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How Could I Improve...
No, Im serious. Just joking.
No, Im serious. Just joking.
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How Could I Improve...
Oddly, Mark&Liam, your vapourbots are not my biggest concerns at the moment, its your tournaments.
Both of you are new to this and your tournaments are of low quality. I cant blame you for this, you have to start somewhere. What I DO blame you for however is the AMOUNT of tournaments you guys start with no experience whatsoever.
If I were you, Id concentrate on 1 tournament, give as much info on the rules and restrictions as you can (remember, YOU manage your OWN tournament, so do it right), and take all advice you can from the more experienced members. This first tournament of you guys will be flawed, of course, but itll help you becoming better.Comment
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How Could I Improve...
I am focusing just on the 1 now- The Challenge Belt. Unfortunately someone (Cough-Mark-Cough)replies to the old ones, so they go back to the top of the Fanfic section, despite me having said it was cancelledComment
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How Could I Improve...
okay, very well
if The Challenge Belt is your only tourney atm, Ill give you some tips there, and Ill probably enter it tooComment
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How Could I Improve...
Go ahead Martijn. Come and have a go if you think youre hard enough! :wink: = Nitro-Gene 4.0 is the current belt holder, and I havent had a fanfic battle against you since Daves return tourny. It should be good
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How Could I Improve...
O, one last thing
Robots with 0 ground clearance all over cant move
Have a nice day
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How Could I Improve...
*coughtrackscough*Comment
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How Could I Improve...
of course thhe ground clearance under the wheels is always 0 :PComment
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How Could I Improve...
I know, just testing you...:PComment
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How Could I Improve...
As much as I encourage newcomers, and the fact that a lot of people have recently discovered vapourbots out the blue is great. But Im afraid, particularly the latest editions (Liam and Mark) have a long way to go.
Martijn couldnt have said this much better. There is nothing wrong with you starting a tournament. But there are a number of steps you should take in doing this. I€™ll try and give you guys some pointers€¦
1) Have a practice writing a fight and post it here for comments, feedback and possible improvements. Not too long ago Joey came up with a good idea of making a practice battle using his own vapourbots. This not only allowed him to practice his battle writing abilities and prove himself, but it also gave us a better understanding of what his vapourbots are intended to do. I highly recommend trying this.
2) Then start a tournament, a small tournament which we define as a €œminor€ which may consist of maybe 8 robots. Complete this tournament as straight one on one battles, which should give you around 8 attempts at writing a fight. If this is a success, move on to a bigger tournament, this time using maybe 16 robots.
3) In doing so, please take a look at how tournaments are started here. Take a look at the first few posts in some tournaments and see what they ask for. This usually involves giving details of the rules, weight limits, format, arena and so on. I highly suggest looking at some of the better tournaments in the archives and see how they start things off.
4) Also, battles are supposed to be full written commentaries and descriptions of the battle. People are not interested in one-line summaries of the results. Once more, see how people write battles around here and take inspiration before writing your own.
5) Keep to just one tournament at a time. Fair enough, the likes of Kody and Martijn have a few tournaments running simultaneously, but that is because they have the experience and the qualities to do so. I€™m not joking here, I have become lost in this section the past couple of days because of the amount of tournaments. Between the two of you I can count 6 new tournaments in the past few days. Forgive me if I am wrong, but none of them seemed to be started, written or explained in the right manner. They also seem, to me, to all be pretty much the same.
6) This isn€™t so bad, but it€™s still a little hate of mine. I for one am certainly not fond of real robot tournaments. I believe most of the new tournaments have eventually allowed the use of vapourbots, so good. But still, people are here to try out their own designs.
For battle writing skills, I€™m not much good myself, so have a look around. I suggest you write your battles in a Word Processor, which also eliminates and spelling and grammar errors and makes battles easier to read and understand. I always aim to write at least one page in a Word document, however this is obviously variable. A quick match can be half a page, while a full 5-minute or longer match can be a few pages in length. I once made a point about giving all robots involved a share of the action and advantage in a match. However Frank quite rightly corrected me by saying, €œwhat if that match included MDU?€ So take that rule lightly.
I believe that is all I wish to say about battles for now. My other concern is about vapourbots and stats. First and foremost, look at how people present their stats. They are often variable but include largely the same stuff. The more information you give a writer about your robot, the more that writer can understand the robots capabilities.
Unfortunately, the daunting aspect of vapourbots for beginners is the research aspect. You will probably have to take time looking around at parts and understanding what does what and to what extent. However, this soon becomes common knowledge and you can learn it all off by heart. For those bits you don€™t understand, we are here to help. That is the purpose of this thread.
This is our sick and twisted idea of having fun. Occasionally, things pop up like Andre€™s €œdouble the weight limit€ tournament and Mark€™s €œinvent your own parts€ tournament which can be a laugh. But in all seriousness, we are here to test our ideas. We are attempting to stay with reality, using what we really could use if we had the funds and resources available. We are not going to make up our own elements, we live on Planet Earth (well, outside of our alter-egos :wink
and use what is available to us. It€™s sort of €œif you could make any robot, with any available parts and no restrictions to money or tools, what would you do?€ This of course is within rules and regulations, weight limits and things which actually exist.
Take a read through the archives. Learn some history of the €˜sport€™, learn how to start a tournament, learn how to make a Vapourbot, research parts. I can assure you it will all be worth it in the end. I hope this can be of some help to you€¦Comment
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How Could I Improve...
Very well said AJ. *applauds*Comment
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How Could I Improve...
AJ has just nailed the gold here.
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How Could I Improve...
Yeh I know, I agree totally but IVE sorted it out now.I would delete the old threads but unfortunately theyre more than ten minutes oldComment
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How Could I Improve...
We just need to let them die then, nobody posting to them after theyve become irrelavant...
And regarding your vapours, if you post them here in the standard format we can look over them and offer constructive criticism for you. The standard format is something like this:
Name:
Dimensions (usually in cm, l x w x h):
Shape:
Colour: (not required but nice :P)
Drive (motors, batteries and wheels/locomotion type thingies):
Speed:
Ground clearance:
Armour:
Weapons:
Srimech:
Extra notes:Comment
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How Could I Improve...
OK, heres my first vapour:
Name- Brutalis 1.0
Dimensions- 55 x 40 x 8 (cm)
Shape-Like Dantomkia, but much lower and heavier at the front
Colour-Black with yellow flipper
Drive- 4 x S28-400 magmotors powered by NIcads drive the foam-filled tyres
Speed- about 14mph
Ground Clearance- 0mm around the sides and rear due to skirts, omm at the front due to the flipper
Armour- 6mm thick Hardox
Weapons-1000psi nitrogen power flipper
Srimech-the flipperComment
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