Featherweights - Active weapon rule

[death robotics]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

How about a pit that opens at the start, 20 seconds later the pit goes up and another pit placed somewhere else in the
arena goes down.

If you are making FW's have active weapons for comps, then it looks like my Ming 2 clone will have the front flipper on it

[Team Invade]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

There's no problem with the featherweights. The crowd enjoy the flippers doing somersaults in the air! There are also some very good boxes that are entertaining, as well as the flippers and hammers. There are also some very boring boxes, but they are the starting point. I know very few featherweight roboteers that didn't start out with one.

Worthing was an exception, where in the final show all that was left were the boxes. Both Explosion and Whirlwind were damaged by the floor flipper, which do add much entertainment to the fights. As a result of this we had to forfeit our place in the final. I do understand the reason of the floor flipper being so powerful from entertainment point of veiws, but consider that people have expensive parts in their robots (or discontinued motors in the case of Explosion).

[Lord Bob]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

PJ
Your idea is great!! If i ever get my feather finished i will actually do that. I also think Craig's idea would be awesome too. None of the stuff would have to do much damage, but from the audience's perspective it would look pretty cool. Also it would add even more skill to driving the thinngs

[Danjr1]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

I've only just started the hobby and the way things are at the moment, banning rambots (or boxes) will basically destroy the featherweight class. I have designed a FW spinner but I'm not going to spend £500+ on something i can use once or twice a year. The majority of the competitions can't run the really destructive weapons which i think a lot of us would like to do. People have invested a lot of money in these things, even if they are powered by drill motors etc, so if anything, the show needs changing rather than the robots.

If an active weapon rule did come into force, you would have to grand-father the old boxes where we would all be allowed to compete in future but no new boxes would be allowed. But in my opinion, if this did happen, you would have to promote the beetleweight class as the new beginner (and therefore, the other class to heavyweights) class and phase out featherweights as most beginners won't be able to afford a good active weapon (and why should anyone spend money on a poor weapon just to compete?)

And I'm sorry but i don't agree with the whole drill powered term and its insinuations. Im currently using the argos gearboxes hooked up to 18v drill motors, which are running at 22.2v (hopefully anyway ). I can't see how these would be considered sub standard.

I always thought featherweights we're just meant to be a filler event when the heavyweights are there?

OR make it a rule that every competitor at the competition has to run a featherweight? but I'm pretty sure most heavyweight teams already have this?

[cliveb]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

When I served on the FRA Governing Body I was always opposed to there being a ban on machines without an active weapon,nothing has yet persuaded me to change my mind.Rambots/Pushers/Boring Boxes call them whatever you want are the easiest and cheapest way into the spobby for everybody, not just junior roboteers,I can think of at least 3 adult roboteers that run only Rambot Featherweights, and to alienate all of these members of our community would be akin to committing suicide for our future.
At Worthing 2 of the 3 FP Flipper Featherweights were taken out by the arena flipper,leaving only the boxes to contest the final hardly their fault! I have had Stagefright totally wrecked by a House Robot, but the boxes were always there,and continuing to put on a show for the EO's. I remember the first time Alex won a trophy with Tiny Toon (RL at Burgess Hill),the look on his face when he got his trophy and how it inspired him and drove him on.We only had 1 Robot back then but now have 1 Heavy, 5 Feathers ( 3 with a weapon) and 2 Ants. If he had not been able to compete on a level playing field would we have this commitment?

If a ban was brought in for Rambots, effectively driving out the younger guys, and only leaving the more technically advanced active weapon machines I might have a decision to make whether I would even take the Featherweights to that event.

[robotwars]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

For me speaking on behalf of RR.

I agree with Alan, there have been occasions in the past where the feather weights have been a bit boring, but we generally cut the fight short if thats the case. Havent had that issue for a while though !!

The RR arena flipper is fitted with a fw and hw button since the last upgrade as we managed to flip a HW out of the arena at Guildford.... lucky shot though !!

If the RL arena broke so many robots, I think I read earlier that at least 4 top robots couldn't take part then theres the problem really !!

We have moved away from holding the normal competition with the fws where we end up with a final 6, and decided to treat them all as white board fights and have a trophy for the Feather Weight of the day which takes into consideration all of the fights.
This means you can still have 20 robots in at a time so its still entertaining. Plus we have Matilda.... and MD and Fluffy to add to the mix !

I have always disliked boxes, especially in the FW champs with robo challenge because anyone can build one !! However it is the way to get started and shouldnt be banned !!

John

[blazerbotics]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

So heres the plan... We'll scrap the usual competition, and run every fight as a whiteboard (everybody in), the top 3 from each fight will be recorded and at the end of the event the robot with the most wins/high places will get the trophy. This means there's still a prize, and it encourages everybody to go in each fight.

Regards arena flipper, as said before, i have thought about putting a LP mode, so i will look into that, might take a few events to get it right (unless theres any volunteers!). Can't do much with Battleaxe, the pneumatics are already turned down as far as i can go, the claws have very little crushing power and the hammer only just has enough power to fire itself, and it cant be made much lighter without become weak (its only 2-3mm wall hollow) we did try another head with a bigger area on it, but the slight increase in weight meant it didn't have the power to fire. Did look at a sprung head on it that would absorb some of the impact, but we have to make sure it doesn't look 'soft' to the audience.

Keep the ideas coming...

At least we have abit of a debate going, this forum hasn't seen one of them in a while!

