facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
I'm glad others are coming around to my way of thinking, that Sawblaze is basically a glorified wedge bot. A very good wedge bot, but still.
I also still think the active weapons requirement is dumb and half the fun of robot fighting is the meta shifts that lead to different bot types taking precedence over time, and that the current spinner-heavy meta because of a ban on the bots best at dealing with them leads to it being boring and predictable.
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
There's nothing more boring than bots without weapons.
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
Wedge vs. spinner is fun, but there's the opposite extreme that killed Robot Wars for a while, allowing brick/wedge bots means you end up with a bracket peppered with potato fights where two wedges rub against each other and the judges shrug and flip a coin. And that was a format with at least one straight up lethal hazard in those pits.
Duck and Sawblaze show that a wedgebot can meet the technicality of the active weapon rule and still be successful. Free Shipping shows that they can also suck in an exciting and entertaining way.
It’s funny, but I like both Duck and FreeShipping and dislike Sawblaze. Maybe it’s that Duck doesn’t have any pretense and presents a better “did you build your bot well enough to House the weapon?” test, while Free Shipping presents a “did you make your bot maneuverable enough to use the weapon?”
I’d like to see Deep Six try to handle either of them. Just the idea of Duck scooting in on the side and lifting it up with that silly beak makes me giggle.
Sawblaze seems to want to insist that the spark/fire show is important, when in reality it’s all about pushing lesser tier bots into the screws and trying to look flashy.
Having said that, I certainly don’t feel a need for more wedges on the show
Wonder how the tournaments would shake out if they removed the "active weapon" restriction, and then had some preliminary, non-televised rounds where bots got matched up against other bots with the same weapon (or lack thereof, in the case of "brick" bots). That way you can still have a brickbot or two in the competition, but you don't have a field overflowing with them resulting in a ton of boring TV.
Plus it might lead to some innovation in weaponry. If you're the only person who brought a flamethrower bot, congratulations, you get to skip the prelims. Maybe someone would take the effort to figure out a novel weapon - it'd be pretty sweet if someone figured out a cryonic weapon for instance.
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
There's nothing more boring than bots without weapons.
I think watching wedge vs wedge fights is super enjoyable, because driving skill becomes of paramount importance. I also think seeing so many spinners gets tedious after a while, even if the destruction they wreak is cool.
Mostly though, like I said before, right now spinners have no real counter so all the top bots are spinners in some form or another. Allowing wedge/brickbots to counter spinners would not only mean more of those bots, but more of every other type of bot too because suddenly the rock-paper-scissors game doesn't have one clear obvious best choice.
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
I don’t know that we need to go to wedge versus wedge to see good driving, and the weak hazards in battlebots would make such fights interminable.
Whiplash and Minotaur show that you can combine great driving and a weapon that still does damage. Minotaur’s problems this season seem rooted it the decision to go bigger and the worse handling and overloaded motor/belt the increased spinning mass caused. The instability and reliability issues have reduced the advantage their driver’s skill gave them.
What weapon types would see a resurgence if plain wedges were allowed?
What weapon types would see a resurgence if plain wedges were allowed?
IIRC, the primary counters to a wedge were a better wedge (closer to the floor of the box, lower angle on the wedge, more powerful drives) and better driving...
I'd imagine that if just straight up wedges were allowed you'd see a spike in flippers/lifters in response. Anything that might get a wedge outside of the ring. Possibly an increase in grappling bots designed to grab and lift.
If wedges are brought in, I'd hope that they come with a few improvements to the box:
1: A substantial improvement to the power of the hazards. Kill saws weren't that impressive 20 years ago, and they haven't really changed.
2: All hazards are controlled by the competing teams. They're split up 50/50, clearly labeled in the box and every team that is competing designates an operator for them.
3: Put a limit on the hazard use (for example: drum spinners can only run 60 seconds per match, hammers can only fire 15 times, flipping pad can only launch 10 times etc)
4: A stepped box design, or otherwise uneven floor. Altering the design of the floor to include a 2-3 inch step up in the middle would require substantial rethinking to pretty much every bot design out here (Huge may be the exception)
Alternate to 3: Bring back the staff guy who ran the hazards in the Comedy Central days. For example: Did you know the hellraisers and the swinging arms on the spike strips next to the screws are still in the box? They're never used or even referenced, but according to a few people who were there during assembly they're still included in the box for some reason. The only hazard that's actually been dropped since back then are the ram rods.
