This isn't fun anymore

[martyn]

thats really all i have to say after todays events which have been building up for a while now........

[leorcc]

This isnt fun anymore

I do not appreciate messages like the one above me because even though you are entitled to have an opinion, this message does not come up with any attempt to rectify this situation or add something constructive to the table.

All in all this is YOUR game, so if you dont like the way it is now, speak up and tell us what YOU want out of it.

Ive heard a lot of now its not fun anymore and the old fights were so much better

The olden days fights to paraphrase David Sheppard were also totally unrealistic.

It is the arcade racer versus Racing sim. One is instant action and putting the pedal down, the other means tweaking your stats to get that leading edge over the other. Both have supporters, both can be a lot of fun. One supporter of the first genre usually does not like the other genre. For one it is too complicated (so he wants Arcade) and the other it is just dumbing down the racing (so he goes for the sim style game).

So what do want? Realism or arcade?

Those that argue that you could have both have never in my opinion ever come up with a good explanation how they would want to do that.

If you (and with that I mean all of you that were there when this thing started) made the decision in the olden days for a base set of rules we would never have this discussion to begin with. I already argued the case for a baseline of rules, but vapourboteers felt that that should be up to the writers. Fair enough, but the writers are not interested in laying the ground rules, let alone get together and creating a foundation for it. They got enough going on as it is writing battles and coming up with tournaments.

What choice do I make?

If I wanted to play arcade than I would have stuck with RA2 or RW arenas of destruction.

Some people find that these rules are too complex, well Im sorry, but building a good robot is not just a matter of piling on parts. And it is not fair towards the people that do try to keep their stats in check if they get knocked out by a robot that even on Pluto would not have made the weight.

This is the last I am going to say on the matter. think it over, my suggestions are out there. Do with them as you will. Once you guys made a decision let me know.

Until then I will just do normal moderator stuff and answer questions if you want me to, but apart from that I will keep out of fanfic. I will not intervene in any decision making with regards to rules.

[pcbore]

This isnt fun anymore

We did actually try to create a set of base rules a while back, but it was impossible to enforce, meaning everyone who disagreed just went their own merry way making it a pointless excercise. Its not like we have membership like the FRA that can kick people out if they disobery the rules.

[alex_holt]

This isnt fun anymore

Leo, frankly I think you are trying to overstandardise things.

One of the points of vapourbots as an alternative to real robots is that it lets people design stuff without the technical knowledge required to build a real robot, but is infinitely more customisable that a RW game.

Part of the strength of vapourbots is that its not bound by an overall set of rules, if you standardise things then you loose the variety that keeps it interesting. If every tournament is the same itll just end up being Ooh another tournament except this time written by Steve, you are basically trying to tell us that we should remove any personal nuance from tournaments from a system we have all put together over the years and to be honest I find it kind of rude.

Im not against thorough stat writing, and its the job of both writers and designers to try and police good and bad entries, but to be honest the community would be far better served by reference material to help in descisions (like the how I could improve thread or like the table I suggested in the other thread rather than trying to impose some absolute ruleset - getting vapourbotteers to agree is like herding cats.... cats who design vicious robots for a pass time.

[pcbore]

This isnt fun anymore

Right, heres an idea. How about a collection of sticky threads, one which has motor info ,one which has armour info, one that has battery info, etc.

Basically each thread would have information on the various types of each componant, giving ideas on how much power they give, how long each battery will last, etc.

After that you can leave it up to the writers to decide how much of that info they need from stats.

[martyn]

This isnt fun anymore

Okay a couple of points.

1. Some things, such as batteries arent included in stats as i would say most people who do this dont understand it enough for it to work, i know i dont. And since this is something I do for fun in spare time, i dont really want to spend a huge period of time learning about something which isnt going to pay alot if any refrense to my day to day life.

2. People have to be less harsh with new people. Yes they need to show some effort, but it is pointless to attack them over sub-standard stats, you need to give advice and not dictate to them you must do this, you must do that rember your first set of stats, and how far you have come since then, new people probably are not going to start on a very high level. If I was watching this thinking about signing up and saw some of what some people (a few people in a particular) said and do to the new people, i would not bother to sign up.

3. The arguments on this forum are getting beyond a joke, it is ridiculous how people are strugling to get on in places.

4. and finaly, vapours can never be totaly realistic, as otherwise we would have people pitting themselves by accident, or robots where the removable link isnt put in properly so a little tap from the opponent causes it to fall out.

