Babróg - Beetleweight Lifter Build Diary

This (admittedly late build diary) is for Babróg, my third beetleweight design, and is modeled directly after my featherweight robot Barróg Doom. Similar to the Léim’s, the name once again is somewhat of a bilingual pun, where it sounds like a baby version of the larger robot Barróg (it works even better in Irish, where the world for baby is “babóg”). Despite how similar both bots look in general shape and weaponry, the end build turned out to be on the polar opposite of Barróg Doom’s design philosophy; while Doom used mostly air to protect its key parts, Babróg is a densely packed brick of a bot by comparison, mostly due to the sheer difficulty in fitting everything in that I wanted to the bot while keeping within weight (both bots have the same 10mm HDPE outer armour!).

https://i.imgur.com/68F3RA4.jpg
The finished robot, in its standard configuration.

https://i.imgur.com/69LzYa0.jpg
The horizontal config, with no forks and a static grabber arm for better stability.

The drive is the same as Léim Thart: two cheap 22mm gearboxes paired with an 1806 2300kv brushless motor and KingKong 12A ESC’s, but this time with a drive inspired by Saw Loser, with custom moulded 3D printed wheels, held onto the drive shaft with a square nut/grub screw combo, and using HTD3 belts to drive the front wheels. The lifter is driven by a Robostar 53kg/cm servo, with a 7:11 ratio (14T to 22T) using HTD5 (HTD3 belts kept slipping). The bot also uses a UBEC Duo which provides 5V to the receiver, and 12V to the servo in place of the direct 4S Turnigy Graphene 0.5Ah battery which powers the drive. The grab and lift mech is similar to the FW Mantis, using a cam with a slotted hole for the travel of the grabbing arms and lifter forks. The bot has two main configs, a vertical setup with three 3mm Hardox forks, and a horizontal setup reusing the cursed 2mm grade 5 titanium wedge from Léim Thart and a static thicker plastic lifter. There are a few more unique quirks with the bot, but for now I’m going to link the build log on my team’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TeamBarrog/...09893694045251

For now, enjoy a few select photos from the build, with more on the FB post, which should be public to all:

https://i.imgur.com/vmJXdnX.png
One of the earliest versions of the CAD. This build would allow me to use moulding for the forks and wheels for the first time.

https://i.imgur.com/VgalXkE.jpg
The internals, one of the tightest wiring jobs I've had to do yet!

https://i.imgur.com/dZUfiKi.jpg
A look at everything inside, mainly the lifter setup, as well as the drive and ESC's.

https://i.imgur.com/WXaHM60.jpg
The link mount, probably one of my favourite bits of wiring on the robot in general.

https://i.imgur.com/TjP7fgG.jpg
The fork mounts, similar to the Barróg's, they can be adjusted height wise to be flush with the ground no matter what.

BBB Beetle Champs 2021:

I arrived at my first beetleweight in two years feeling rusty but unusually confident. Everything I had wanted to get sorted in the build was finished on time, the machine made weight with far fewer compromised than last time, the weapon had the power to lift a full beetleweight with little trouble, and the drive seemed to be responsive, grippy, and free from the issues Léim Thart had. My main concern with the build was the weapon servo: Robostar servos have been sketchy from the experience of other builders I’ve talked to, and there was only a very small window that the servo could move within, otherwise it would continuously rotate (weirdly, this only happened going in one direction). The bot was able to self-right within the sweet spot travel of the servo, but only just, and any tweek of the mechanism could leave me vulnerable. Nonetheless, I passed the tech checks and was ready to fight.

https://i.imgur.com/eg4XZzv.jpg
Babróg at the pit table, ready to fight for the first time!

Fight 1 VS. Spotty Botty, Inferno:

My first melee promised to be interesting. Spotty Botty was a grabber control bot that looked quite nicely built, and seemed like it would be able to push me around easily. Of the two opponents though, Inferno immediately stood out as the more dangerous: the bot look typical of the 2WD egg beaters that had become so dangerous in the US BW scene, and the driver Will Thomas was a robot combat veteran with a record of both fantastic builds and driving ability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj2Bs70qUio
Fight starts at 2:52

Sure enough, within seconds of the fight beginning, I was already hit and turned upside down, and Inferno wasted no time in taking shots at my vulnerable lifter assembly while I attempted to self-right. Those initial hits bent my front armour, making the robot “bouncy” to drive, and Inferno kept landing hits on my side and, critically, the underbelly of my robot, wheels included. I was definitely suffering from my lack of recent robot combat experience, as I struggled to keep Babróg straight and continued with what by now should have seemed as ill-advised strategy of going face first into Inferno’s weapon. Eventually I lost one side of drive, and after a few more painful exchanges I lost the second side of drive, rendering me immobile.

https://i.imgur.com/VazpiHw.jpg
Broken bits following the beatdown from Inferno.

I was pretty shaken after the fight if I’m honest. I had really underestimated the power and speed of my opponents, and overestimated the strength of both my wheels and my ability to self-right. Inferno had been no joke, taking chunks out of my lifter, side panels, and even bending my 3mm Hardox forks like they were aluminium! The square nuts had partly done their job of stopping the D shaft from rounding itself out, except now the shaft simply dug into the plastic on the opposite side of the shaft, which ultimately led to the same outcome. It was probably always going to end up like this despite my testing, though Inferno’s direct hits on the wheels almost certainly accelerated this process. What’s worse, I stupidly chose not to make any spare wheels for the event, so it looked like I wouldn’t even be able to make my second redemption fight. I have to give credit to my opponents though: Spotty Botty made a valiant run in its later fights, and the one solace I’ll take from losing to Inferno was that Inferno would go on to win the event entirely!

https://i.imgur.com/hRCYSG9.jpg
The wheels following the fight, note the grey moon-shape at the top of the hub, that's where the shaft opened up the plastic.

Fight 2 VS. Oubley

Any hopes I had of having an easier match for my redemption battle were shattered when I was paired up with Oubley, another 2WD egg beater built by Sam Graham and technically the reigning champion as winner of the BBB Summer Showdown event recovering from a shock loss in its first fight after getting its forks stuck under the arena wall (fun fact: each of my five last BW fights have starred a winner of a major event, Daedalus, X-301, K2, Inferno, and now Oubley). My only option for drive was to superglue the now buggered wheels onto the shaft, pop on my spare lifter forks, try to get my driving style back in order, and absolutely send it into Oubley and hope for the quick knockout, even if I knew that no matter what, I was likely on borrowed time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj2Bs70qUio
Fight starts at 38:58

You can see in the fight that getting to recompose myself and calm down was having an instant effect. I was able to stay out of Oubley’s weapon, orbit the drum, and get around to the sides and control him. Then, almost miraculously, I was able to pin him to the wall, get the grabber in, and hold him suspended off the ground, something I was never able to do even with the original Barróg Doom! I tried to get him out of the arena, but unfortunately I didn’t quite have the height, and as soon as I had him out of my grasp, one of the sides of drive had once again given way. After some futile spinning, I ended up flipped over again, without the travel to self-right. As a last ditch attempt, I manually messed with the trims on my transmitter, sending the servo into its weird glitched out continuous rotation mode, and it gave me just enough travel to self-right one last time! It didn’t make much of a difference though, as by now the other side of drive had failed, and I was immobile, ending my second BW event in a row with no wins.

https://i.imgur.com/eV6f9SE.jpg
The robot after both fights. Visually mangled, but surprisingly OK underneath!

