Still don't understand why we can't snag spinners

I understand that if I drove round the arena unravelling duct tape as I went then it would create boring matches and be unfair. However, the last time I asked this I don't feel as though I got a legitimate answer other than "entanglement is banned in the rules".

I'm not talking about stopping robots running round the arena, just trying to come up with a solution to the actual blade or disk of a spinner. I noticed at the weekend that as soon as a cable got caught up in a blade, it just snagged and stopped. So in terms of this being an engineering sport and trying to promote ingenuity and a variety of designs, why would I not be allowed to wrap my robot in cables? It's then up to those that build the big power spinners to counter with new blade designs with low profile bearings and so forth to not get wrapped up?

At the minute it feels as though the rule set gives credence to more and more powerful spinners, and that any other type of robot is handicapped to defend against it. Almost like the field being full of flame throwers and then telling everyone they can only use wood to build a robot. I don't want us to be without spinners, I just want the rule set straightening out to say that you cannot stop translational movement round the arena by entanglement, but that using it as a form of permanently fixed armour to resist spinning weapons is OK. I can see absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be able to use various ideas to snag blades.

"I understand that if I drove round the arena unravelling duct tape as I went then it would create boring matches and be unfair"

Change duct tape to rope or cables and you have your answer. Boring matches and once entangled you wouldn't be able to disconnect from the other machine. Crushers have to disconnect after a period of time and demonstrate they aren't stuck on the other machine.

About the only way in the rule book you could get around it would be to use a tethered projectile and hope the tether gets tangled up. Again you would likely be disqualified if you couldn't disconnect from the other machine.

There's also the issue of safety. If the arena marshals have to enter the arena to untangle two machines they may not be able to access the removeable link easily if the machines are tangled up. I'm sure as hell not putting my hands near a robots weapon if I don't know the link is out so I wouldn't expect them to either.

Yeah well that's my point, don't want to stop people driving about just bind up blades/disks etc.

What's your point?

That the entanglement rule is too generalised. I think it should only count towards translational movement and not weaponry. You shouldn't be aiming to stop someone's mobility but I don't have a problem with weaponry.

This issue still stands regardless

"There's also the issue of safety. If the arena marshals have to enter the arena to untangle two machines they may not be able to access the removeable link easily if the machines are tangled up. I'm sure as hell not putting my hands near a robots weapon if I don't know the link is out so I wouldn't expect them to either. "

Hmmm...will grudgingly admit what you say makes sense lol....

Also, it isn't ingenious to win against a spinner by entangling it. It would be incredibly easy. You'd need to loosely attach some netting to your bot and just feed it to the spinner, which will lock it up, with the rest of the fight being a shoving match between a bot not meant for shoving and one most likely just a box. There's no cleverness there; it's not a fight. No skills are required.

It's equally biased to expect spinners to all redesign in order to be immune, which would be pretty much impossible anyway; nets and cables would remain insta-win methods.

Plus the safety points Gary makes.

All in all this is something that was revised in (or is it out) of the rules a long long time ago. Entanglement being banned is the better way. :)

So what if someone comes up with a way to disable a disk? Don't see why it's such a negative thing if it's part of the evolution of robot fighting?

Ie spinners are the most destructive weapon, look...we've found a way round them... forces people to rethink their weapon and design and so the evolution continues. The rules favour spinners which isn't right, they should favour all types of robots equally.

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Originally Posted by daveimi

So what if someone comes up with a way to disable a disk?

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I think that's called a hardox wedge...

It's not good evolution if an old sock becomes the weapon of choice. It really is that overpowered. Everyone would just be trying to entangle everyone. Lifters, flippers, axes, exposed wheels, etc, would all also get choked up.

This came up in dramatic style in the Battlebots revamp earlier in the year. See this from about 1min in:

https://youtu.be/W2PXFBwS1_0?t=51s

Two highly advanced fighting machines, tens of thousands of dollars involved, fight instantly won by... a net. No fun!

The rules aren't biased towards spinners as much as you think, yes they're difficult to defend against but it can be done. Take the World Championships this year for example, 6 of the 8 robots i fought in my qualifiers were spinners and i went into every match knowing Hatchet might not come out in one piece again, having said that when i did win a fight down to my robot overcoming the odds it was a fantastic feeling, going into a match knowing you can disable a spinner so easily takes away the competitiveness in my book.