[leorcc]

This isnt fun anymore

Just to clarify:

quote:

If every tournament is the same itll just end up being Ooh another tournament except this time written by Steve, you are basically trying to tell us that we should remove any personal nuance from tournaments from a system we have all put together over the years and to be honest I find it kind of rude.

I am not talking about the format of tournaments, that is totally up to the writer and on no way shape or form have I ever mentioned or implied that. If a writer wants to create a tournament where the arena is a rotating sphere, they are welcome to do so.


quote:

getting vapourbotteers to agree is like herding catsIve heard that line before, and yet the people that are discussed with that line are also getting more organised by the day.

[majinb]

This isnt fun anymore

I truly understand where you are coming from but I dont always agree

1. I will tackle this in a bigger post Im working on.

2. Those who were prone to starting heated arguements, they know who they are, have actually calmed down. The days when some people could expect an all-caps post around every corner are gone. The who could I improve topic is slowly changing for the better imo. And even though some words are a bit more harsh than others, a badly designed robot that clearly weighs 150+ kg just shouldnt be allowed to compete.

3. The arguments are softening up, over the last year we had Joey, Liam, Danny B, Samuel and Ben joining our ranks and they all seem to be getting there.

4. Like I said in point 2, things that are blatantly wrong should never be allowed in, but a robot that might be 105 kg instead of 100 isnt a big problem to me.

[alex_holt]

This isnt fun anymore

The thing is I think that as a rule if you look at a stats, and it sounds plausible then it probably is, I still think that just giving varpourbotteers the tools to work with and letting them get on with it is

Thats not the point - they are getting organised but only in their own way and the second you try and get them to all go on the same way we get things like this happening.

Anyway I would agree with Frank - just sticky the reference material in another thread, Id saw just one personally, and then its there for either vapourbotteers to use or tournament writers to demonstrate why something isnt going to work.

I wrote the beginners guide to help streamline entry into vapourbots, and I think all we really need here is something similar which focuses more thoroughly on the mechanical aspects of design.

What I think we really dont need is rules which only serve to overcomplicate things when you can generally tell if someone has done it or not, and if they havent done it then we refer them to the help thread or this hypothetical Beginners Guide to Vapourbot Mechanics.

[majinb]

This isnt fun anymore

Ok, I have give this a thought, the fact that I understand both points of view doesnt make things that much easier for me.

There€™s several reasons we€™re making (and liking) vapours rather than realies. Yeah, time and money are a big issue, but there€™s also the fact that we aren€™t all technical experts. Yeah, we could do research and try to understand it, but at the end of the day making an actual working robot is pure beta science, and not everyone has a knack for that. We all have in common that we LOVED RobotWars and have all kinda creative ideas, we dont have a knack for beta sciences in common, sadly.

This game basically is about the question €œwhat robot would you build if you had the resources to do so?€. We USED to be happy with a rough description, things like €œheavy motors€ and €œstrong armour€ were sufficient. When something came along that looked TOTALLY impossible (€œeight heavy motors and very very thick armour€), we told each other that, those were simple days.

Now we came as far as EXACTLY describing what our robots can do. LEM-130€™s are existing motors of which we can look up the specifications. 4 Mm. of Hardox is something else we can look up and research. I like it that way. But stating specifically WHAT kind of batteries you have (apart from the voltage) doesnt add ANYTHING to the descriptive powers of your stats. Adding however what amount of WEIGHT the batteries take, DOES.

The fact many people dont add batteries in their stats MAY cause them to neglect them, which means their robot would suddenly be 15 kg overweight. That is something that should never happen. But when you would take Alex H€™s bots as an example, you€™ll see that the stats in itself make for ~90 kg worth of robot, wouldnt that mean that batteries ARE in fact there, especially seeing the motor specifics do mention a voltage.

I once went wrong with batteries myself, Aaron advised me this:
quote:

4 x S28-400 Magmotor isnt actually lighter then 2 x LEM130s. The saving is in the batteries. Your two LEMs on 48v will need 12.8KG of 3600 NiCD batteries, 36v youll need 9.6KG. On 24v the Magmotor makes more power them the LEM130 (1.5Kw) anyway :P You can run 4 x S28-400s on 4.8KG of batteries (24v x 3 Packs).