Conclusion:

After the first fight I was feeling pretty miserable with the robot, but my second fight had left me feeling pretty optimistic for the future of the design. The wheels had failed once again, but there was an improvement, and there were any number of steps that could be done to improve their reliability (better material choice, more metal in the mounting etc). What’s more, aside from the wheels, everything else on the machine worked spectacularly well: the drive was fast and grippy, with no motor/gearbox failures, the armour stood up to plenty of abuse from two of the most powerful weapons at the event, the forks could get under opponents without getting caught on the arena, and the lifter had the power and surprisingly the durability to do what it needed to do. The latter was the biggest surprise; I had heard horror stories about the Robostars from other builders, but even continuously rotating against the solid wall that was the top plate, the servo wasn’t phased. It seems like the plastic construction of the bulkheads allowed for some flexing in the design as well, and the servo flexing the chassis and skipping on the pulley acted effectively as a clutch for the weapon. Babróg was 90% of the way from being the bot I envisioned, I just had to put a little extra effort in.

https://i.imgur.com/FnKk70a.jpg
A small preview of some of the upgrades to come!

Major props to the crew in Bristol for all the hard work by the way! The event was incredibly entertaining to watch when I wasn’t losing, and it was fantastic to see the city and everyone in the BBB once again for the first time since the pandemic. Everyone who helped me in the pits was invaluable, and I’d like to give a particular shout out to Rob for his help while sharing our pit table, and Rhys and Fed for allowing me to drive their experimental crusher bot for a whiteboard event plus the gladiator. I intend to compete at the upcoming BBB Beetle Brawl in February 2022, and hopefully this one will go a little better!

Thank you for the interesting story.

Great write-up Eoin, I love Babróg both as a design and as a mini-me version of your other robots. Sorry it didn't do so well at the event but it looks really promising and it's so nice to see something original and creative like that.

The drive looked great, and the tanky armour too, though it did feel like the weapon was a bit flimsy, bot in terms of the servo power and the strength of the material. I guess there's not much you can do when you're already at weight but it feels like Barróg Doom had a bit more oomph behind the weapon. Maybe that's just my bad memory though.

Looks forward to seeing your upgrades in any case!

The weapon was slow, certainly slower than what Doom can do, though this was more a limitation of what options were available for me at this weight class. The next most common lifter setup at BW level would have been a 37mm motor, but those are much bigger, longer and heavier, and with space already at a premium it was no dice. The servo was a risky choice, and certainly not a fast one, but it could lift an opponent without killing itself which was the main goal, and being able to hold an opponent suspended in place is its own advantage.

The fragility was mostly due to 3D printed components, everything short of the grabber arms was PLA+. I didn't really expect the lifter forks to take much abuse since they were recessed into the bot, but I've had to reconsider that approach after the damage I took at BBB. I'm hoping to bring a lot more HDPE back into the mechanism going forward for the event later this month.

The final issue with self-righting was more due to the fact that the weapon was powered by a servo, not a motor. This meant that I had to finish a self-right within a limited range of motion, and while I had been able to tinker around with the geometry of the grabbers and the gearing just enough to get it to self-right semi-consistently, it wasn't as reliable during the fight. I have plans to bring much more motion into the mechanism so that this should be a non-issue going forward, which should give me a self-righting time of a little over a second; not ideal, but certainly an improvement.

So with a week to go before the 2022 BBB Beetle Brawl, I’ve decided to get myself together enough and actually post about some of the upgrades I’m making to the bot before the event. I was mostly happy with how Babróg performed, but there was definitely room for improvement. Fortunately, Christmas saw me acquire probably the most useful tool I’ve gotten since my 3D printer: a 3018 Sainsmart desktop CNC machine. The working area is small, and it won’t do anything to most metals, but for working with plastic it would allow me to do things I’d never thought possible before, both for weight saving and general construction. With this in mind, my goals were to beef up the more vulnerable parts of the robot, and to find weight wherever possible to make those upgrades.

https://i.imgur.com/Mw5Y0Xy.jpg
The CNC machine, with my "pragmatic" solution for cleaning swarf without an enclosure.

The majority of the weight saving was achieved by pocketing parts of the side armour, up high in the parts where the robot wouldn’t be hit normally, while also being an easy first job to get myself accustomed to the CAM workflow. From there I cut out new lifter cams and forks to replace the previously 3D printed parts, the latter using a new design entirely to be possible with a 2.5D operation. Finally, given how the old side bumpers had shattered after a single hit, I decided to try to make them from solid 20mm HDPE. The operation took a while to pull off and the finish is a little fuzzy, but the final product works, and should be far more durable.

https://i.imgur.com/4iP3Hu4.jpg
On top is the new side armour, while the old hand-cut one is on the bottom. Both new sides save around 30g.

https://i.imgur.com/NFmwR37.jpg
An assembly of all of the outer armour, including the side, top, and front pieces, along with the side bumpers.

https://i.imgur.com/TktvNuZ.jpg
The old 3D printed components next to their milled HDPE replacements.

Electronically, I began looking for ways to extend the range of my lifter servo. After not having any success with a servo extender, I decided to open the servo up again to get an idea of how I could manipulate it. Fortunately, I noticed that the potentiometer was only linked onto the gearbox (to get feedback on which position the servo was in) pretty loosely. This meant that I could simply position it into a position where it assumed the servo was at zero on the sticks, use some glue and tape to prevent it moving further, and leave it loose in the servo assembly, no longer connected to the main servo transmission. This way, it would be able to rotate infinitely in either way, and stay still when the stick was in a neutral position, essentially behaving like a normal motor, bypassing the internal servo ESC’s weirdness in how far the servo could travel (this also saved me from having to mess around with manually soldering resistors, something I’m very grateful for after my experiences with the original Léim).

https://i.imgur.com/2Yj5HQH.jpg
The potentiometer. Interestingly enough, my 4mm motor d-shaft fits the potentiometer perfectly, which was handy when I was trying to get it centered to 0.

Finally and most importantly, I wanted to strengthen the wheels up to prevent the failures of November. My experiments with printing in tougher materials such as nylon would be costly and time consuming to implement, so instead I simply decided to look at ways I could improve the existing PLA design. As the problem last time was a result of the shaft digging into the plastic on the opposite side of the square nut, the simplest solution was to put another static square nut on the opposite side of the shaft. This one wouldn’t have a grub screw, but would mainly provide much more surface area and greater resistance in the most obvious direction the shaft would want to move towards. Prototyping was done on simple pulley assemblies before I felt confident enough to scale the design up further.

https://i.imgur.com/A6YUN5w.jpg
This is from the second batch of moulding I ended up doing, before this I had made four rear wheels for stress testing. This batch includes six rear wheels, two front wheels, and four lifter forks.

I finally gave the wheels a proper “torture test” last week, doing everything I could think of in my power to break them (pushing loads heavy enough to stall them, rapidly going back and forth, attempting to drift them, doing J-turns etc.). After about 5 minutes of hard running, the supporting square nut had actually managed to dig into the plastic enough to cause the wheel to free spin (22mm gearboxes and 1806 motors on 4S really are powerful!). This isn’t perfect, but I do feel better in the knowledge that:

• They survived longer than the old wheels, and longer than a typical 2 minute BW fight

• They were being pushed far harder than I would be driving normally, I’ve tended to use a driving style that “nurses” the wheels after my experiences with the Barróg’s fragile wheels

• They had only three or four walls on the print before the gridded infill, since then I’ve made wheels with totally solid pulleys

• This time I’m bringing spares, and lots of them. Even after losing this set, I’ve got four spare pairs of rear wheels, and a spare set of front wheels. This should give me enough scope for a deep run in the competition (provided I actually win fights this time, gotta break that 6 loss streak eventually)

https://i.imgur.com/L6uyv6U.jpg
You can actually see where the right shaft-side nut dug into the plastic. Given the surface area of the square nut this is really quite remarkable!

