Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

[jamesb]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Nice slippers Sam. In seriousness though, glad youre ok.

Fantasic venue, there was one point, when I was waiting to put my biscuit tin into the arena (not a man hole cover or bin lid, its a custom milled industrial biscuit tin!) that I had a minute to look up, and on 3 sides of me there were hundreds of people clapping to we will rock you, with the lights going and the music blaring. It was awesome!

Congrats to roaming robots, crowd wise, that was better than robot wars. seriously.

Ill echo the more info on fights thing, just because I only entered one all day not understanding how the competition worked and was forced to go in the 9 heavy 2 feather suicide fight. (loved it really) next time Nipper!! Ill av ya!

[ewe2]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Cutlets fine.although a little Air_sick!

Sorry Jonno, timing could have been better. But at least we have learnt something about these new nasty big flippers!

Just to echo what James said The crowd atmosphere really was better than RW!

Great event!

Oh , I didnt mention the perfprmance of my All New EWE2! .....best left unsaid!

Ian
EWE2 will be back (and working!)

[ewe2]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Oh and by the way. Did anyone find any Titanium sheet lying around as they left? I was given a large piece of very thin stuff, by a very nice man with a perm! (no names OK). When i got home it wasnt there :sad: Anyone find anything please let me know.

Ian

[kinforester]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Well thats two great events ive missed this year !

Spent most of sunday driving Stiff Breeze around the livingroom (between coughing,sneezing,and blowing my nose...ugh!).Its not quite the same on your own .

Roll on saturday

[stu]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Hehe kewl - cya this Saturday at FWSmash 2004 then Gord.

Cant wait to see your new bot in action mate.

Mr Stu

[revolutionroger]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

What more can be added,

We wimped out and died in melee - uncharged batteries from fight with Thor - which if I do say so was a very pleasurable experience being that I left with all motors intact.

Presentation and atmosphere was incredible, truly reminicent of RW.

Titanium - Anyone find any..., no-one is that honest.

Whiteboard - Echo - was very confused - every five minutes we were in a different fight - kept putting different things on the robot and taking them off again. First time though - and I think new format will be better.

Trophies - WOW

In short - Not a bad day out at all.

Roger.
Happy Dude with working motors.

[geoff]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Well done guys...an exellent event, sorry about the floor Jonno! (all Mutes fault, honest, they started it!) But great fun with a kid from the audience driving Scorpion.
Just one gripe, the whiteboard, I dont think confused quite covers it, Try total farce! (sorry but it had to be said!)

[robotwars]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Hi Guys,

Firstly I want to say a big thankyou for the kind generosity for the charity raffle, you did us all proud. Hundreds of pounds going to local charities.

We have now just about hit the mark, from how I saw Roaming Robots developing as far as the presentation goes, when I dreamed up RR.
Once again, steps forward and our best event yet.

An M8 bolt / nut coming loose stopped the pit, which I am very gutted about, as I was confident it was going to work all day. But I couldn€™t tell until we pulled the arena apart and had it working perfectly again.

There was some confusion over the fighting order.
Basically we were experimenting with running random fights, rather than a scrap to get your names down on the white board, for several reasons€¦

€ We now run a slightly more formal ( Friendly Competition ), and especially at Preston, with some very smart Trophies.
€ To encourage robots to fight different robots rather than certain robots only fighting each other.
€ To allow every robot an equal chance of getting in the arena.

Although I am hearing some grumbles, on the whole I think it worked well allowing each robot chance to charge and repair.
I don€™t understand how there can be confusion, when we picked all of the fights for both sessions randomly.
The main problem ( I think ) being that roboteers filled the white board over lunch, which was removed and a new random fight order put on for that show, hence people feeling they had been removed.

Any comments or suggestions, please contact me so we can get things clarified.

All in all a great event again.

Jonno
We will€¦ we will€¦ rock you !!!!

[s8nsmum]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

one thing i think might be useful is to put a maximum no. of robots for the featherweight fights. For the heavies it says max 3 per fight and i think the feathers should be limited to 6 or 7 to a whiteboard fight, just a suggestion so any featherweight builders who love the 10 way fights dont go mad at me. I just dont like getting fights split into 2 and ending up not fighting the people you really want.

Joe Townsend

[robotwars]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

To be honest, i think its time i dug out the feather weight arena from our barn, dust off the cobwebs, and split feather weights with pay to drive (when it returns), seperate to the main arena as a seperate attraction.

So you get play time in a feather arena, and run league serious fights in the main one.

Theres just toooooooooo many now!!

Jonno

[revolutionroger]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

I am very fearful of posting suggestions to more experienced people for obvious reasons - but you did ask,

Biggest gain that I can see, would come from cutting down the time between fights (more fights, more action, crowds+teams happier etc)

Best ways of doing this and not compromising safety are -
Cut down load+unload time : new door ? 2 doors ?

Cut down arena repair time : Better floor surface ? Ban Mute ?

Only random thoughts.
Roger

[robotwars]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Always ready for suggestions and comments.

or i wouldnt ask

Jonno

[geoff]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Jonno,
One thought that may have saved a lot of the problems with the whiteboard...If, at the begining of the event the roboteers were given a quick briefing to explain the details of how the new format was going to work, then I think a lot of confusion could have been avoided.
My two pennies worth!
Geoff.
(Still a bloody good event though, Well done!)

[robjones]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

Good points: Great atmosphere, great battles
Bad points:
The 12-2pm show had five heavyweight fights and two featherweight fights. Thats seven in 120 minutes. Needs to be more I think
Even as a featherweight builder/fan I was a bit disappointed with the entertainment value of some featherweight fights compared to the heavyweight bouts, and the time it took to load/unload/enable six or more in the arena.

We put CHIP and microCHIP on our bench at 9.40am. We didnt get tech checked until 12.18 pm so we didnt get in the arena until 3.30pm and microCHIP only fought once all day.

How feasible would it be to put Ally or steel on the floor?

[kaideejee]

Roaming Robots, Preston 29th Feb 2004

I dont think its the material thats the problem - its the edges, which obviously cant be avoided short of having a one piece floor and a *much* bigger van (read : lorry) to carry it around in, or a roll up / hinged floor that folds flat which may then cause issues with gaps in the floor and uneven layers.

Maybe if all the edges were nailed and then gaffer taped down even bots like Mute may have problems getting under it. Then again, maybe they wouldnt

-- Kev