I now live by those numbers, and I think anyone neglecting batteries in their stats SHOULD. Leo was gonna convert numbers like these into a new battery system but if he€™s not gonna do it I hope someone else might. Like I said, I€™m considering batteries as it is, I€™d be more than happy to write €œ12.8KG of 48v batteries considered€ in my stats, and I think it would help SEVERAL people in making their bots more realistic if they did so too. Realism, even in the simpler days, has ALWAYS been what we wanted, ALWAYS.

Standardised stats vs let every tournament writer decide what he wants.
By far most vapourboteers think it should be up the tournament writer who decides what is needed. Lets see where this discussion got started (or rather, revived), ah, yes, it was in fact in C&B3, a tournament where the writer DOES ask us for providing batteries in the stats. I was surprised at how many people actually entered stats WITHOUT batteries, Kody let them all pass, even though he would check all vapours personally.

If Kody would agree with people saying stuff like €œ12.8KG of 48v batteries considered€, than I think we have one helluva solution on our hands, since everyone should be considering battery weight anyway, wetter they understand batteries or not.

[knightrous]

This isnt fun anymore

quote:

Aaron, your arguement is massively oversimplified, annoyingly patronising and verging on being willfully elitist as per usual.

The point with batteries is that unlike armour or motors which have a direct and easily quantifiable effect upon a design, the fact that these fights are written makes a battery stat just a vague and unecessary complication. How long is a written fight? The writer may say its 3 minutes but as you yourself profess vapour fights frequently dont even resemble actual fights anyway and are by no means half as busy as them most of the time, so how can we expect writers to have an accurate guage of time, if anything what we need to devise is a way of standardising how writers percieve time, but of course as there is no way that could ever be done, its just asking for bad writing to enact something which depends on time as a factor, its not like Im saying dont ever include batteries, or even dont allow for batteries in the weight, which Im in fact for.

You always kick off with the personal attacks dont you Alex...

You reckon that batteries dont bring any effect to the battle like armor or motors. The big deal is, motors are dependant on batteries for their performance! You can get away with a LEM130 @ 24v on two packs of nicds, but you will easily degrade the motor down to 50% of its possible performance.

Robot A runs 2 LEM130s with 4packs, sacrifices some armor to get the full power of the motors. Robot B runs 2 LEM130s, with 2 packs and runs heavier armour. The writer just blindly looks at the LEM130 in the stats, goes off a figure that they will both product the same push, but Bot A loses cause it has thinner armor... Makes a big difference. Another can of worms is gearing, gearing can make a big difference in performance.

In the end, we all need to come to a comprimisation, I feel we could work towards something like a chart that shows batteries, voltage, weight and capacities. A similar chart for motors, stating voltage, power input, power output and weight. Simply select your motors from the motor chart, look at the power rating and then select some batteries from the battery charge that match those requirements.

In the end, I believe with some accurate stats across the board, the writer can look at stats and go This bot will be able to out push that bot, since in the stats I can see this one is geared a more for torque instead of speed, This bots weapon has more power then that ones and then throw in an unpredictable element called luck and produce a nice battle, were everyone started off on a level playing field. This also gives the writer an accurate backing behind their battles, weve had disputes with battles before, and rewrites because of it.

As a conceptualist, your too caught up in the glossy picture you drew, instead of thinking about if it will actually work.

[leorcc]

This isnt fun anymore

ok, before this goes too far:

We are all rational persons here, lets try to keep a sensible tone in the discussion and not assume the worst in each other. I am sure neither of you meant any disrespect.

[leorcc]

This isnt fun anymore

quote:


2. People have to be less harsh with new people. Yes they need to show some effort, but it is pointless to attack them over sub-standard stats, you need to give advice and not dictate to them you must do this, you must do that rember your first set of stats, and how far you have come since then, new people probably are not going to start on a very high level. If I was watching this thinking about signing up and saw some of what some people (a few people in a particular) said and do to the new people, i would not bother to sign up.Hopefully, that is where I would come in. I usually try to stay reasonable, specially to newcomers because I know they are new to the game (and I know I dont have a perfect track record on this but I never resorted to name calling ever, but nothing human is foreign to me). When newcomers present their first stats we a are not going to slash into them, and anyone that tries will deal with me. But respect is a 2 way street, the newcomer needs to be willing to learn the ropes.

[knightrous]

This isnt fun anymore

Sall good Leo, just a Zidane of egos

[majinb]

This isnt fun anymore

quiet or I headbutt you Aaron!

-2>ok, everyone knows that was a joke, dont hit me please