Entanglement IMO is a cheap way to win, not to mention being dangerous for the person who has to try and remove the link of a robot covered in a net.

Also, think of it this way, you're worried about your robot/components being damaged by a spinner, think of the damage that a net could do to the set up of a spinner, it could kill the motor, burn out their speedo or do countless other things that could render it useless and cost the builder a huge amount of money.

You could attempt something similar to do what Shunt did to Hypnodisc in series 4 of Robotwars: Fire an axe or arm with a steel rod into a bar/disc. The disc would grab the bar and pull it round until the bar jammed it against its own body. Then you just retract the arm as all that will have happened is the bar will have stopped the weapon almost instantly, probably bending the bar and probably the spinners chassis as well.
However there are like 10+ reasons why no one tries that, least of all because its a 1 in a million shot and you would need an arm travelling several times faster than the weapon itself to get the bar in.

Yeah like I have Asperger's so I'm not trying to provoke an argument to say no to spinners and fall out with people and all that type of thing. It's hard to come across as sincere by typing and I'm quite a meek and mild person in the flesh lol and not trying to rant at people. I understand how easy a win would be by clogging a robot up. I just mean that I feel there's ways of wrapping a robot in stuff to clog a disk as a form of defense that are passive and only end up stopping the weapon. I'm not trying to be cheap and stop another robot driving about and all that kind of thing, but I just like the idea of evolution. People build flippers, so others made invert-able robots. People sussed spinners will literally right an opponent off, so those of us with the means to build only pushy robots find a way to defend against it. So the spinner people say incorporate a wedge in the back end to resort to if the blade jams...so on and so forth.

In response to Sam talking about the money involved in clogging a blade up, my pushy robots incorporate about a hundred quids worth of motors, wheels, hubs, Sabertooth, receiver, failsafe and battery. I appreciate that a lipo/spinner set up undoubtedly can get expensive, but even a well specced pusher is not cheap and yet they are regularly badly damaged without any real means of stopping a blade within the weight limit. Any sort of decent material thickness takes you over the various weight limits, hence my questions about finding other ways to stop a spinner blade.

I'm sure if you designed a weapon that stopped a disc or similar that when retracted released the disc that would be OK.

There would be no objection as it means the disc is not "tangled" but obstructed in a managed way. you release the weapon you release the obstruction.

I think the best way to address the discs is to use their energy in some way to break their own machines.

In simple terms "put a stick in the spokes of the wheel". the disc or drum stops quickly the energy is released into their own chassis, they die you live. every ones happy almost.

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Originally Posted by daveimi

People build flippers, so others made invert-able robots...

finding other ways to stop a spinner blade...

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These are two different things, invert-able robot don't stop flippers flipping, they just mitigate the prime effect of the flip itself.
Stopping the disk itself would require a great amount of absorbed energy. Spinners can also be deflected, just look at some of the fights between last rites and sewer snake on ye old interwebz.

dave my beetle bone crusher can survive direct hits from spinners easly it took an asskicking from egg beater and kept going all match best way to defeat a spinner it to design a way to deflect its energy away from your bot instead of trying to absorb it entanglement was banned years ago and it was the best thing to do about it as its as cheep as someone who wins at a computer game through cheat codes

To be fair mate, and this is in no way a dig, it's difficult to tell from that event how your robot stands up to spinners. Eggbeater was using hair bands (literally, they were hair bands) for belts on it's weapon and it could barely spin up properly. Lynx in the rumble at the end went through 15mm of hdpe on Fhqwhgads and went through the 3mm steel on the front of Flatulence and Spin Cycle was pushing through 10mm hdpe, that's the sort of stuff a robot has to stand up to.

Maybe its time to talk about having a Sportsman class in the UK? Its the perfect solution for everyone who wants to experiment with new designs without having them ripped apart by spinners.

Every heavy event is a sportsman class event, no spinners allowed. Not for the feathers and surely not for the heavies.
Only during the FRA FW Champs are spinner weapons allowed, so once a year unless they brave the mainland.

no harm sam it was merely the best example i could readily think of at the time i didnt want to bring up any of the other spinner matches as one side really didnt do well in each of them

Limpet has wiped the floor with my big spinner, Newton, twice in a row. It's a well built 6WD rambot with a tough wedge and great driving behind it. The weapon wasn't spinning up properly below but I am certain it would have played out the same even if it were at 100% - John's an awesome driver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghpnxZEcdNA

Point is, it's all about the design. A good wedge coupled with good driving = ultimate anti-spinner combo. Your machines tend to have flat fronts; building in some angles will help an awful lot. :)

Limpet is an awesome set-up and have seen it beat all sorts, have also seen it have the wheels and motors chewed out of most of one side.