Hopefully these new wheels prove to be a success, if the design holds up better I may consider selling them in the future. My main reliability issues have been with the sheer power of the motors, but this should be mitigated with lower voltages or the more standard BBB brushed sets, though not without further redesign. I actually ended up purchasing a set of the BBB brushed sets with the intention of being replacements, and was surprised to find that the flat on the shaft was significantly smaller than on the Rotalin gearboxes (the flat starts roughly 0.5mm down from the diameter of the shaft on the BBB gearboxes, compared to 1mm on the Rotalin gearboxes. This is only really a concern for press fit wheels such as the design I use)

https://i.imgur.com/ZXaDVN1.jpg
The new horizontal config ready to go, along with the standard setup in the background.

https://i.imgur.com/dx0EmUh.jpg
Bonus picture: this is how I've been adjusting my forks to be flush with the ground, using washers with base-mounted mounts. Keeping a flat edge on the floor reduces the chances of getting caught in seams on the floor.

Nice work! Love the CNC machine with the adhoc setup, might invest in something similar (albeit beefier for the weight classes I typically play around in) for when I've moved house - was your one particularly expensive? I might invest a bit of time in setting up some forks along the lines that you've done.

See you there!

Thanks! The machine I ended up getting was a Genmitsu 3018-PRO, which was surprisingly affordable at around €220, so certainly less than £200 (link here: https://www.sainsmart.com/collection...18-pro-diy-kit). For about €100 extra there exists the PROVer variant, with an easier assembly and safety features such as limit switches.

The 3018 did take me a few weeks to get running, as there was a lot I needed to do first such as assembling it, making a spoilboard, purchasing the necessary surfacing and cutting bits, though a lot of these can be purchased on the Sainsmart site instead. It's also worth learning some Fusion 360 for its CAM software as well as a PC to CNC interface suce as Universal Gcode Sender. There were plenty of tutorials online available however, and once all the prep was done every plastic piece I've made has worked flawlessly.

The most important tip I've been given for operating with HDPE was to use these bits here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tungsten-Ca.../dp/B07D6GJVYW, 1/8th single flute end bits. The single flute should prevent the HDPE from heating up compared to the dual flute cutters, and lead to better chip clearage and a smoother finish overall.

Also finally if you were in the market for something bigger, the 3040 variant hovers around the £700-800 price range, but gives you twice the machining area, with room to upgrade should you wish to work with metals tougher than the softest aluminiums.

Looks great! I am really tempted to get a CNC but I'm put off by the mess and the fact that there's a decent 345x345 CNC router at the Hackspace here in Nottingham. For less than £200 it's hard to say no though, and 300x180 is enough to make substantial parts at FW scale as well as complete chassis as BW.

Good luck at BBB!

BBB Beetle Brawl 2022:

Most of the work for the robot had been completed two weeks before the competition, it was just a matter of picking it all up along with printing some spare parts. I did end up forgetting to bring a few parts along however such as grub screws and certain nyloc nuts however, and while I was able to obtain all the necessary spares, reassembling the robot, along with helping with the arena and venue setup, meant that I only made the tech check with minutes to spare. I had assembled the horizontal setup, as it was faster to assemble, which proved timely considering my first round matchup…

Fight 1 VS. Beetlejuice, Everything’s A Drum:

Some very interesting designs in this fight. Everything’s A Drum for this event was actually a combination of two different cluster teams; EAD which was two drums, and Frenchiest Fries which were two wedges, so for this fight I was fighting against one drum and one wedge. Beetlejuice meanwhile was a melty brain spinner built by brushless wizard and gearbox despiser Gareth Barnaby, which had the potential to hit harder than any other opponent if he could get up to speed. On the basis of the horizontal threat, I figured the wedge config would be best, along with the static claw up top (able to withstand more punishment, but unable to grab things).

https://i.imgur.com/1hJzhpm.jpg
Babróg ready to face off against its opponents in the opening melee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi_LMNpcot8
Fight starts at 15:20

As the fight started, my main goal was to prevent Beetlejuice from spinning up, and after taking a few blows I was able to consistently stay in contact with him, the last thing any melty would want. I was concerned about the weapon on EAD, but unfortunately the drum half seemed to be having issues, and couldn’t spin up, while the wedge half seemed hesitant to go anywhere near the danger zone that was Beetlejuice (probably rightly so). Without the grabbing claw, I found it tricky to get a good grip on any of my opponents, though I did manage to hook Beetlejuice and hold them up for a while at one point. Eventually the pit button was hit, and I wasted no time in corralling the melty brain towards the pit. After that, I got a pretty lucky shove, and managed to pit both cluster bots simultaneously, winning me the fight!

https://i.imgur.com/C3IKfOU.jpg
The bot after the match. Outside of some light scuffs on the wedge, the bot was effectively in perfect condition.

Needless to say, I was delighted after that fight to finally end my 6-fight losing streak. I checked the wheels after the fight to see how they held up, and while they seemed to have a tiny bit of slip, they had held up far better than before, which was a massive improvement in my book. The wedge had survived the few hits Beetlejuice had managed to land, and I was able to keep him under my control about as effectively as you could hope. The worst part of that fight was that Beetlejuice was one of the machines I wanted to see working the most, and it pained me that it was against my best interest to let him spin up. It would have been great to see EAD working at full power as well, though sometimes these things just happen in the opening fights.

Fight 2 VS. Igor:

After a longer than usual wait for my second fight (not being in the redemptions was a pleasant surprise), my second opponent, Igor, promised me a good old fashioned control battle. Igor was a well driven, 4WD lifter, with good pushing power and a weapon that could win the ground game if I wasn’t careful. I put on the standard config for this match, hoping my work on my front forks would pay off, and that I could flip over Igor rendering their forks less useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi_LMNpcot8
Fight starts at 49:06

This fight was probably some of the best driving I have ever done in any event, and I chalk a lot of it up to changing the rates on my sticks for this event to 50% for forward/back, and 20% for turning. I spent most of the fight getting under Igor, and most of those opportunities came from getting around to the sides and rear of them. I remained cautious throughout the match; I didn’t want to burn or stall the servo out without a perfect lift, and I didn’t go too hard towards the pit for fear of putting myself in. A key advantage I had was that Igor’s forks had a tendency to get stuck under the arena walls, while mine were too steep to do the same. Right before the end of the fight, I managed to score the only good lift of the match, flipping Igor over, and guaranteeing me the win through a judges decision, though I feel confident that I’d have won the fight without that lift regardless.

https://i.imgur.com/8rWI2Xj.jpg
A shot of the bot after the fight with the front panel taken off. The rubber seems to be vulnerable to being torn off in certain conditions.

The wheels after this fight had definitely become much looser, and I could feel it in the way the bot drove in the last 20 seconds of the match, so I made the decision to swap over for a pair of my spare wheels. The grip that they offered though really proved crucial in winning that one though; even with Igor’s four 22mm brushed motors and Banebots wheels, I was able to shove them around with just the two 1806/22mm motor/gearbox combos. It was also reassuring to see how effective the front of the machine was in out-wedging an opponent while also not compromising my driving, even as it was essentially the exact same design that I brought in November.

