Featherweights - Active weapon rule

[Bodge Job]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

I think full body hammers should be allowed, because they actuly cause damage, un like the drill powered robots (I admit Bruiser is a boring drill powered robot, but I have been Planning to up grade him to a lot better drive fo quiet a while now...) and I think rammers are more interesting in the robo chalange arena, because it's smaller, so there not over welmed...

[craig_colliass]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

I think Alan's point is purely centred around the public entertainment point of view.
I would not think for one moment Alan would suggest anyone's robot is not good enough. It may be from the 8 year old girl in the audience point of view a bit boring!
In fact some of the most interesting robots can be the ones designed to fall apart when hit, or catch fire like one of jonno's robots dose.

when making your drill powered robot think about how the audience is going to view it, if it's a plastic (or in Tron's case a metal) box with a wheel at each corner the public see A boring robot, even if it is your pride and joy! A Horizontal twackbot is not hard to make and would be more fun to drive.

[PJ-27]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

I fully understand Alan's point of view, at the end of the day it is an Entertainment business that is also a platform for people to get into the sport.

Not meaning to stir the s*&t too much but I do have one point:

The limitation of the robots wepaons isn't the problem, it's the EO's arenas. There are lots of truly spectacular FW's that can't run at RL or RR because of the lack of Full Combat arena and as a result RR and RL have become the place for beginners to take their robots.
Now I think this is a good thing, the FW spinners are ballistic and the fact that Bitza got through in one piece is some sort of fluke, but to most people this would be a massive turn off, beacuse when starting teh sport you simply cant make something to the same level, and don't want your learning curve to be the reason all your hard work gets destroyed instantly.

A few other points are:
It's not necessarily the weapons that make the robots interesting. Lifters for instance have an active weapon, but are boring to watch compared to rambots smacking into each other. Seraph isn't particularily destructive either but is grear fun to watch.
Most forms of 'decent' active weaponary is also very expensive, in the RR and RL arenas we are limited to Flippers and Axes which to be effective have to be FP or LP, both of which are beyond my grasp.
My final point is this means Bitza 2 can't run. We've put a nasty spinny thing on the front which will be awesome to watch but can't run at RL and RR which leaves it as a Rambot (if we don't spin the blades), whether it is an effective rambot is yet to be known. If it isn't effective it can't run

[PJ-27]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

I'm not just full of criticism though, I do have a suggestion. I was going to start a new thread to discuss this, but I'll open it here.

The main problem seems to be the lack of action or destruction. Now the first is being address here but how could we up the destruction?
Most people will (and rightly so) complain if there robots get destroyed unfairly (floor flipper, or house robot weight 10 times their robot) so this needs to come under action, not destruction. Turn down the floor flipper so 13.6kgs doesn't clear the arena, and turn down the axe on the house robot so it looks good, but doesn't wreck out ESC's so we can't run anymore.

My criticism is that with space age materials we end up with (and this is true of the HW's) several ¼ber boxes knocking into each other for 3 minutes. Powerful flippers and axes liven this up a bit, but this isn't an option for everyone.

My suggestion is what about we start a class that limits the use of certain materials. If all robots are forced to use wood? The destructibility goes up, but what with it wood being quite cheap and easy to work with, the cost is little - but the view spectacular.
Expensive components can be kept in a metal box, but everything else must be wood. This also takes advantage of the lack of spinning weponary since that would just obliterate any wooden body shell.

So you get the action, with limited cost and damage to the roboteers.

Thoughs?

[mattsdragons]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

PJ has a very good point, if we cant the audience to enjoy it more, we need to make an effot to bring spinners to Rl events, or even lower powered ones but so damage can be caused and the audience get the 'wow' factor

[swanaldo]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Alan....I got to be honest with you mate and please dont be offended too much.

