Ant or Feather

we dont enter white boards when were in a competition - from what i have seen its mainly robots who have gone out early or people who have spare robots and havent entered them into the competition

im not saying get rid of all boxes it would be just nice if more teams were encouraged to build weapons

and about spending money on robots to get trashed.

i believe competitions are when you bring out the best robots and spend abit of money to be able to win and you take the risk of getting trashed by entering them and if u dont want to get trashed then people shouldnt enter as its only like 3 events a year? where spinners are allowed

and thats y there is prize money in most of them now to pay for the damage you take

and we can get ti bar but we cant weld it so you would have to do that yourself . the bar is also bent but that makes the design on beauty look good i think - we also wouldnt want all of them looking like beauty lol

i also dont know which competition that was as i can only think of like 6 flippers/lifters?

at the uk champs there was like 16 push bots and 4 flippers/lifters in a fight and the 4 weapon bots went through

(Message edited by john on September 29, 2007)

(Message edited by john on September 29, 2007)

I counted 17 pushbots, 7 active weapons, 2 I didnt know.

Adrian, if your active weapon robot gets trashed, it was obvoulsy not good enough and its time to build a better one. That is the essence of the sport.

build, fight, break, repair, fight, rebuild.

For me pushbots are just rc cars with added armour. I am not saying pushbots cant win, I am not saying that pushbots are ineffective, what I am saying is that in all weightclasses the featherweight class has by far the most pushbots.

Antweights, raptors, beetleweights all weightclasses lower in weight than feathers, and even though there are pushbots there, there are nowhere near as many, not even percentagewise.

If there is no problem with an excess of featherweight pushbots, why do you think this topic ever came up in the first place?

im not fussed about my robot getting trashed as i know its part of it, but to be honest my robot has ever been far from that, scratches and a few chips and broken bits of polycarb has been the worst anyone has done to it.

i think you always will have pushbots as its good as a first time robot, people move on like i have, but i still believe you need them in competitions

a perfect example, look at the new thread by dan. first robot to gain experiance and look what he is building.

(Message edited by ady on September 29, 2007)

The problem we have is not that there are too many pushbots, it is that there are no spinners. At the present there are few event organisers who can run spinners. I appreciate that event organisers are trying to overcome this and I hope they will succeed. A pushbot vs a spinner makes a very good match. New builders may not want to tackle pneumatic technology; it would be good if they had the option of building spinners.

100% agree with what John Frizell has said.... its like 100% spot on.... Yes we aint seen many spinners due to the new rule changes against feather weight spinners. So only 2 or 3 events this year have been able to run them... and when they finally do run, they may break down fast due to they have not been fully battle tested as theres no where to do it now really...

As a startign point - pushers are the way to go for most Feather Weight Builders....

Some would argue about too many Feather Weight pushers makes shows boring - and i agree most of the time, hence why we add things such as the arena hammer and flipper and jets to liven things up from a spectators view...

But the idea to BAN pushers and say everyone MUST have an active weapon is 100% wrong and im against it....

Im personaly against the weight going from 12kg up to 13.6kg.. but thats my personal view and i cant be assed to get into it... mainly coz im not bothered any more coz i cant be bothered to enter my robot into competitions as im either too busy working at RR events, or busy with Uni work to go to other events.. thought i had a good run 5 days a week for 6 weeks with my feather KX at Haven Holiday Parks. Though thats besides the point....

Yeah everyone has their views, and to be honest i dont know why im getting invovled but main reason im speaking now is that id hate to see some stupid rule that forces robots to have an active weapon because not all roboteers can do that straight away and i feel for them.

But then surely most of them will advance up to a weapon like Adian has done/doing it seems. Even saying advancing to have a weapon is sometimes wrong - Stiff Breeze Kicks ass as a pusher and has beaten the nasty spinners and axes before and so on... is a good example of a great pusher. So hey i dunno...

Just my 2 pence

Mr Stu

Was asked to post this here from Tony Booth:-

It was proposed to change the weight limit for featherweights to 13.6kg. but if the limit was increased the bots would have to have a active weapon. Push Bots could still compete at all competitions but at 12kg . As Ady as all ready said in this thread they take little or no damage. At no time was it said to ban them from championship events or any events.
Hope this helps.
Regards Tony.

to change the weight limit for featherweights to 13.6kg. but if the limit was increased the bots would have to have a active weapon

well that sounds the best option to me

but what if we have a world champs do they all have weapons or are there some hardox boxes ???

(Message edited by jct on October 01, 2007)

Thats one step forward and two steps back as far as rule harmonisation is concerned. The general RFL rules do not state that robots have to have an active weapon. The RFL weight limits have a 2-tier 30lb weight class; open and Sportsman which has been incorporated into the RFL ruleset from the NERC rules - this Sportsman class also puts limits on many aspects of the design including a ban on any wedge that is capable of elevating a flat sided box with ¼€ of ground clearance more than ½ off the floor simply by sliding the wedge under the box when the robot in question is in any €œnormal€ driving positions e.g. with its wheels on the floor.. !!
To ban boxes in this country in the way suggested does nothing for harmonisation IMHO

Does this mean that they have banned flippers, as most of the flippers have a wedge shaped front.