Inspiration/innovation in weaponry

[overkill]

Apparently to give new robot designs a chance. Plus increase in weight for shufflers and walkers. I imagine using entanglement is more likely to stop drums as you can only use a metre of rope/chain/Kevlar etc. But probably still useful against spinners. RW wants more innovative weaponry, like robots that pick up other robots and use them as shields or have pneumatic spikes and can invalidate Newtonian physics.

Do you have a link for that?

[daveimi]

I have a crazy amount of experience fighting robots made from wood. It's awesome. Hardwood for lids and bases and softwood like 2x2 for sides. When spinner blades hit it they just bind up and slow down. As mentioned, the technique that works well I find is just a wall of softwood and keep bullying said spinner so it never gets to spin up. I will works brill.

[R9000]

@overkill it's in podcast form, but it's a good one.
https://soundcloud.com/insidethebot/...r-james-cooper

[overkill]

Thanks, that was very interesting!

As a highly biased Spinner builder . I am not sure if entanglement will produce interesting TV, even with the limitations mentioned. It wasn't mentioned if the entanglement rules applied to feathers or just to the heavies - does any one know more about that.

[R9000]

I would assume that any general rule for the heavies also goes for the feathers. Still I don't think spinners have been as big a problem in FW right? Not completely dominating as such.

[overkill]

That's true, the flippers have dominated for the past few years. There was talk of raising the FW arena's inner walls last year, which would be relatively easy to do. An alternative might be to borrow from the Sportsman rules and limit the flipper width to a percentage of the bot's width (which would really annoy several teams ).

Personally, I just updated my application form to have an entanglement device as an optional 2nd weapon.

Just thinking ahead, it would make really boring matches if spinners also had effective entanglement weapons - fights would end up being pushing matches if both weapons were disabled.

[Runsler]

Most interesting thing about these limitations on entanglement for feathers is, if the length stays the same.
One meter is much more on a feather than on a heavy.

Depending on that i might have an idea that really could stop anything from spinning within these limitations and is a ready-to-buy-solution.

[adamclark]

Share the solution? I've got a sail winch feeding 50cm of hawser with a fish hook on the bench at the moment. Also it's 1m per bot so minibots with 1m total each could be interesting

[Runsler]

Well... you know these clothes lumberjacks wear (or should wear) safety jackets and stuff filled with aramid fibers?
Those really aren't long (i doubt longer than 1m), but those clothes are made to get ripped by chainsaws, get those fibers into the chainsaw, wrap them around anything moving and get them stuck.

just build a wooden bot, use some staples to put pieces of those clothes on there -> boom, spinner-proof wooden bot.

Well, if you survive the first hit, that is... would have to try and go for just a light touch early on.

And i'd pity any roboteer having to clean those fibers out of any rotating stuff inside...


Just realised: 1m per bot meaning also 1m total, or is it 1m per bot per string (and multiple strings allowed)?

Forget my idea if it is 1m total.
And absolutely forget it if i can finish my spinner before the event in germany in april and you want to go there

[R9000]

The caveat was that any entanglement devices could not be woven cloth/chainmail/nets. I don't think fabric would be allowed, even in strips.

[Tim The Plumber]

@overkill it's in podcast form, but it's a good one.
https://soundcloud.com/insidethebot/...r-james-cooper

Just listening to this.

Applications must be in by 20th March.

I have a collection of bits and ideas, an engineering company sorting out a couple of spindles and shortening my hydrolics oil tank.

Should I actually apply or just wait for next year?

[Runsler]

maybe my vocabulary isn't enough to describe this... it's basically just a bunch of aramid fibers (just stuffed in there, not structured, woven or anything at all) between two parts of normal cloth. maybe would have to substitute the cloth with... maybe two big goggly eyes or whatever, and when these are destroyed, the fibers get caught on the spinner.

could still not be allowed (actually hope so), but would possibly work just the same with some kind of... dunno, "curtain" of fine fibers? (almost) no weight, mounted per hot glue, and looking like a cape while driving.
If there is no number of "strings" limited, i'd bet something like this will happen sooner or later.

[R9000]

That could work. I think I'd need to see it to understand fully how though.

[overkill]

In the podcast, the Coopers specifically said no woven material, nothing net-like, no chain mail - that definitely covers lumberjack clothing IMHO. You still have many other options to try.

One thing people haven't mentioned is how entanglement will work against other types of bot: I don't see passive entanglement doing much against flippers / axes / crushers etc - just hoping they will drive over your entanglement and suck it up around a wheel is a risky strategy. Another requirement is to have the entanglement device detachable so that the bots are not locked together; the anchor points will have to be much weaker that the main device.

I updated my FW entry to RW with an optional secondary entanglement weapon but I don't really expect much from it.

[Runsler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnuXYWk-JMg

That's how it is supposed to work
might need a bit of adaption, but the concept is easy: many fine but very strong fibers (so aramid or something similar), let the spinning thing catch them, maybe even cut them, doesn't matter. then they'll wrap around any rotating anything, and since they are stronger than what the motor could possibly tear apart, everything get stuck.

way less effective the bigger the diameter of the spinner is and the more the spinner relies on one-hit-K.O.s (Tombstone for example would likely just hit once, damage you really badly, and have some lametta on the tip of his blade if you're not very lucky and this lametta can find it's way into the weapon drive system). but specially vs vertical spinners who have smaller diameters (like Pulsar)... Or bots with the spinner somewhat less exposed, so the fibers won't fly away and get caught easier (like carbide, or maybe even into the drive of PP3D and other undercutters)...
Guess it could work there.

Even though these fibers are so thin, even if not woven they will somewhat stick together, you won't go and brush your armor, would you? so maybe this is at least stretching the new rules a bit, and looking at the mess this causes i really hope nobody uses it.
Once had to clean a chainsaw from this stuff after accidently just gently brushing my leg with it. took quiet a few hours and a lot of swearing. Imagining the arena would be full of this stuff afterwards... i don't want to clean that.
But i like to try and think about the boundaries of what is possible and/or allowed, and this fits there, i think^^ If no other use, it might at least detect possible weak spots in the rules, so we don't get something like complete control did in Battlebots 2015... better make sure the rules are as defined as possible before any event