The teams only directly control the hammers. A crew guy half heartedly fires the saws once in a while. The screws mostly seem to run on automatic, they're supposed to reverse when something gets caught on top of them, but half the time they just stop working instead.
Back in the CC seasons, though? That guy who ran all the hazards was a complete sadist. If you lost drive power under the hammer, he didn't care if you were getting counted out, he'd slam that hammer down on you until the officials made him stop. At least once he broke a hammer off beating on a robot that had been disabled for a good 30 seconds at that point.
Hevach on
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
This is the best Witch Doctor we've ever seen I think, by a wide margin. I actually think it has potential of making a run.
facetious on
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
This is the best Witch Doctor we've ever seen I think, by a wide margin. I actually think it has potential of making a run.
In the Amazon convention thing, Witch Doctor utterly wrecked Tombstone and Bronco both in under a minute.
Those are generally the "if you can't beat them you won't win" robots, though I might add Cobalt to that this year - If you don't face them you face their victor, and that isn't always going to be the vengeful ghost of an 0-4 tire fire that slipped in on a technicality.
I'm loving the glass cannon of Deep Six. They did an AMA where someone asked them about adding more stability for next year and their response was they were going to increase their weapon weight from 110# to 125#.
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
Also gotta give Nelly the Ellybot some props after that fight. Their robot sucks and they're going to go 0-4 (if they can even fix it for four fights), but they're like, "Hell yeah we suck man this is super fun though I hope Tombstone gets to break us next!"
I'm loving the glass cannon of Deep Six. They did an AMA where someone asked them about adding more stability for next year and their response was they were going to increase their weapon weight from 110# to 125#.
Deep Six, it's like they looked at Nightmare and said "No, that's entirely too stable"
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
I loved the part they showed on the show where they just went over with a tape measure and figured out which weapon would hit it on the top instead of the sides.
Earlier in the season Shatter was walking around opponents with a pool noodle being all sneaky and shit. Huge is just like, "Hey buddy mind if we have a few minutes with your robot? Thanks."
What an awesome series of fights on Friday. That hit on
Tombstone holy shit. Tombstone needs to source some more resilient blocks of steel for its weapons this isn't the first time this has happened. Bite Force might be my new favorite bot.
.
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
Just finally got to watch the finale.
Was rooting for Witch Doctor - this season it went from being overrated to being a legitimately great bot, and I respect that they upgraded, but damn BiteForce is good.
Tombstone flopping around the box was one of the wildest/scariest things I've ever seen.
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
Was rooting for Witch Doctor - this season it went from being overrated to being a legitimately great bot, and I respect that they upgraded, but damn BiteForce is good.
Tombstone flopping around the box was one of the wildest/scariest things I've ever seen.
Yeah, spinner dances are wild to watch and quite entertaining when seen through the distance and safety of TV.
I imagine actually sitting next to the box in the Judges booth or the driver's area during a dance is a bowel loosening experience to say the least.
I mean, it's pretty easy to forget how much power these things have on them when you only see them on TV. The sounds are muffled, the aftermath of matches is often overlooked or covered in a 3 minute filler piece, the damage done to the box itself is often handwaved away (and the construction of the box where it's getting damaged is rarely touched on). I can only imagine that standing next to the box is a different experience altogether.
What an awesome series of fights on Friday. That hit on
Tombstone holy shit. Tombstone needs to source some more resilient blocks of steel for its weapons this isn't the first time this has happened. Bite Force might be my new favorite bot.
.
Re: Durability
Tombstone's weapon is so crazy that there is no steel able to withstand it forever. Ray's real flagship robot is Last Rites, which is almost identical to Tombstone but it's not as pretty because it's not on TV. He didn't want to tie up the name in the Battlebots contract so he used the name of a less successful superheavyweight robot, but put it on an exact copy of Last Rites.