Fight 3 VS. End Boss:

My third fight, and certainly the scariest challenge so far, was End Boss, a vertical spinner driven by Shane Lale. End Boss had already sent several competitors hitting the roof at this stage of the competition, and while the weapon wasn’t the hardest hitting of all the verts at the competition, it was certainly one of the most stable, a scary combination when mixed with Shane’s excellent driving. The one advantage I had going into this fight was how often End Boss tended to gyro dance when turning, allowing me a better chance to get around the front of the robot and avoid the weapon entirely, and hopefully allowing me a chance to get an OOTA or a pitting.

https://i.imgur.com/kx8Fpd8.jpg
Me and End Boss trying to get a feel on who will win the ground game with their forks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi_LMNpcot8
Fight starts at 1:11:41

The fight started out incredibly well, Babróg’s superior speed and evasiveness allowed me to keep out of the path of End Boss’s weapon, and when we did come face to face I seemed to have an advantage in getting under him. At one point I had managed to get End Boss high up onto the wall; flipping him would have been risky, though the twin grabbing arm setup allowed me to avoid his weapon, so my main plan was to run down the clock until I could get a pitting. Unfortunately, a third into the fight, one side of drive gave way, and this basically sealed the deal on the match. I tried to keep squared up with End Boss, but he kept getting to my sides more and more, and after some clever driving on his part, just one big hit from the spinner sent me out of the arena.

https://i.imgur.com/iR7VCMU.jpg
Babróg after the fight. Outside of some slight chewing on the side rollers, only one hit was scored by End Boss on the front corner of the bot.

It was certainly disappointing to go out in the tournament once again due to drive issues, but I didn’t mind as much due to how much better Babróg did in this tournament. It helped later on that End Boss, the machine I had been beating until my self-inflicted injury, went on to win the entire tournament, keeping up my streak of getting knocked out by tournament winners! The robot was in good shape after the fight; the wheels were still in decent shape despite the dragging, and the new side bumpers held up far better than the old 3D printed ones. What had gone wrong was that I had forgotten to change the plastic gears to metal in the first stage of the gearbox, once the gears shredded I had no connection to my drive. A quick swap of gearbox teeth and the machine was fully functional again in no time.

https://i.imgur.com/HhRV2RW.jpg
The gearbox failure in question. A little hard to see, but the top half of those plastic teeth are gone.

Fight 4 VS. Contradiction, Qry About It, Mini Spinny Mk III:

For the first time in a while, I had a robot that was ready to go again for more action, and I decided the best way to see if the new improvements had worked would be to throw the robot into an all spinner whiteboard and see how much it could take! I elected to go for the horizontal wedge to protect against Mini Spinny Mk3, and while previously I needed to use the static arm to make weight, I decided to assemble the grabbing arm assembly instead, and to my pleasant surprise it was now exactly on the weight limit!

https://i.imgur.com/cYnBIGU.jpg
The grabbing arm and the wedge both on the robot, making the weight limit right down to the gram!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNx8gszLv9M
Fight starts at 14:54

Lots of stuff to keep track of in this fight. I initially tried keeping away from the vertical spinners, focusing mainly on Mini Spinny, and letting the others wear themselves out for a while first. After Mini Spinny seemed to get beached, I elected to try and flip it back over the right way, leading to a semi-successful lift before getting hit from behind. At this point Babróg continues to get hit over and over again, but it’s here that I really got to see the improvements in durability pay off, as the bot continues to self-right and remains driveable well into the match. Finally, near the end of the fight, I try to self-right, but the corner of the wedge gets stuck on the side walls, and so I’m unable to make it to the end.

https://i.imgur.com/iPjrwB1.jpg
Damage to the side, you can see where a screw was ripped right through the baseplate.

Rather remarkably, the robot remained perfectly functional after all of the abuse. The new wheels I attached for this match seemed to have survived all of the tumbling and even one direct hit, the side bumpers got chewed up but kept broadly in one piece, the new plastic lifter arms didn’t shatter like the old 3D printed ones, the wedge took multiple direct shots with barely any damage, and the servo still showed no signs of any damage whatsoever. Of all the fights I had this event, this was the one that left me the most satisfied, as it told me that the bot was capable of taking multiple direct shots from dangerous weaponry and remain functional.

https://i.imgur.com/wh7vocw.jpg
A weird hit. For a brief moment, it seems the bot flexed long enough for the power LED to come halfway out of the bot. Not meant to happen at all!

Conclusion:

In terms of success, this was probably the most satisfied I had ever been with one of my robots barring Barróg Doom’s 2019 FW champs run. It’s taken me five beetleweight events and three different robots to finally feel satisfied with both the design and functionality of a BW entrant of my own creation. Babróg basically did everything I wanted it to do: it was durable, the weapon was effective, and the drive was easy to control and very effective. The loss to End Boss was unfortunate, but the cause of the loss was swiftly addressed, and I feel now that with the right fortune, I now have a control bot that could be in with a shot to win an event for the very first time. The icing on the cake was being given the “best driver” award at the end of the event, which came as a bit of a surprise, but was some assurance that I had gotten my nerves that sometimes plagued me in the past under control.

Going forward there’s very little I’d change about Babróg. The next event I’ll probably go to will be Rapture this coming July, and short of remaking some of the more damaged parts of the bot it’ll be going in as is. I do intend to do a fourth BW design though, mainly so my Dad has something to compete with himself. Once again a huge thanks to all the BBB crew, this event was a blast, and I look forward to the next event I can attend with them. They work tirelessly to put on the lions share of events in the UK BW scene, and deserve far more praise than they get!

https://i.imgur.com/ilzEhwF.jpg
The chewed up bot after all the day's fighting. Not quite as shiny, but still perfectly functional, and ready for whatever the next competition will bring!

Robot Rebellion 2022 Event Report:

With Robot Rebellion 2023 coming up rather soon, I'm just doing some housekeeping and making sure all of my build diaries are up to date.

Robot Rebellion 2022, also known to many of the competitors as “Rapture”, was a rather unique BW event for a few reasons. The first of those being that the format of the event involved robots in heats fighting in a round robin format, before the top scorers in each heat moved on to a single elimination best of 16 bracket, closer in style to a FW event such as those run by Robodojo or Robochallenge. The second was that along with me running Babróg, basically unchanged from Brawl 2022, this would be my dad's first ever BW event, running Schnake, a four-bar grabber robot that was only finished a few weeks before this event.

https://i.imgur.com/vi3rjaA.jpg
Babróg looking fancy going into the event.

All fights are taken from the re-upload of the official Robot Rebellion stream, though there may be some video issues due to it not being the raw footage. Special thanks to Nick DSC for the Herculean task of timestamping all of the fights!

Babróg: Fight 1 Vs. Aggro Wobba Smidders Edition

https://youtu.be/47Bcr_reDWg?t=9288
Fight starts at 2:34:48

Due to the format of the tournament, every robot had a bye for one round, and so Babróg’s debut was delayed slightly. I was looking forward to the first fight, as Aggro Wobba Smidders Edition was a great control robot to spar with and see if the robot still worked as well as it did at Brawl. Aggro was super well driven, and had good traction, but a speed advantage and my front forks were able to help me massively in getting underneath consistently and try to lift them up. There was one scary moment where I ended up near the pit, and Aggro forced me to go the long way around, but I was able to basically reverse our positions, and catching them when they tried to escape allowed me to get my first pitting, and the first win for the tournament.

Babróg: Fight 2 Vs. Zephyrus

https://youtu.be/47Bcr_reDWg?t=15212
Fight starts at 4:13:32

Zephyrus was an incredibly unique robot to fight, with its “face spinner” design easily able to reach some of the more vulnerable parts at the top of Babróg. I ended up going with my horizontal config in the end due to being able to meet the spinner with my wedge, and would take things slowly while waiting for an opening. Ultimately after a little testing of the water, Zephyrus managed to land a hit on the sides, but this hit would end up causing Zephyrus to go flying around the arena, ultimately losing a weapon belt and getting stuck on its face. A slightly anticlimactic way to end, but I was happy to have a second knockout under my belt.

https://i.imgur.com/8bO52eC.jpgBabróg post-Zephyrus. Some weird geometry, but Babróg seemed to take it well.