Sam highlights my point about your options of fending off a spinner are thick angled metal or to snag the blade. Getting thick angled metal within the beetle limits is proving incredibly difficult given that even a 0.5kg blade will go through 15mm hdpe and 3mm steel. Obv the spinner builders are not going to like blade snagging.

A half combat beetle class is probably the way forward. Probably need to get stu to read this thread and see what he says, since most of us that enter regular are into the beetle thing at the mo. Tbh I'm hugely sucked in, but the spinner thing is making it unsustainable.

I should stress that although Lynx did get through 3mm steel, it wasn't by much. Just a small hole on the underside. That's not to belittle Lynx's achievements but just so you're not writing off 3mm steel as armour. It will still stand up against a lot of what is out there.

I also don't think you need an overkill wedge/box to beat a spinner. My beetle Flatulence is the one with the aforementioned 3mm steel. It's all done at an angle due to it being part of a flipper blade and is a great source of protection while also having offensive capabilities. At the Scotland Iron Games event, it took a bit of a beating from Eggbeater in the final but once I was able to keep the front end pointed at his weapon, I was able to take the hits, stop the beater from rotating and then take control of the fight. In a match against Spin Cycle, the flipper blade took an impact but the force caused more damage to Spin Cycle and Flatulence went on to win the fight. So it is possible to defend against, and cause damage to, them with something other than a brick. Flatulence isn't even that expensive but has been through about fifteen battles at various events and only needs a bit of cosmetic TLC to get it ready for November.

As for entangling spinners, an idea came to me today. At work we have protective kevlar sleeves we can wear as part of our PPE. You can put them on your arms and run a brand new stanley knife blade down it and it doesn't cut it or get through to your skin. If you get hold of something like that, you could put it between a pair of arms or claws and drive that into spinners. Not saying that discs won't tear it up, but if it survives the impacts, it would take a lot of energy out of the hit, allowing you to snag up the spinning blade and let you dictate the fight. The benefit of it being attached to your robot is that it won't (or shouldn't) get tangled up, letting you back away and reuse it as an attack while not violating the entanglement rules

Oh yeah i didn't mean to give the impression that 3mm steel is useless as beetle armour, it will take the hits. Heck i'm using it on the front of my new beetle, angled to help with deflection.

It's all about being clever with your design rather than trying to "Brick" everything, Limpets front has been bent every which way, John just bends it back again and it's good to go.

Well if you want a bit of advice on beetle spinners, Lynx and Spin Cycle got through 12 HDPE on the front of Fhqwhgads... It's not so much the material you use, rather how you use it.

HardWired 2 isn't strong because it's two layers of either 3.2 or 4mm hardox in most places, it's because all of the sides are angled to redirect some of the energy

Also, just because spinners cause damage it doesn't mean they're massively successful - I don't recall that any spinners have won any Kinematic Events, and it's not often they win the feather events either. In fact, I think NST's been the first spinner in about a decade to take the title... so there you go. None in the top 4 at the world champs either...

To be fair you could always pull a "Tornado" and stick a "roll cage" style section around your robot that you can attach and remove between fights. Spinners do have a history of "Spazzing out" when they come in contact with another machine with dancing/flying around the arena etc, but if you can put a frame around your machine, you essentially nullify the the first couple of hits and give you a window to fight back. Against vertical spinners you are safe-ish, depending on how tough the frame is. horizontal spinners... I don't know, would have to see an actual fight where this was employed I think.

(Ps: Not trying to shame tornado, simply using it as an example because it is one of the most well known examples of active adaptation to counter weaponry between bouts)

My first robot 'PullverizeR' (mis-spelled by mistake) indeed had a 'cable catcher'. It is not so hard to do I think, just make sure anything that it catches keeps rotating with the blade or disc and does not get stuck on the axle or drive system.

In the dutch series 2 a disc got stuck on a wire (fight starts at 7.55);
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX-34W7rlYQ