Anyway, Last Rites has used a titanium bar for a couple brick bots. It got snapped in half fighting Whoops, and in another fight Last Rites ripped its frame apart in the recoil and the bar was the only thing salvageable. Basically, if Ray is fighting something that needs that bar, he's already lost so what's the point?
This is why Bite Force won, and why Witch Doctor wrecked Tombstone in the livestream thing: Tombstone hits harder than anything, it turns quickly, and Ray's a good driver so the only thing you can hit on him is usually his own weapon. It can take being run into the walls all day, but it can't take its own recoil for more than a couple hits. It visibly degrades with every hit it delivers. So contrary to fighting other horizontal doom spinners like Icewave and Son of Whyachi, the key to beating Tombstone isn't to jam him up, it's to let him get to full speed and take the punch. If his knuckles break before your face, you win. Weapon-on-weapon hits from shorter vertical bars seem to be good at breaking his fist, but if the hit rips your entire weapon assembly out it won't do any good.
The best part of the fight, though, is in the slow motion.
You can't see any of it during the fight, but this season they had some DAMN good slow motion cameras, and you can see exactly what happens: Bite Force gets a weapon-on-weapon hit on Tombstone's bar that cracks it but doesn't break it. The bar makes a half turn, and the other end hits Bite Force, and the recoil finishes the job. The end of the bar OPPOSITE Bite Force snaps, flies backward, and rips off Tombstone's own wheel.
Is that what took off Tombstone's wheel? I watched that slow motion replay a half-dozen times and still didn't see what was happening.
The finale had some scary hits overall; the australian team's bot doing a couple backflips off it's own weapon hitting the ground was pretty exciting.
Yep, even in the slow motion it's only a couple frames worth, but in the second slow mo, with Tombstone in front and Biteforce in the background, you can just make it out. Tombstone's bar is spinning forward on the side that hits Biteforce, but the broken piece fires off the left of the screen, backwards, hitting the wheel on the way through.
I know these lexan panels around the box are pretty tough and they seem to have multiple layers too but It still amazes me that there hasn't been a breach yet. There is so much mass and emery at play in these fights. The steel floor often cut like butter.
Safety seems to have properly been accounted for, heck the clean up crews wears proper masks, but I'm always afraid of a freak hit escaping the battlebox.
The outer layer of lexan is absurdly thick. The inner layer is already thicker than bullet proof glass, but it's there to protect the outer layer from damage the outer layer is the real safety barrier. The inner layer's only been broken a couple times over the years, but it still takes a lot of hits and at least some of the panels need replacing every session.
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
That's pretty much what Shatter was. Defensively it worked out pretty well, Shatter could take a hell of a beating and never took more than cosmetic body damage, and it didn't get thrown in the air by spinners like everyone else despite being on the lightweight side. It couldn't actually do any real damage or exert control, and it's hammer got torn off more than once, so it still lost, but the armor did way better than I thought. A vertical spinner like half the damn field could probably do incredible things with the same armor.
On the other hand, that's also basically what Nelly the Ellybot was was, and Captain Shredderator and Chronos both had lexan top armor, and it worked out pretty shit for all of them.
Yeah, for a time, Lexan seemed to be the dominant armor of choice.
Not sure why it fell out of wide use, I'd guess a combination of repairibility and cost. Can't exactly weld a new piece of lexan over the damage, and replacing full body panels in this kind of round robin tournament could get pricey quick (as opposed to the single elimination style of earlier tournaments where you only have to worry about keeping your bot running if you win.
Other thoughts: perhaps the way that Lexan is mounted may also be causing some failure points. Since it can't be welded into place it has to be bolted in or otherwise attached mechanically which could cause stress on the lexan sheet.
I'm surprised that people haven't given more thought to the armor schemes too. Blacksmith's completely vertical panels have shown it to be pretty stout against a lot of vertical spinners, especially drum spinners like Minotaur, because it's much harder for them to catch an edge, and the the spinner just grinds on the flat surface doing little if any damage. Now Blacksmith was eventually defeated by Minotaur, Biteforce etc mainly because it has shit all for weapons. Biteforce has vertical armor panels too (with a very low center of gravity), and I can't actually remember it getting caught and flipped by any vertical spinners (not saying it hasn't, I just can't think of any specific instances).