Babróg: Fight 3 Vs. Ultra-Violence

https://youtu.be/47Bcr_reDWg?t=20617
Fight starts at 5:43:37

Ultra-Violence was probably the scariest spinner in my heat, but I had seen in previous fights that day that they were struggling with the weapon hitting the floor and bouncing the machine up and down. Fortunately for Ultra-Violence, this was the fight that the issue would be solved, and thanks to the diagonal side forks on the robot, getting around and under was incredibly challenging. I was only able to get around UV once due to some fantastic design and driving by Ari, and whenever Babróg was flipped, they wasted no time in going for any vulnerable points while the robot self-righted. Not surprisingly, I would lose the judges decision, though there was still a lot to be happy about the fight. The weapon assembly took several direct hits but stayed functional, and the only reason I lost drive was due to plastic gears in the gearbox which I thought I’d replaced; annoying to suffer, but at least not repeatable with a more metal replacement.

https://i.imgur.com/rM0l8BJ.jpg
Babróg post-Ultra-Violence. Mostly functional, and took the beating well, though several parts are quite bent up now.

https://i.imgur.com/8vwYnNa.jpg
Once again, my inability to spot plastic gears cost me. Grrrrrr!

Babróg: Fight 4 Vs. Sproing

https://youtu.be/yg7puE8x-10?t=2205
Fight starts at 36:45

While Schnake was out of the tournament, Babróg was still gunning for the top 16, and following Ultra-Violence winning its last fight, I needed a KO against Sproing to guarantee a spot in the bracket. By this stage of the competition Sproing had been heavily rebuilt multiple times, and so I started the fight with a mindset of at least giving Sproing one shot to show it’s weapon still worked (I’m well aware of the pain springs bring). After that, I was able to push Sproing around pretty easily with my forks, and nearly lift him out of the arena. I had a few scary moments bringing him close to the pit, but ultimately a driving error allowed me to get Sproing into the pit, securing my top spot in the group and allowing me into the top 16!

Babróg: Fight 5 Vs. Bby Shrekt

https://youtu.be/yg7puE8x-10?t=13001
Fight starts at 3:36:41

I knew that going into the round of 16 that the likelihood of fighting some really nasty robots would shoot right up, and that was proven when my next opponent was one of the favourites for the event: Sam Price’s Bby Shrekt. Sam was smart in how he fought by running his weapon slower for most of the fight, reducing the gyro effect that I usually depend on to get around opponents. I was never really able to get around, and while Babróg could take the hits, my front piece had been bent in such a way that I couldn’t get underneath Bby Shrekt as easily. Eventually we ended up in a position where Bby Shrekt had its back to the OotA zone with the weapon ramping up, so I decided for a hail mary and ran straight at him, hoping my opponent would recoil up and over the wall. It nearly worked, but I ended up getting sent across the arena, and stuck in a position where I couldn’t get my wheels on the ground, leading to my elimination from the competition.

https://i.imgur.com/B8rGhCM.jpg
Babróg post-Bby Shrekt. Another case of being very bent but still functional.

https://i.imgur.com/0PYGLNx.jpg
The fork mount which caused the bending at the front. It was less the front piece being bent up and more the base plate being bent down.

Bonus Fights: “Grabber” Melee and “International” Melee

https://youtu.be/yg7puE8x-10?t=17498
Fights start at 4:51:38 and 5:50:57 respectively.

With both bots out of the main competition, we had a bit more time to get some more driving time and iron out any more bugs with whiteboard battles. The first whiteboard was going to be mainly a rematch between Step Up 3D and Schnake, but very rapidly evolved into a general grappler fight with a few lifters as well. Then right after, there was due to be a fight involving all of the “International” competitors, and as a result we barely removed our bots in between matches. These fights were great as a torture test for both bots, as we could see how they’d manage a variety of weapons with no real time to tweak or charge things in between fights. Schnake got some good charges in, and Babróg finally managed to actually land some suplexes!

Conclusion:

This was probably the most hectic event for us since the UK FW Champs in 2019, and there was a lot to learn for sure. For Babróg this had probably been its best event yet, with three wins, two losses against very good opponents, and even winning its heat with minimal damage sustained throughout the event! The wheels have proven to be much more durable than before, and the only true mechanical failure suffered was from something I thought I had swapped over earlier.

This was another really fun event, and I’d like to congratulate all involved! Both robots will be appearing new and improved for Robot Rebellion 2023!

https://i.imgur.com/nwurywo.jpg
Not the most suplex-heavy event, but there will be more!

Nice design... Thanks for the information on Discord.

BBB Beetle Brawl 2023:

After skipping out on any more BW events following Robot Rebellion, I was refreshed enough again to make my way over to the BBB Beetle Brawl 2023 event. Following on from decent runs in the last two events, there was very little I really wanted to change on the robot. Outside of printing and casting the usual spare wheels, the only other thing I did was to change the baseplate and improve the spacers underneath the forks so that the mounting blocks were less likely to bend back.

https://i.imgur.com/AgWDxIk.jpg
Babróg looking all nice and neat ready for its fights.

Fight 1 Vs. Nitrite, Ares

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QfRrKpV6Xg
Fight starts at 11:31

This would be a fun first match. Nitrite was a vertical spinner originally built by Sam Price, which already tells you that the robot will be capable of hitting hard, and Ares was a front hinged flipper with a tanky front, decent drive, and some really good ground game. After a decent suplex and a scary moment near the OotA zone, Ares managed to get Nitrite out of the arena, turning the fight into a 1v1. After some delicate driving from both of us and an unstick as a result of me getting stuck over Ares’ open flipper, I managed to get a decent slam on Ares that took out its link, granting me the win and sending me straight to the round of 32.

https://i.imgur.com/9swnHal.jpg
Babróg Vs. Nitrite (left) and Ares (bottom)

Fight 2 Vs. Ray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QfRrKpV6Xg
Fight starts at 57:18

My second fight placed me against Ray, a positively adorable control bot built by Pip. From the start of the match I seemed to have the edge in the ground game, and was able to get Ray stuck up against the side wall. No one wanted the fight to end like that, especially me, so I freed Ray back onto its wheels, mainly in the hope of landing a proper suplex. In one of my attempts at a lift, I managed to get one of my lifter forks into a wheel guard, and was able to get Ray into the pit, though going in myself was not part of the plan. A fun match for sure!

https://i.imgur.com/DtbBzje.jpg
Babróg Vs. Ray

Fight 3 Vs. Saw Loser: 2 Saw 2 Lose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QfRrKpV6Xg
Fight starts at 1:15:00

My next opponent was the most recent revision of Alex Mordue’s Saw Loser, a very nasty hammer robot. We last fought in 2019, back when Léim Thart couldn’t survive getting knocked on its back, but Babróg has so many aspects of its design taken from Saw Loser, as well as many other design quirks of my own, so I was feeling much more confident going into this one. The first half of this match was actually pretty back and forth, with neither robot being able to effectively win a head on battle, and so we were both reliant on getting around the other. I was feeling a little more confident going into the second half of the match once the pit had opened up, but unfortunately I lost a side of drive shortly afterwards. I tried limping around and keeping my front end pointed forward, but there was only so much I could do, and so 2 Saw 2 Lose was finally able to land some heavy hits onto the front end. I lost the other side of drive with about 30 seconds to go, and so looked to be counted out, but since 2 Saw 2 Lose kept engaging with me, the fight went to the judges, not that it would have changed the outcome. Babróg was once again out at the top 16 stage!

https://i.imgur.com/RxUM97v.jpg
Babróg Vs. 2 Saw 2 Lose

Conclusion:

https://i.imgur.com/N36SJUO.jpg
Babróg post-event, with most of the damage coming courtesy of 2 Saw 2 Lose.

