What next for Robot Wars & bringing it back

[psychostorm]

- Oh yes, and PAY THE ROBOTEERS! Seriously, I couldn't believe it when I read in Gearheads that the UK Roboteers for all intents and purposes never received a penny for their hard work, even as they and their robots became international stars. Shame on Mentorn for that, really. Please tell me that between now and then Mentorn actually paid them...

Well generally that was the case but Mentorn did hire the hotel where free rooms were given. Plusthere was a the refund of the Robot Wars club money , the free food from the burger van & sometimes a petrol allowance. Plus free liability insurance. Still two grains of rice though.

[Garwulf]

Hmm. I do think the personalities of the teams matter hugely and frankly, fully autonomous bots just won't cut the mustard in terms of good viewing. However, I think some inclusion of this may well help with funding, and it would be fun to see each bot have SOME autonomy. A "special-move" type of idea might work, self righting would be easy enough etc. and perhaps the more automated a bot is, the more concessions towards weight or something could be awarded. A certain amount of fly-by-wire is probably a natural progression anyhow (eg, selecting where in the arena you want the bot to go, rather than actually steering) But recognising an opponent vs house bots for example? Hmmm.

Well, a certain amount of autonomy, perhaps, but it would have to be pretty limited.

Something I noticed a while ago when it comes to these things. The first time a robot follows a line, it's amazing. The second time, it's cool. The third time, it's ordinary. The fourth time, it's little more than a technology demo.

There are sometimes robots with self-firing weapons, and a self-firing SRImech makes plenty of sense - but I wouldn't want it to go any further than that. The reason is simple - the more you remove the driver and the team from the equation, the more it becomes a technology demo once the match begins. People will care about the roboteers, and they'll care about the robots that they are driving - but I really don't think they'd care about autonomous robots for long, even if on a technological level they are more impressive.

[Eventorizon]

Just a thought but perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we judge the events. The criteria for Battle bots allowed for even the most bizarre robots to be able to take victory on a regular basis. Where here, cos damage gets you such a high number of points you end up with lots of spinners and then armoured flippers that are designed to end the fight quickly.

One thought that I had what to include another element... expected damage. This is heavily dependant on your driving skill and your aggression as you may have a powerful spinner but if you cant utilise the weapon properly that is either poor design or poor driving.

I have no idea how you would go about scoring that but I am just throwing it out there.

Finally I guess that as we can OOTA this gives flippers an easy victory. Flippers are less common in the US as they don't have an OOTA but you see launchers that aim for massive air and the resulting internal and structural damage. Even if you put wall son 2 sides of the arena you reduce the chance of an OOTA by 50%. This would give machines that cant OOTA or end the fight quickly to gain more points for control and aggression over longer lasting fights.

I also love the idea of having an angled edge to the arena. Say that a 2m length on all sides is at a 20-30dgr angle with the wall at the top as usual. what would that do to the style of robots?

[Max]

Just an idea- what if an oota wasn't an automatic win, instead after an oota it went to judges decision. That way flippers are still effective but they will have to drive well and try to be aggressive throughout the fight then flip the other robot out at the end so that way they win the decision. Whereas if an axe bot was aggressive throughout the fight then got flipped out at the end it would still win the decision!

[Bacon Wizard]

Just an idea- what if an oota wasn't an automatic win, instead after an oota it went to judges decision. That way flippers are still effective but they will have to drive well and try to be aggressive throughout the fight then flip the other robot out at the end so that way they win the decision. Whereas if an axe bot was aggressive throughout the fight then got flipped out at the end it would still win the decision!

I'm not sure how popular or fair this idea is.. but I'm guess that the oota would carry some serious points? That might make it a reasonable way of doing things...

[ady]

Oota are cool, just not when it happens in the first 30 seconds!

[MudnuK]

One of the things which really annoyed me about robot wars was the use of house robots. Being someone who sees robotic combat just as much as a sport than as a hobby, it was so irritating to see a house robot tear a chunk out of one opponent and hardly damage another. Even if it's by accident, I'd like house robots to be used just for whiteboards, though I know this is how it was for last year's champs.