[Danjr1]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

So heres the plan... We'll scrap the usual competition, and run every fight as a whiteboard (everybody in), the top 3 from each fight will be recorded and at the end of the event the robot with the most wins/high places will get the trophy. This means there's still a prize, and it encourages everybody to go in each fight.

Regards arena flipper, as said before, i have thought about putting a LP mode, so i will look into that, might take a few events to get it right (unless theres any volunteers!). Can't do much with Battleaxe, the pneumatics are already turned down as far as i can go, the claws have very little crushing power and the hammer only just has enough power to fire itself, and it cant be made much lighter without become weak (its only 2-3mm wall hollow) we did try another head with a bigger area on it, but the slight increase in weight meant it didn't have the power to fire. Did look at a sprung head on it that would absorb some of the impact, but we have to make sure it doesn't look 'soft' to the audience.

Keep the ideas coming...

At least we have abit of a debate going, this forum hasn't seen one of them in a while!

make the hammer interchangeable for a timmy-mallett version when its in with the feathers lol

[cliveb]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Sounds good to me

[Shakey]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Surely you could hide the spring?

Sort of like a small tube in a slightly larger tube so from what the audience see it is a solid block but roboteers know it is a sprung head. Same sounds but happy feathers.

[teamstorm]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

All, I don't post often but think I have a unique perspective on this as I spend my time at an event interacting with the audience.

It was me that said to Alan we have a problem here when I realised that we have an all-box final. The problem with the Featherweights that day was two fold.....

1) There are too many robots in the arena for the audience to keep track of. This ruins the 'story' of the fight, the audience ultimatley want a story to be told, a perfect fight would be knife edge after knife edge of 2 or three robots fighting. With so many in there, you can clearly see the audience loose interest.

2) With no robots with active weapons you've now got the double problem of not just lots of robots, but lots of robots that do very little. At Worthing the audience switched off, totally, people were talking to each other as the fight went on in the audience, kids were dis-interested and it took a real effort to get them back for the Heavyweight final.

The problem is that viewed individually, you can argue that a robot doesn't need an active weapon for lots of reasons.... which have already been discussed above, however when you put all those non active weapon bots together in a group, it just doesn't work (fact).

We need to entertian an audience, and we need to make what we do look like fun both to sustain the ticket sales, and bring new builders into the game. Alan's idea is a good one, the problem with feathers in a heavy arena is that they quickly get lost.


I don't want to see active weapons made a requirement either - but a simple lifter or anything that moves isn't that hard to do, and I'd hope that people soon want to move on from building a rambot to something more exciting rather than people have to be forced into it via a rule change at events.

[Ellis]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

As I've said, never been to an event, but I've viewed my fair amount of fights online. I personally dislike it (as a member of the audience, be it a virtual audience) when there are 8 robots in a single fight. I can't see what is going on, all strategy is lost and I zone out. For me it's the strategy that keeps the fight interesting. I would prefer to see 2 or 3 boxes head to head than 8 flippers in one go.

I think the robots are fine, I think the arena is (mostly) fine. I think the way the fights are planned out is the problem. Lots of robots = no strategy / impossible to follow each robot = disinterest.

[john]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Just scrap the competition and just have white boards but limit the amount of boxes allowed to enter and get all the flippers in there to flip out the boxes and then go and take out the axes.

But seriously, where is the wiki the FRA were meant to be making how many months ago? Having guides where people can learn from would help and encourage people to make robots with weapons.

On July 4th Kane wrote to a reply of mine asking if there was any news on the wiki.

The new website is just about ready, and this includes full editing so people can create, edit and publish pages on the site.

If it takes over 2 months to launch a just about ready website then I really do worry about the FRA...

Don't wait for the FRA to do anything Alan as the sport will be dead by the time they do something, but obviously boxes can't be banned as they are the starting point and some are actually decent, just make them all be fast lol.

[psychostorm]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Well, at least we know what the problems are...

Alan, that plan sounds a lot like a league system - well worth trying out at Kidderminster as what works for the heavyweights doesn't necessarily work for the featherweights.

Ed, I'm quite glad you wrote as I've been thinking a lot about that duty myself. I've considered commentating such videos for YouTube & I feel I would somewhat be sharing jobs slightly.

The person who wields the microphone is ultimately relied upon by the audience to highlight the moments worth seeing. Only trouble being, the current number of featherweights would require a speed worthy of the grand national!

When it doesn't happen, you are left not saying very much & lacking in the very enthusiasm the show needs you to promote. Ed is too much an educated gentlemen to stoop to the trivia, corny puns & general mocking myself or J Pearce would.

You (plural) say limit machines to 4 or less RW style battles but that would be unfair to those who have travelled for hours upon hours for... one fight? That sounds more like the show section needs a review.

You say weapon less machines do little but that is surely is general statement. Flippers & Axes are generally 1 (very popular) trick ponies.

Speaking of popular, has anyone considered the crazy idea of actually asking the audiences?

[Danjr1]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Make the arenas spinner safe and you'll get competitors from the robochallenge events. This solves a number of problems:
1. Gives the people who have built these things somewhere else to compete
2. Means the fights will ultimately have more destruction
3. Doesn't alienate anyone and invites a part of our own community which has been excluded for a long time
4. It isn't up to the competitors to improve the show. The current breed of non-spinner featherweights are a creation of the event limitations

Anyway, we could say the same about the heavyweights. Put a ban on flippers and make them have destructive weapons