It was hard not to feel a sense of déjà vu leaving the competition in much the same way I did last year, and it was initially disappointing to go out in the same manner as I did in 2022, but upon further inspection it was actually much better than that. In terms of armour, Babróg continues to take hits very nicely; 2 Saw 2 Lose landed some of its hardest hits on me, but none of them inflicted any damage to the internals inside. What’s more, for the third event in a row, the wheels weren’t what failed for me. On one of the sides of the drive, it was the pinion on the motor that failed for me, and on the other, the bolts holding the gearbox to the motor had loosened enough for them to disengage. These are all problems that are easy enough to fix from happening again, and I take it as a sign that things are always improving if my mode of failure keeps changing every time I compete.

Overall another really fun event! I’m looking forward to bring Babróg and a new version of Schnake over to Robot Rebellion 2023, which should be the next event on my schedule. I’ve also got some fun upgrades planned that should increase my odds against vertical spinners greatly, so watch this space!

https://i.imgur.com/UiiTluL.jpg
Another hit from 2 Saw 2 Lose. Hammer bots tend to deliver hits in pretty funky ways!

Robot Rebellion 2023:

Robot Rebellion 2023 would see both of us returning in a very similar manner to 2022, with minor upgrades to Babróg and an entirely new Schnake to test. The only major change done to Babróg outside of redoing the sides and front panels, was a change to the wheel hubs that used the actual hex Pololu hubs pressed into the 3D print instead of the dual square nut system I’ve used since Brawl 2022, which surprisingly didn’t increase the total weight all that much. To improve reliability, I redid all of my brushless motors and gearboxes to make sure I would have no more shaft failures, following as exactly as I could the instructions laid out by Alex Mordue (at this stage, who else?). Mercifully, tech checks went far smoother this year, and so both bots were ready to fight with minimal fuss.

This year the format of the competition was slightly different: each of the 12 heats would contain four robots in a round robin format, with the only rule to the order being that the winners in the first round would fight each other in the second. Points were no longer being used to score a heat by the method of winning or losing, merely if the fight was one or lost. The robot with the best record would go through in each heat, with the second place robot going to a three way playoff to determine the final entrants to the top 16. There was also the potential for “lockdown” melees to determine heat order should three robots have the same W:L record by the end. Finally, each heat would have a seeded robot competing. Remarkably, Babróg was actually the seed for its heat after making the top 16 last year, though it should be noted that we were the only team in our heat without an overall BW competition win!

https://forum.bristolbotbuilders.com...2_690x318.jpeg
Babróg and Schnake ready for the tournament!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JQt0huekM
Here is the heat Babróg took part in, which has all of its tournament fights.

Babróg: Fight 1 Vs. Chucky

Babróg’s fight was against Chucky, a 2WD lifter robot that was really more like a flipper, sharing most of its non-weapon components with Icebreaker, one of the most dangerous BW’s in the UK scene right now. With both our powerful brushless drives and aggressive driving styles, this fight promised to be like a cartoon battle in a dust cloud, and it basically was. Chucky definitely had the raw speed, and got Babróg airborne far more frequently, but Babróg’s wedge and more stable platform allowed it to profit off of the failed whiffs of Chucky, and nearly get it into the pit halfway through (incredible job by Chucky to get out of that situation by the way!). It looked like the fight would go to a very close judges decision, but ultimately Chucky ended up driving into the pit with less than 10 seconds to go. A slightly anti-climactic ending, but I was happy to take a win against such a strong opponent.

Babróg: Fight 2 Vs. Baby Dead Bod

Babróg’s second opponent was Baby Dead Bod, a horizontal spinner that already had an event win under its belt with Battle in the Burgh 2, and was a robot that had been refined across multiple Robodojo events to become an incredibly reliable and hard hitting machine. Babróg had sort of come across horizontal spinners before, but Baby Dead Bod was a real test, spinning up very quickly, and often able to hit above the protective wedge and dig right into the more conventional plastic armour. I was very happy that my more solid plastic grabbing arm was justifying itself in this match, taking direct hits but still able to hook an opponent. After about a minute of a solid beating, Babróg finally got the grab I had been hoping for, stopping the horizontal spinner at last. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite able to suplex Baby Dead Bod out of the arena, and in my haste to go for a pitting before having to put my opponent down, I misjudged my charge, and ended up in the pit first. If this was antweights I may have gotten the win, but at beetleweight level the loser in a double pitting is determined by who hits the bottom first, so unfortunately Babróg lost the fight.

https://i.imgur.com/0ucHF8l.jpg
Babróg Post-BDB. Quite a few gouges out of the plastic for sure!

This was one of those really frustrating losses where the disappointment comes from knowing how close you came to a win, but there was a lot to be happy about with Babróg. Baby Dead Bod hit like nothing else Babróg had ever fought before, and despite all of the gouges and bending in the weapon, front, top, and side panels, Babróg remained fully 100% operational. All that was needed was to pull out one of my old side panels, and Babróg was ready to be converted to its standard config for its final fight.

https://i.imgur.com/12ddQPY.jpg
A top-down view, showing the gouge taken out of the horizontal grabber arm, as well as how much the side has bent out.

Babróg: Fight 3 Vs. Oubley

Babróg’s final match would be against the robot to eliminate it at its first event nearly two years ago, Oubley. The drum spinner had suffered a much tougher run this time around, suffering from issues while also taking two losses in its first two matches, but still remained at its core the same robot that made deep runs in previous tournaments. I went into this match as cautious as I dared to be, trying never to engage head on with the weapon, and slamming the robot whenever I managed to get around it. Oubley’s wheelguards made for a great grabbing point for much of the fight, before I finally managed to stop the weapon from spinning. I got my lifter forks into the space between the beater and the main robot, and with some more careful driving this time around, managed to finally get the pitting I had tried for earlier. This was probably the most complete performance Babróg had put on in a fight yet, and the win meant that I remained in the competition with a 2-1 record.

Heat H 1st Place Playoff: Babróg Vs. Chucky Vs. Baby Dead Bod

Babróg had a far more explosive match coming its way with its heat being the opposite of Schnake’s, where one robot went 0-3 and the rest went 2-1. The winner of this match would move into the round of 16, while the runner up would take 2nd in the heat and go to a playoff rumble for another shot at a top 16 spot. Babróg ran its horizontal config, which slightly compromised it against Chucky in the battle for low ground, but we both seemed to recognise that Baby Dead Bod was the robot that was more dangerous to expose yourself to. This was very much a battle of choosing your fights, not wanting to expose yourself to too much damage, but also being careful not to lose points in aggression. Both me and Chucky were taking hits from Baby Dead Bod, and we both took it in turns to hold Baby Dead Bod whenever the other opened up a spot. Neither of much took any structural damage, but Baby Dead Bod certainly did a great job keeping the weapon going, landing hit after hit, and keeping as aggressive as possible, only losing a wheel in the last 10 seconds of the match.

https://i.imgur.com/BFtAw0J.jpg
Babróg following the melee. Very similar gouges to the first fight with Baby Dead Bod, that bot really has become super consistent when it comes to dealing damage.

