Printable View
quote:
The only thing a writer really needs to know is Does this robot have enough battery power to last 3-5 minutes? because fights rarely last longer than that. And how will you know that if the vapourbot builder doesnt include battery stats? Right now most writers just assume it does, which in my opinion is wrong.
(Message edited by leorcc on August 14, 2008)
And I never apologize at all. Well... rarely. :)
(Message edited by leorcc on August 14, 2008)
I, for one, do not include such trivial things like battery power and dimensions. And, to be quite honest, I have better things to do than that. If I was forced to to research and find something about every aspect of the robot, made sure that it stayed underweight while coming up with a good and effective design, I do not think it would be worth to compete :P
quote:
made sure that it stayed underweight
ermz... fact is Alex, you come here and enter stuff and claim that its 100 kg, its your responsibility to make sure its not blatantly overweight
and of course we have the how to imrpove topic, if you arent sure what to use run your bots through that topic and make sure to listen to the suggestions you get
Adding my own two cents here...
Batteries and dimensions DO matter, as were trying to be creative with our designs, and I think it lazy and uncaring of the other builders that dont account for batteries in their stats. Sure, Frank, batteries really dont matter in a battle much, but its like Leo said: When a part of the robot is 10-15% of the total weight, than that part is far from pointless. Its the actual STATS that matter. Look at some of the overpowered bots that use LEM200s and Eteks. Im quite sure that hardly any of those people take into account that battery weight will push their rammer over the limit.
As for dimensions, its the same thing. They dont matter much in the battle, but they DO matter in the stats. Some people are so infernally convinced that they can stuff like a couple of LEM130s, some NiCads/A123s, 4WD, a weapon, and all the rest inside something like a 70x70x15 box and get away with it. and even if it DID fit inside, then batteries would matter even more, as they would get so damned hot from lack of space they wouldnt be able to air out, and would meltdown and the bot would stop. Aarons right, some of the writers (I myself :proud:) have gotten to lazy to notice that.
And while were on the topic of dimensions, Frank, I think The May Tracks Has You seems a little too small in dimensions...
Ta. :)
(Message edited by kodster on August 14, 2008)
Aaron, your arguement is massively oversimplified, annoyingly patronising and verging on being willfully elitist as per usual.
The point with batteries is that unlike armour or motors which have a direct and easily quantifiable effect upon a design, the fact that these fights are written makes a battery stat just a vague and unecessary complication. How long is a written fight? The writer may say its 3 minutes but as you yourself profess vapour fights frequently dont even resemble actual fights anyway and are by no means half as busy as them most of the time, so how can we expect writers to have an accurate guage of time, if anything what we need to devise is a way of standardising how writers percieve time, but of course as there is no way that could ever be done, its just asking for bad writing to enact something which depends on time as a factor, its not like Im saying dont ever include batteries, or even dont allow for batteries in the weight, which Im in fact for.
The point being no offense to anyone here, but I just dont trust the majority of writers to get the effects of comparative battery stats right, and as it is Im fed up with going out of competitions in unrealistic ways, and this is just another complication to a system a lot of people dont get right as it is.
*walks in*
*looks around*
*walks out*
ffffff>Postcount +1 :D
What we really need here is a comprimse between what is fun and what is real. For vapourbotting, clearly we need to have the basis for it grounded in reality but we need to not have it so nitpickingly real that we lose a lot of the fun of the whole competition. I know for a fact that Tony retired because of the progressivly stricter rules regarding vapourbotting left it unfun, and I felt that one of the biggest draws in ARC was the easy and simplicity that kept it fresh, fun, and importantly not bogged down in the smaller details.
While I do agree that we need accurate stats in weight (to a certain degree), motors, weaponry, and armor, I do not feel that the smaller details like batters, dimensions, and ground clearence should play a huge part.
What reinforces my point is the fact that fights hardly ever take into account such details, and, like Alex said, are usually hardly accurate enough to follow such things as batteries. One example is where I made Cosmic Thunder 2 have a 1mm or 3mm (i forget) GC on the sides, just to make sure that it would be more manueverable (as if such a small amount would do so :P). It ended up that I was penalized for doing so, since the opposing robot was able to easily get under my sides and toss me around. Despite the fact that they had 0mm ground clearence on the front (like CT2 does), they never hit any bumps in the arena floor or anything of the sort.
The underlying theme Im trying to make here is, just, dont lose sight of what makes this whole competition fun by trying to bring the more trivial parts of real life robotics in it. After all, its just an internet game :P
Okay, seriously, this discussion needs to be kept off the tournament thread. Please.
Right. For the sake for other people, Im going to lift the you need batteries in your stats rule...just stop the arguing, PLEASE.
Need Mattys bots still.