On the other hand, it seems like extremely horizontally sloped armor could be a very good defense against horizontal spinners like Tombstone. The theory I guess being that if the armor plate is dragging on the floor, the horizontal spinner bar would hit the extreme slope, push it into the floor, aiding deflection upwards of the spinner bot. I was really looking forward to the Quantum-Tombstone fight mainly to see how that sloped armor would fare. Unfortunately, the wheel got taken out super early and couldn't really see much. That being the alternative to a Duck/Biteforce vertical armor wall that you just hope breaks the weapon bar before you get broken.
What an awesome series of fights on Friday. That hit on
Tombstone holy shit. Tombstone needs to source some more resilient blocks of steel for its weapons this isn't the first time this has happened. Bite Force might be my new favorite bot.
.
Re: Durability
Tombstone's weapon is so crazy that there is no steel able to withstand it forever. Ray's real flagship robot is Last Rites, which is almost identical to Tombstone but it's not as pretty because it's not on TV. He didn't want to tie up the name in the Battlebots contract so he used the name of a less successful superheavyweight robot, but put it on an exact copy of Last Rites.
Anyway, Last Rites has used a titanium bar for a couple brick bots. It got snapped in half fighting Whoops, and in another fight Last Rites ripped its frame apart in the recoil and the bar was the only thing salvageable. Basically, if Ray is fighting something that needs that bar, he's already lost so what's the point?
This is why Bite Force won, and why Witch Doctor wrecked Tombstone in the livestream thing: Tombstone hits harder than anything, it turns quickly, and Ray's a good driver so the only thing you can hit on him is usually his own weapon. It can take being run into the walls all day, but it can't take its own recoil for more than a couple hits. It visibly degrades with every hit it delivers. So contrary to fighting other horizontal doom spinners like Icewave and Son of Whyachi, the key to beating Tombstone isn't to jam him up, it's to let him get to full speed and take the punch. If his knuckles break before your face, you win. Weapon-on-weapon hits from shorter vertical bars seem to be good at breaking his fist, but if the hit rips your entire weapon assembly out it won't do any good.
The best part of the fight, though, is in the slow motion.
You can't see any of it during the fight, but this season they had some DAMN good slow motion cameras, and you can see exactly what happens: Bite Force gets a weapon-on-weapon hit on Tombstone's bar that cracks it but doesn't break it. The bar makes a half turn, and the other end hits Bite Force, and the recoil finishes the job. The end of the bar OPPOSITE Bite Force snaps, flies backward, and rips off Tombstone's own wheel.
I think Tombstone and others are at a point where their weapon systems need to focus less on damage output and more on durability. Move to a tapered shape instead of a square bar to increase strength at the middle and base of the bar where breaks have been happening.
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
The BattleBots youtube channel has been uploading unaired fights from last season:
The delayed tournament finished filming and premiers December 3. Slightly reduced field but still 60 teams and lots of big names, with teams also being the bulk of the audience, repeating last year's preseason/qualifier field followed by a 32 bot tournament.
Also added Peter Abrahamson, builder of Ronin from the Comedy Central days of the show, to the commentary crew.
Hevach on
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facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
I'm real excited to see how the new Chomp performs... It's a six-legged walker and therefore gets a weight bonus... It's 500 lbs to the standard bot's 250.
Maybe it'll be a dud but at least it won't be flinging itself all over the ring when it swings its hammer.
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
Chomp before apparently got screwed by the floor not being as magnet friendly as they were promised. Walkers tend to suck really hard though. Poor Wrecks.
I hope Team Chomp has a lot of replacement legs, lol. I don't see how they don't all get chewed off by Tombstone and Bite Force-like weapons. Chomp's hammer better be powerful!
I wonder if a spinning shell weapon would work on a giant walking bot. Got no maneuverability, but who needs that if you need to touch me to attack and touching me will cause you severe damage until you break me! Think such a bot would fly around the box like Gigabyte does?
The other notable rule change this year is an 80lb limit for spinning weapons (120lbs for shell spinners).
Which, considering some of the hits last year that almost made it through the battle box it's probably for the best.