Also, just an idea for how to judge these fights. Instead of having a robot win for simply lasting, how about points are awarded for immobilizing opponents, and how they do this. Something like 0 points for entering a fight, 1 point for stacking an opponent or turning them over so they can't self-right, 2 points for an OOTA or pitting, 3 points for braking an opponent so they are completely unable to move (full immobolization) and 4 points for total annihilation (taking a wheel or two off, or ripping off a sizable body panel), and then take away the corresponding amount of points for robots losing in those ways. This encourages destruction and means even if a robot is pitted in a fight, it can still win. Oh, also, -5 points for not turning up to a battle.
As an experiment, I tried this with the FW qualifiers with pretty good results. LS4 came first, LH3 joint second with Explosion, 720 fourth, Beauty 2 fifth, NST sixth and so on, so I think quite accurate to how good the machines are. Judges might have a hard time keeping up though.

[Bacon Wizard]

Judges might have a hard time keeping up though.

Solvable by reviewing the fight on film though, if judges score-cards do not agree. Only required if the difference in opinion actually changes the outcome of the fight.

[psychostorm]

Return the Perimeter patrol zone to conquer OOTAs. also I'm thinking bungee cord.

[SamO]

I hate to get in the way of anyone's ideas, and I wish not to sound abrubt, but why try to fix something that isn't broken.

I mean, all that an untrained eye wants to see is mass destruction with big spinny things and I think that from the number of people that were watching the fights at GSL, we are already in a good position with this. Even Roaming Robots (Robot Wars) and Robots Live are getting sell out shows on many events. What I think we need to do is make what we have already got more publicised to a wider audience (i.e having events, as they are, shown on TV). Also, I was just searching through Dave (tv channel) listings and the comments that people had made about Robot Wars. People loved the show as it was, and I think as long as there is carnage, they won't care about the scoring system etc.

I also think that the main aim, in the short term, is to get HW spinners back up and running.

Anyways, just putting that out there

[Flag Captured]

I legitimately think that Robot Wars, in that format, had it's time. As much as I'd love to see it back, it's never going to be back to the style of Series 5-7 because there's just not going to be as many heavyweights about. What I would love to see, however, is Arenas of Destruction style 'makeshift' arenas - I know that's a logistical and health and safety nightmare, but it'd be rather cool to see robots fight in a disused factory, or in a scrapyard, or some obscure location to mix things up a tad, because I think that's why the viewing figures started to drop... each successive series (especially 5 onwards) was pretty much the same thing...

I think the 'golden age' of Robot Wars was definitely series 2-4, when the innovations were really coming out but there were also loads of variations of the formula like the gauntlet, Sumo Basho, Pinball... that kind of thing. Likewise, the whole idea of TechnoGames is something I'd love to see come back alongside Robot Wars. It had a lot more personality back then as well, it wasn't all fake aggression and shouting all the time - Craig Charles' little 'stand up' bit at the start of each episode was absolutely great, and I do think that's something that was really missing from the later episodes.

If it were to come back though, it'd need a major overhaul - I think the arena would need a complete redesign visually, the house robots would need improving (not to cause more unnecessary damage, rather to be as imposing as possible) and I think you'd need a massive structural change to the competition as a whole. Probably need a way of nerfing flippers a bit too, they were really popular later on as I'm sure you all know, and it wasn't as interesting to watch when a great number of robots had the same weapon. I'd love to see a new type of weapon 'invented' but I'm not sure what else can be done within the rules!


I've just been doing a video about all this for Youtube as well, so if it seems like I've got a lot to say on that matter, that's probably why!

[Chris230291]

Yes bring it back!

What i would change...

- Similar arena to Battlebots where robots can't be flipped out.
- Radically reduce weight limit (and maybe other aspects) for robots with heavy rotational weapons. (Flywheels/spinners)

I think the main reason contestants lost interest is the fact that their robots were being ripped apart by crude spinning weapons. If the rules were changed to make those INCREDIBLY hard to build and enter with additional limits, i think people will be interested again. This would also likely stop the majority of the thick metal "boxes" that were being entered around the same time.

Just my thoughts but I genuinely believe it was the "spinners" and "boxes" that killed the show.

[Porker]

Personally, I would also like it to have house robots.

[playzooki]

Remember, its a tv show.
The house robots were there to LOOK good.
Id like to bring it back

[Porker]

I agree, but it would need to get millions of viewers as the show was expensive to make.