The fight ultimately went to the judges, and after plenty of deliberation, it was decided that Baby Dead Bod took the win, while Chucky took second place, knocking Babróg out of the tournament. I feel like I put on a great performance, but I do think it was the right call looking back at the fight and seeing how Chucky had a slight edge in pinning Baby Dead Bod down. Definitely no shame in losing to either of these machines, and with minimal damage, Babróg was free to compete in other side competitions.

https://i.imgur.com/DophG7Y.jpg
A side profile of the bot post-melee. You can really see how many ways plastic can flex in small ways that add up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPfIzpd8qYo
This video should have all of the fights both Babróg and Schnake took part in during the competition. If you just want the non-tournament fights, then you can skip to 13:32.

Annihilator Playoff: Babróg vs The Chilli Daddy. vs Yomi vs Cryptomnesia vs Data Breach

With more time to play with now, Babróg was free to compete in a new side event for this year: the annihilator. The rules of an annihilator are simple: many robots enter (usually 6), and fight until one is knocked out. After a small time for repairs, the fight recommences, and continues like that until one robot remains. There was so much demand for a spot in the competition that play-in matches were organised to make the tournament, so Babróg was put against Data Breach, Cryptomnesia, Yomi, and The Chilli Daddy. (the full stop is important) with the goal of being in the surviving three. I mainly focused on trying to disable Yomi while The Chilli Daddy. made short work of many of the other competitors. I only really interacted with TCD for a short time in this fight, but the overcutter not only took some chunks out of my wheels, but also snapped a corner of my titanium wedge clean off. The wedge was already cracked from day 1, but it’s quite remarkable that after all the abuse it had suffered against robots like Daedalus, Mini Spinny, and Baby Dead Bod, that it would be TCD to finally break it. Babróg and TCD therefore qualified, as did Data Breach, which would unfortunately have to pull out due to damage sustained in this match.

https://i.imgur.com/7c91y1H.jpg
The damage TCD dealt in just one fight. Babróg is really getting tested by horizontals this tournament!

Annihilator: Babróg vs The Chilli Daddy. vs Bop! vs 7th Circle vs
Brüg Deluxe vs Data Breach (Had to drop out)

There are four fights here, but instead of summarising them individually, I’ll just do them all in one go. In the first and second rounds I mostly focused on the control bots, mainly Bop!, while 7th Circle had its link sniped by TCD, and Brüg Deluxe lost drive after something inside it broke. The third round was a much more even affair, with each bot focusing on the other at different points, and despite some more damage taken to the wheels, it would be Bop! that would end up losing power.

The final of the annihilator had me up against The Chilli Daddy., a very scary undercutter by the same builder of fellow grab-and-lift Luchador, which had only just made top 8 at NHRL a few weeks prior. This fight went way better than I had expected from the previous encounters; TCD never really seemed to get some good connections with the weapon while running blade-up, and I was able to get Babróg consistently around the wedgelets and keeping TCD off balance. Despite a failed grab, I was able to keep TCD from hitting any dangerous parts on the robot, and finally managed to both hit the pit button, and get TCD into the pit. It had taken a while, but Babróg had finally won something, even if it was only a side competition!

https://i.imgur.com/nBk68cm.jpg
A shot which shows the chunks taken out of my front wheels. Very happy with how durable they seem to be.

Whiteboard: Celtic Rumble

The final fight both Schnake and Babróg took part in was a Celtic rumble, consisting of (mostly) robots from the non-English parts of the islands. There wasn’t a huge amount to say about this one honestly, Schnake spent most of the time stuck under Cormoran (as did half the field it seems), and Babróg had some fun tussling with Arcticfurno and Chucky, but ultimately drove itself into the pit. Bit of an anticlimax, but they can’t all be winners.

Conclusion:

Robot Rebellion 2023 was certainly an event with a lot to teach us. For me personally, this felt like Babróg’s strongest event performance-wise, even if on paper it had done worse than last year. I had no losses as a result of damage, and the robot remained smooth to control throughout, rather it was driving errors on my part that resulted in most of my losses, be it from self-pittings to just not being aggressive enough. I left this competition feeling pretty confident that the robot, as it was, had a deep run in it somewhere, it just needed everything to come together.

https://i.imgur.com/RAkqS3T.jpg
A rather knackered Babróg following Robot Rebellion 2023.

So that was Robot Rebellion 2023! Apologies for the delay in posting this, it’s just been a challenge to find the time to sit down and properly write all of this down. I am unsure how much time I will have in July 2024 for what I’m assuming will be Robot Rebellion 2024, but I definitely intend to have both me and my dad competing at a BW event together at some point in the following year. Stay tuned in the coming days for some more event reports!

BBB Beetle Champs 2023:

I arrived at this event quietly confident that I had gotten Babróg performing at the level which could make a deep run in a tournament, and so brought the robot over basically unchanged from its Robot Rebellion configuration. Outside of replacing some worn down parts, I did one design tweak with the lifter forks. One issue I kept having was that the rubber was very easily torn off of them following a hit, or would break away, and there wasn’t really any pattern that would work on the mill that would fix this. My solution was to print off a pattern similar to what I use on my wheels, then screw that onto the flat lifter fork plane, and then do my moulding work. This was such a small batch that I didn’t even use the black dye I usually incorporate into my builds, but the final product was exactly what I was hoping for, and ended up weighing exactly the same as the original design.

https://i.imgur.com/AsTVPlx.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/2s9igWm.jpeg
The old and new forks side by side. I didn't have time to mix the normal black dye I use, so enjoy the transparent demo.

https://youtu.be/htxdbdbtcik?si=U9vGDfjtvaC6_fM6
All fights can be found in this video, timestamps included with each fight.

Fight 1 Vs. New York Slice, Bonkers

Fight starts at 1:58.

https://i.imgur.com/oHLPeXb.jpeg
All of the participants pre-match.

My first matchup was basically the worst case scenario matchup I could have for a melee. Bonkers was from the builder of Rudimental, a very impressively designed lifter, and Bonkers was basically that chassis design with a nasty vertical spinner. This would normally call for me to run forks, but the other bot in the fight was New York Slice, a pretty nasty undercutter which would easily bend or rip my forks out, calling for a protective wedge instead. In the end, I decided to go for the titanium wedge, and while it did provide some insurance against New York Slice, the lack of any good ground game and a proper grabbing setup would really cost me. An early hit from New York Slice somehow managed to get me stuck upside down, and Bonkers had pushed me up against the wall that made it impossible to self-right from. Thanks to sheer luck, I managed to get knocked back onto my wheels, and despite my best efforts against Bonkers, his drive and wedgelets were too good for me to fight, and after a few more hits I ended up stuck once again, and so started an event with a loss for the first time in a good while.

https://i.imgur.com/vW1OfQL.jpeg
Babróg post-match, some small nicks, but nothing too serious in the end.

The damage from this fight wasn’t too bad in the end. Some nicks had been taken out of the front piece and grabbing arm by Bonkers, and the shaft connecting the grabbing arm to the lifter forks had been bent. The entire robot seemed to have been slightly twisted by some of the big hits as well, but these were easily fixed by just reassembling the bot into its standard config for the next match.

Fight 2 Vs. Autonomouse

Fight starts at 38:02.

My second match was fortunately much less punishing. Autonomouse was an ambitious beetleweight, in that it was a fully autonomous robot with a lifter, that had unfortunately just come from a fight starring Sniper and Stratus, mangling said lifter in the process. This meant that the robot I ended up fighting in the redemption round was reduced to little more than a Roomba, and was more of a chance for me to polish up my driving and lifting, which I definitely noticed were both rusty. The fight was over after a minute, but credit does have to be given to John Frizell for not only bringing in such a unique robot, but for also getting it back up and running in such a short space of time, and I am glad it got some time to drive around in the arena.