Oh also flippers/lifers now have a requirement to actually be able to flip/lift 250lbs.
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
Posts
I also still think the active weapons requirement is dumb and half the fun of robot fighting is the meta shifts that lead to different bot types taking precedence over time, and that the current spinner-heavy meta because of a ban on the bots best at dealing with them leads to it being boring and predictable.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
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
Duck and Sawblaze show that a wedgebot can meet the technicality of the active weapon rule and still be successful. Free Shipping shows that they can also suck in an exciting and entertaining way.
I’d like to see Deep Six try to handle either of them. Just the idea of Duck scooting in on the side and lifting it up with that silly beak makes me giggle.
Sawblaze seems to want to insist that the spark/fire show is important, when in reality it’s all about pushing lesser tier bots into the screws and trying to look flashy.
Having said that, I certainly don’t feel a need for more wedges on the show
Plus it might lead to some innovation in weaponry. If you're the only person who brought a flamethrower bot, congratulations, you get to skip the prelims. Maybe someone would take the effort to figure out a novel weapon - it'd be pretty sweet if someone figured out a cryonic weapon for instance.
I think watching wedge vs wedge fights is super enjoyable, because driving skill becomes of paramount importance. I also think seeing so many spinners gets tedious after a while, even if the destruction they wreak is cool.
Mostly though, like I said before, right now spinners have no real counter so all the top bots are spinners in some form or another. Allowing wedge/brickbots to counter spinners would not only mean more of those bots, but more of every other type of bot too because suddenly the rock-paper-scissors game doesn't have one clear obvious best choice.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
Whiplash and Minotaur show that you can combine great driving and a weapon that still does damage. Minotaur’s problems this season seem rooted it the decision to go bigger and the worse handling and overloaded motor/belt the increased spinning mass caused. The instability and reliability issues have reduced the advantage their driver’s skill gave them.
What weapon types would see a resurgence if plain wedges were allowed?
IIRC, the primary counters to a wedge were a better wedge (closer to the floor of the box, lower angle on the wedge, more powerful drives) and better driving...
I'd imagine that if just straight up wedges were allowed you'd see a spike in flippers/lifters in response. Anything that might get a wedge outside of the ring. Possibly an increase in grappling bots designed to grab and lift.
If wedges are brought in, I'd hope that they come with a few improvements to the box:
1: A substantial improvement to the power of the hazards. Kill saws weren't that impressive 20 years ago, and they haven't really changed.
2: All hazards are controlled by the competing teams. They're split up 50/50, clearly labeled in the box and every team that is competing designates an operator for them.
3: Put a limit on the hazard use (for example: drum spinners can only run 60 seconds per match, hammers can only fire 15 times, flipping pad can only launch 10 times etc)
4: A stepped box design, or otherwise uneven floor. Altering the design of the floor to include a 2-3 inch step up in the middle would require substantial rethinking to pretty much every bot design out here (Huge may be the exception)
The teams only directly control the hammers. A crew guy half heartedly fires the saws once in a while. The screws mostly seem to run on automatic, they're supposed to reverse when something gets caught on top of them, but half the time they just stop working instead.
Back in the CC seasons, though? That guy who ran all the hazards was a complete sadist. If you lost drive power under the hammer, he didn't care if you were getting counted out, he'd slam that hammer down on you until the officials made him stop. At least once he broke a hammer off beating on a robot that had been disabled for a good 30 seconds at that point.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
Those are generally the "if you can't beat them you won't win" robots, though I might add Cobalt to that this year - If you don't face them you face their victor, and that isn't always going to be the vengeful ghost of an 0-4 tire fire that slipped in on a technicality.
Deep Six, it's like they looked at Nightmare and said "No, that's entirely too stable"
Very interesting write up by the Huge team on the fight: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=417681508837728&id=182584115680803
Earlier in the season Shatter was walking around opponents with a pool noodle being all sneaky and shit. Huge is just like, "Hey buddy mind if we have a few minutes with your robot? Thanks."
Huge was almost a lock, so little Bronco could do there. Their other two fights and Witch Doctor on the Twitch stream thing we're huge letdowns.
