going to be more than one or two at the bottom seeds, and with Tombstone, Huge, and Witchdoctor all at 1-2, gotta say I wouldn't want to be Witch Doctor. Huge lost one bullshit fight and one gimmick for the cameras, Tombstone lost two brutal slugfests, but Witch Doctor lost two fights to a weapon that breaks when it hits something.
You got it a little backwards. Tool steel is harder than what most are using for armor, but that makes it more brittle. That meant it wasn't just getting dinged or bent when hitting other bots, it was chunking apart causing it to become unbalanced. The new AR500 steel they got is softer and thus will just get beat up a bit instead of exploding after a single hit.
Said it before and I'll say it again: The battlebox needs to be more dynamic; adding different terrain types would encourage people to field something other then super low ground clearance spinners and allow people to win with good driving and not just raw destructive power.
Things like sand pits and slopes would be way more impactful then spikes that don't do anything and that hammer that rarely hits anything.
What they need is to bring back the sadistic motherfucker who ran the hazards back in the Comedy Central days. Ground scraping skirt? He pops every hellraiser and spike on you and you keep hitting shit. Drive train burn out under the hammers? He's going to drop that thing again and again on your smoking wreckage until the ref tells him to stop. Even think about getting near the killsaws? WRRSCREEEEE! Hope you have bottom armor. Get a wedglet stuck in a hazard? Oh, now he stops hammering the button and you're just fucked.
Hazards that are actually hazardous would go a long way to upsetting the status quo.
Round of 32 bracket is up. Not a lot of surprises overall, Tombstone, Huge, and Witch Doctor squeaked in with middle seeds, probably to keep them from just trashing the brackets out of the gate, since all three are not well represented by their 1-2 records and giving them the bottom seeds their records call for means they go up against the top seeds and a LOT of big contenders will go out in round one.
Hydra can fuck itself with that 1 seed, though. Madcatter at fucking 12 is also 3-0 and actually fought all three, but instead Hydra gets the path of least resistance and Madcatter gets fed to Tombstone in round one and has a solid wall of doomspinners if they survive that.
Hydra being so unbelievably low to the ground seems to be quite an advantage against most bots, including the dreaded vertical spinners. I don't see how it'll have a chance against any horizontal spinner that should be able to easily land a hit though. Has that happened before and I just don't remember? Is Hydra even going to beat Gigabyte in the next round? If Gigabyte gets spun up though I don't see how Hydra has any chance. But if Gigabyte gets caught in a rush or just stops working I doubt it'll survive much flipping.
I have to imagine Valkyrie's undercutter would fuck Hydra up pretty good too if Valkyrie gets past Whiplash. And if Tombstone makes it to the semi-finals? No way!
Uppercut should handle it well, too. It's one of the few vertical bar spinners that doesn't have ground scraping wedges or forks by its weapon, it leads with a good six inches of spinning death.
There's two ways to win the ground clearance war:
A. Lower and sharper wedges (and everyone's already hitting invisible seams everywhere because they've taken this method to the extrme)
B. Lead with a giant fucking weapon so their wedge is all fucked up before it gets under you.
Hydra just beat Uppercut a couple weeks ago though. Hydra was pretty easily getting under his blade and Uppercut isn't maneuverable enough to keep that blade always facing Hydra. He got flipped from the sides and front a bunch and it went badly for him. Uppercut did get one good shot on a corner and it totally felt the whole fight like maybe he was just one good punch away from winning, but it's so hard for vertical spinners to hit him.
I miss Minotaur, I wonder if they'd be able to outdrive Hydra and chew his ass up from the back and sides.
Uppercut should handle it well, too. It's one of the few vertical bar spinners that doesn't have ground scraping wedges or forks by its weapon, it leads with a good six inches of spinning death.
There's two ways to win the ground clearance war:
A. Lower and sharper wedges (and everyone's already hitting invisible seams everywhere because they've taken this method to the extrme)
B. Lead with a giant fucking weapon so their wedge is all fucked up before it gets under you.
It's funny since I was actually thinking the opposite. Due to its symmetrical design, its vertical spinner is higher up than on most vertical spinner bots. With such a low profile, it's entirely possible that if Uppercut can't get its little forks under the skirts of Hydra, that the weapon just won't connect at all. And with the gyrometic forces making rapid maneuvering difficult, it would be very tough to get to Hydra's side. Though uppercut is a hearty bot that has taken a lot of damage and just kept going. It wouldn't surprise me to see it launched, land on its weapon and just keep going, or have Hydra's launching arm feed up into the spinner and get obliterated.
Wow what a fight, imagine if mammoth hadn't had to deal with that bent fork in the front and kept full mobility. Those claws at the end of the arm worked really well and like Huge, large bendy parts can absorb energy without breaking. I'm really happy they won that.
Shatter vs Hypershock
That pick ax delivered. Shatter feels like a battle ready version of what the old Chomp wanted to be. Always facing the opponent and with a very powerful hammer. When Hypershock got flipped, they were in real trouble since that armor looked very soft.
Jackpot vs Rotator
Jackpot's strategy was working well and could have won them the fight until Rotator was able to shave rubber from Jackpot's rear wheels. The loss of mobility was the end for them.
I think this was one of the most hilarious fights I've ever seen. Fusion just climbed up on top of Tantrum and went up in flames immediately like it was Homer's bowl of cereal. I think I laughed for a minute straight.
Gruff and Fusion (Tantrum too in past fights) both give a good example of why more bots should have a telemetry system like Ribbot. Gruff burned out motors in two fights and while there wasn't smoke this time, I doubt it smelled good when they opened it up in the pit, something was probably cooked. And even in fights Fusion WON it's had overheating problems.