Me and Jason had a good conversation on the way home and our conclusion was that your worthing show was pretty poor on a whole from a crowds point of view. The roboteers (ALL OF US) build these robots and bring them to your show. you need roboteers and roboteers need you. The featherweights are what they are and your show is what it is. put them together and its a no brainer whats going to happen. There were points in that show where all i could hear was the slight clash of a featherweight now and then above the scilence. There was no excitment during the feather fights. The heavys were as good as usual but still was lacking razamataz. Skelly is always good a crowd pleaser for sure. boxers are boring for roboteers watching but only because we see them all the time....crowds like them i am sure. Instead of pointing the finger at boring box's up your game and make them interesting. we spend our time and money to help you so you should spend your time and money to help us.

Boring box's are the very start of some roboteers that go on to build heavys. Dont cull them or you will kill your future.

[blazerbotics]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

up your game and make them interesting. we spend our time and money to help you so you should spend your time and money to help us.

We have, we built Battleaxe for this very purpose, we use the arena flipper, pit etc. I don't see what more we can do.

show was pretty poor on a whole from a crowds point of view

What makes you say that? We speak to many of the guests as they leave and hear nothing but positive comments.

I don't want to ban anyone, pushers would be still welcome to run in whiteboards. I'm just looking at a way of making fights more interesting, so if anybody has any other ideas, im all ears.

[PJ-27]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Wooden Robots!

[terry]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Stop arguing I've got the solution.

New featherweight house robot, Thor :shock:

I think that will make things a bit more interesting

[PJ-27]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

If your idea of interesting is having every robot chopped in half!

[Ellis]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Put a caravan in the arena and let everyone destroy it. The crowd (and Jeremy Clarkson) would love that.

You can do that right?

[mightymouse]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

I agree with Swanny on the boring boxes, these guys will build the heavies in the future, but not if they don't get a chance to play in the arena.

Make feather fights interesting by sticking as many as you can get in there at any time, the boxes will get to play and test out their designs and the experienced bot builders will have the fun of playing with them. Was not at Worthing but in the past the feather finals are made up from the top 3 or 4 from the qualifiers, leaving say 8 machines for the final. The size of the RL arena means that they are lost. Make the final 20 machines and there will be a focus for the crowd somewhere in the mass. Judging would be a nightmare, but you want entertainment Alan, who cares who the ultimate winner is? It is not like there is a couple of grand or a championship at stake. Let the audience decide.

Alienating the new-comers by preventing their first attempts will ultimately lead to them not building better machines in the future.

Maybe it is time for new arena hazards - make the pit mechanism powerful enough to eject the feathers into the air when you have say 8 bots in there, but not enough to OOTA them - maybe we can get more suggestions going here?


Trev

[craig_colliass]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Ideas for FW arena hazards
1/ A pit sweeper It's just a steel blade that follows an arch if you don't get out of the way you get swept in the pit! easy to operate either with an electric motor or pneumatics.
2/ Dukes of hazard speed ramp see how far these fast robots can jump
3/ chuck in a big ball and some goal posts
4/ Poop-ah scoop-a, A lifting device that if a robot gets pushed on to it will gently scoop them out of the arena and on to a mat
All with lots of lights and sirens

[harry hills]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

saying as someone with a featherweight with an active weapon (who did end up getting put on the floor flipper , but that was my own stuipid fault) i would be more than happy to cobble together a rubishy little thing to get its self wrecked against some more powerfull robot if it made it a better display

[psychostorm]

Re: Featherweights - Active weapon rule

Ideas for FW arena hazards
1/ A pit sweeper It's just a steel blade that follows an arch if you don't get out of the way you get swept in the pit! easy to operate either with an electric motor or pneumatics.
2/ Dukes of hazard speed ramp see how far these fast robots can jump
3/ chuck in a big ball and some goal posts
4/ Poop-ah scoop-a, A lifting device that if a robot gets pushed on to it will gently scoop them out of the arena and on to a mat
All with lots of lights and sirens

Heavy metal ball of rolling around randomly - draw angry face - name it Ball breaker.

car wash style rotating brush - red & yellow?

a rubber door mat - preferably with Welcome engraved in as sarcasm.

floor raising by air bag in a hill - Jolt hill using corner air bags - send nearest to centre through.

a bowls style pushing contest - put moving hammer ball in arena - nearest wins.