Tombstone flopping around the box was one of the wildest/scariest things I've ever seen.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
I imagine actually sitting next to the box in the Judges booth or the driver's area during a dance is a bowel loosening experience to say the least.
I mean, it's pretty easy to forget how much power these things have on them when you only see them on TV. The sounds are muffled, the aftermath of matches is often overlooked or covered in a 3 minute filler piece, the damage done to the box itself is often handwaved away (and the construction of the box where it's getting damaged is rarely touched on). I can only imagine that standing next to the box is a different experience altogether.
Re: Durability
Anyway, Last Rites has used a titanium bar for a couple brick bots. It got snapped in half fighting Whoops, and in another fight Last Rites ripped its frame apart in the recoil and the bar was the only thing salvageable. Basically, if Ray is fighting something that needs that bar, he's already lost so what's the point?
This is why Bite Force won, and why Witch Doctor wrecked Tombstone in the livestream thing: Tombstone hits harder than anything, it turns quickly, and Ray's a good driver so the only thing you can hit on him is usually his own weapon. It can take being run into the walls all day, but it can't take its own recoil for more than a couple hits. It visibly degrades with every hit it delivers. So contrary to fighting other horizontal doom spinners like Icewave and Son of Whyachi, the key to beating Tombstone isn't to jam him up, it's to let him get to full speed and take the punch. If his knuckles break before your face, you win. Weapon-on-weapon hits from shorter vertical bars seem to be good at breaking his fist, but if the hit rips your entire weapon assembly out it won't do any good.
The best part of the fight, though, is in the slow motion.
The finale had some scary hits overall; the australian team's bot doing a couple backflips off it's own weapon hitting the ground was pretty exciting.
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.
Safety seems to have properly been accounted for, heck the clean up crews wears proper masks, but I'm always afraid of a freak hit escaping the battlebox.
On the other hand, that's also basically what Nelly the Ellybot was was, and Captain Shredderator and Chronos both had lexan top armor, and it worked out pretty shit for all of them.
Not sure why it fell out of wide use, I'd guess a combination of repairibility and cost. Can't exactly weld a new piece of lexan over the damage, and replacing full body panels in this kind of round robin tournament could get pricey quick (as opposed to the single elimination style of earlier tournaments where you only have to worry about keeping your bot running if you win.
Other thoughts: perhaps the way that Lexan is mounted may also be causing some failure points. Since it can't be welded into place it has to be bolted in or otherwise attached mechanically which could cause stress on the lexan sheet.
On the other hand, it seems like extremely horizontally sloped armor could be a very good defense against horizontal spinners like Tombstone. The theory I guess being that if the armor plate is dragging on the floor, the horizontal spinner bar would hit the extreme slope, push it into the floor, aiding deflection upwards of the spinner bot. I was really looking forward to the Quantum-Tombstone fight mainly to see how that sloped armor would fare. Unfortunately, the wheel got taken out super early and couldn't really see much. That being the alternative to a Duck/Biteforce vertical armor wall that you just hope breaks the weapon bar before you get broken.
I think Tombstone and others are at a point where their weapon systems need to focus less on damage output and more on durability. Move to a tapered shape instead of a square bar to increase strength at the middle and base of the bar where breaks have been happening.
https://www.youtube.com/user/battlebots/videos
Also the new season premieres May 15!
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
The delayed tournament finished filming and premiers December 3. Slightly reduced field but still 60 teams and lots of big names, with teams also being the bulk of the audience, repeating last year's preseason/qualifier field followed by a 32 bot tournament.
Also added Peter Abrahamson, builder of Ronin from the Comedy Central days of the show, to the commentary crew.
Forgive my false start from before, but echoing @Hevach with this youtube announcement.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
Maybe it'll be a dud but at least it won't be flinging itself all over the ring when it swings its hammer.
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
I wonder if a spinning shell weapon would work on a giant walking bot. Got no maneuverability, but who needs that if you need to touch me to attack and touching me will cause you severe damage until you break me! Think such a bot would fly around the box like Gigabyte does?
Which, considering some of the hits last year that almost made it through the battle box it's probably for the best.
Oh also flippers/lifers now have a requirement to actually be able to flip/lift 250lbs.
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