Everyone in Battlebots is running crazy overvolted brushless motors so that happens to a lot of bots - everyone's going strong and trading hits and then for no apparent reason one guy stops and lets the magic smoke out. Ribbot knows the amps and temperature of all their motors and knows when to punch it and when to let off the gas, and the whole system for it apparently weighs less than a pound and uses fairly cheap parts. Best thing is you can add amp shunts to existing motor circuits without significantly altering the circuits, so as long as there's some wiggle room in your case this won't call for a major redesign.
I really liked the segment where they interviewed the judges on a possibly controversial split decision, they should do that more.
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Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
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Lesson: if you're knocked out, think very carefully before asking your opponent to flip you back over. Mammoth was probably fixable since they have a full extra frame and it's all off the shelf pipe, but they asked Will to hit them again and their batteries caught fire and they mentioned not having replacements at all.
The rule is controlled translational movement, not controlled wobbling back and forth in the corner. If the opponent can just sit six feet away and you can never touch them you're knocked out.
Super ballsy to keep going at it like that and not take the knockout.
It was a while since the wheel broke off. Scorpios staying on the attack actually delayed it if anything, because the judges need to see a lack of movement and give the driver a warning before the countdown. Unless a robot is actually destroyed they usually won't get counted out while they're still engaged. Same thing happened in the Ribbot fight, they clearly had a knockout but kept pressing the attack to the point of almost getting KOd themselves. There was a fight last week where they actually stopped a countdown and restarted because the opponent reengaged and it wasn't clear if they were rolling from the impact of their wheels were turning again.
Like Ray said, he felt he was showing movement and even shouted so at the ref, but it has to be translational movement, spinning in place is a KO by the rules.
I think it's more Ray's used to things being a lot more clear, even when he loses its usually big.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I'd rather they get lots of teams in and show lots of fights. If they were only showing the A tier I think they'd keep ratcheting up the reality show factor to fill time and that would be... not good.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
So, the reason their weapon kept unbalancing is that it's tool steel, which is softer than everyone's armor. They're basically trying to break boards with a toy plastic hammer.
They sourced a piece of AR500, but on short notice they could only get a massive 600lb sheet. They borrowed Scorponok's truck to haul it, stayed a night in another builder's home, and then Team Chomp used their shop to machine the part.
Finally watched this. Hydra should have gotten DQ'd when they ignored the ref multiple times.
All I could think of when listening to the Witch Doctor story is "of course Chomp's team has a water jet cutter onsite, lol"
edit: hmm, she did say "at the shop", so perhaps it's nearby but not onsite
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
But they do seem to be using them a lot less than they used to. Not sure if it's because the bots are destructive and active enough that they don't need the box weapons for an exciting fight, or if they just don't want to have to replace the box weapons multiple times a day now that the bots are far more likely to damage the box then the box is to damage them.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
You got it a little backwards. Tool steel is harder than what most are using for armor, but that makes it more brittle. That meant it wasn't just getting dinged or bent when hitting other bots, it was chunking apart causing it to become unbalanced. The new AR500 steel they got is softer and thus will just get beat up a bit instead of exploding after a single hit.
Things like sand pits and slopes would be way more impactful then spikes that don't do anything and that hammer that rarely hits anything.
Hazards that are actually hazardous would go a long way to upsetting the status quo.
Round of 32 bracket is up. Not a lot of surprises overall, Tombstone, Huge, and Witch Doctor squeaked in with middle seeds, probably to keep them from just trashing the brackets out of the gate, since all three are not well represented by their 1-2 records and giving them the bottom seeds their records call for means they go up against the top seeds and a LOT of big contenders will go out in round one.
Hydra can fuck itself with that 1 seed, though. Madcatter at fucking 12 is also 3-0 and actually fought all three, but instead Hydra gets the path of least resistance and Madcatter gets fed to Tombstone in round one and has a solid wall of doomspinners if they survive that.
I have to imagine Valkyrie's undercutter would fuck Hydra up pretty good too if Valkyrie gets past Whiplash. And if Tombstone makes it to the semi-finals? No way!
There's two ways to win the ground clearance war:
A. Lower and sharper wedges (and everyone's already hitting invisible seams everywhere because they've taken this method to the extrme)
B. Lead with a giant fucking weapon so their wedge is all fucked up before it gets under you.
I miss Minotaur, I wonder if they'd be able to outdrive Hydra and chew his ass up from the back and sides.
It's funny since I was actually thinking the opposite. Due to its symmetrical design, its vertical spinner is higher up than on most vertical spinner bots. With such a low profile, it's entirely possible that if Uppercut can't get its little forks under the skirts of Hydra, that the weapon just won't connect at all. And with the gyrometic forces making rapid maneuvering difficult, it would be very tough to get to Hydra's side. Though uppercut is a hearty bot that has taken a lot of damage and just kept going. It wouldn't surprise me to see it launched, land on its weapon and just keep going, or have Hydra's launching arm feed up into the spinner and get obliterated.
Shatter vs Hypershock
Jackpot vs Rotator
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Tall! Chomp had incredible mobility. Just not you know intentionally.
Everyone in Battlebots is running crazy overvolted brushless motors so that happens to a lot of bots - everyone's going strong and trading hits and then for no apparent reason one guy stops and lets the magic smoke out. Ribbot knows the amps and temperature of all their motors and knows when to punch it and when to let off the gas, and the whole system for it apparently weighs less than a pound and uses fairly cheap parts. Best thing is you can add amp shunts to existing motor circuits without significantly altering the circuits, so as long as there's some wiggle room in your case this won't call for a major redesign.
I really liked the segment where they interviewed the judges on a possibly controversial split decision, they should do that more.
*jumps up and down*
Tonight was not kind to our guesses.