Fight 3 Vs. Digestive

Fight starts at 49:04.

https://i.imgur.com/IlYcjcF.jpeg
Me and Digestive pre-fight.

My Round of 32 fight was against Digestive, a nasty and really quick vertical spinner from Robert Karpinski of Bourbon fame. The fight started strongly enough for myself, keeping mostly out of the way of the spinner, and managing to get under and flip Digestive once or twice, keeping the fight relatively in my control. Unfortunately, each hit the machine took at the front seemed to bend the baseplate further downwards, making it harder to get under Digestive, and eventually peeling part of the baseplate down, making it very hard to drive in a straight line. I was never really able to get the points back after that, and despite regaining some momentum when the pit went down, and nearly getting Digestive in there in the last 5 seconds, the match went to the judges, and Babróg would go out of the competition at this early stage.

https://i.imgur.com/KcvlRGv.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/IowiLxD.jpeg
Some tasty pics of the damage post-fight.

The damage to Babróg following this fight was among the worst it had suffered so far going against a vertical spinner. Most of the damage had been suffered on the left side of the bot, with large gouges in the side wall, some having bent some screws and barrel nuts. The baseplate had really become warped, especially at the front where it had peeled, and some of the fork mounting blocks had been pulled off of the screw threads. This had happened occasionally in previous fights, but this time really made me aware that the design may need to be redone. Finally, the 3D printed mount for my servo had actually ended up cracking at some point, though fortunately not in a way where I would not be able to self-right. To get the bot working again, I decided to just glue the mount back together, and replace the left side with a spare (the second time in two events I’ve had to swap that side out).

https://i.imgur.com/f1PGe26.jpeg
The baseplate post-event. The bit sticking up was the cause of the robot losing so much mobility.

Fight 3 Vs. Gold Dust, Aggro Wobba, Delta V


Since I had gone out so early in the competition, I decided to sign up for a whiteboard. This match promised to be a fun one, with a fellow control bot Aggro Wobba, and two nasty spinners; Sam Elliott’s Gold Dust was a drum robot I had been wanting to fight for years (weirdly we keep getting eliminated from competitions at the exact same time), and Delta V, a really nasty new build which had already won the Subterranean Showdown event this year. The highlight of the fight was the opening, where despite being unable to right Aggro Wobba and get them back in the fight, I was able to drive both Delta V and Gold Dust into a corner, before lifting Gold Dust up by its drum. Eventually though I had taken a hit which bent my front baseplate down again, and from there I had to deal with the usual control issues.

https://i.imgur.com/CvsC1Lu.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/zNdVrnH.jpeg
Babróg post-final fight. Some rather choice chunks taken out, and one of the fork blocks totally ripped off of the baseplate.


Conclusion:


https://i.imgur.com/1RWp1FW.jpeg
Another piece of damage I only picked up on a few days later. No idea which fight the bulkhead cracked, though it doesn't seem to have been anything serious.

This was yet another fun event for myself, though it was pretty disappointing to have to deal with another low placement in a competition. I’m at a point where I do feel like most of Babróg’s failure points have been ironed out; nothing in the drive system fails anymore, the armour can take hits from every type of weapon and remain effective, and the lifter is nearly indestructible and can control opponents somewhat reliably (shout out to the new rubber mounts which survived an event with barely a scratch). This event definitely made some issues with the design stand out more than ever however, and these are much deeper problems to solve. Self-righting is slow enough to leave the machine vulnerable to free hits, the robot can get caught against the arena walls in positions where it is unable to self-right, and there are times where, whether down to the weapon belt slipping or the servo not having enough power, I just can’t get a good lift, and suplexing an opponent out of the arena seems near impossible. I still like the machine, and feel like it can do well if everything lines up, but I definitely feel like the opposition has greatly improved since 2021: in six events, Babróg has never done better than a top 16 finish at a competition, and meanwhile, control robots such as Boom Zoom, Luchador, and Grab Crab have all finally started to win events. I would like to continue to mess around with control bots, but I have now gotten to a point where I would like to re-do the design of Babróg to try and get some of that competitiveness back into the design.

https://i.imgur.com/NnkvkVb.jpeg
By far the best lift I had achieved during the competition. Glad that Babróg got to go out on somewhat of a high note at least!

Babróg V2

In 2020 I designed my third and, by far my most successful, beetleweight Babróg, a scaled down version of my featherweight Barróg Doom. Despite numerous updates to the components within the bot to improve reliability (the wheel hubs being redesigned twice, the servo hacked for continuous rotation, milled HDPE components), the actual design has remained relatively static since I initially competed way back at BBB Beetle Champs 2021, with basically none of the internal components changing. Last year's champs however left me with a lot to think about regarding what needs to be improved going into the future, and while I did attend BBB Brawl 2024, it was only in a commentator role, while I worked on the first proper redesign for Babróg!

https://i.imgur.com/NHxUFdb.png The mostly completed CAD done in Fusion 360. Learning the new workflow could be painful at times, but I am very glad I persevered.

Going into designing the CAD (my first fully done in Fusion 360 after being finally unshackled from Solidworks), I had three main goals for improvements coming from my previous experiences:

• A more powerful lifter motor to replace the Robostar servo (as well as the large dual UBEC), capable of lifting greater loads far quicker, and without any fear of slipping mid-lift.

• A design that would, at the very least, be far less vulnerable to getting caught in positions where it could not self-right. This came down to having a lifter that could reach further backwards, as well as wheels that could grip the floor even if the robot was not completely flat on the ground.

• A link system that would instead mount to the main bulkheads of the robot as opposed to the top panel, which would make assembly and disassembly far less finicky.

For the lifter motor I could have gone for something more state-of-the-art used in some of the best current lifters, such as the SHV800 servo used in Luchador, or the Strangbox used in Grab Crab. However, these both came with an additional cost investment as well as minor reliability risks, and since I already had two 37mm 80RPM Pololu motors from running Schnake, I decided to use them as they had plenty of power as well as having a fantastic track record in BW robot combat. These motors however presented two significant technical challenges, that would shape the packaging of the entire build:

• They are big.

• They are heavy.

I also wanted to move my rear wheels back further out of the rear of my robot, which would mean going past the 5mm backplate as well as the rolled parts of my side panels. While I was somewhat tempted to upgrade my drive to something more powerful such as Repeat Maxes or Ranglebox Mars’, I had finally gotten the 1806/Robostars running 49mm custom cast wheels to a point where their reliability was perfect for my needs, and any upgrade would have required more internal space as well as being heavier, two things which were at an absolute premium in this design.

https://i.imgur.com/Wy4W6a2.jpeg The new 37mm motor installed, alongside the smaller and lighter 380mAh 4S battery, down from Babróg V1's 500mAh.

Since the original Babróg with the motors in the rear already had its wheels as far back as they could go, the only way I could push the wheels back was to move the motors to the front wheel, so that the driven wheels could have their drive axle positioned far enough back to stick out of the back. This also gave me more space to play with concerning the lifter motor, with one caveat; no matter what I did, the 37mm motor would need to stick out of the bulkheads somewhere due to its size, and with the robot already being shorter at the rear, it would push into either the wheels or the drive belts somewhere. My solution to this was to make the belts longer, and place tensioners at either side to create a U-shape, allowing the motor to fit in the newly formed gap. Technically I only needed to do this on one side, but for tensioning and driving consistency I decided to mirror this design, which would also in theory create a greater area of contact between the pulleys and the belt, reducing the risk of slipping further!

https://i.imgur.com/DGTDDn8.jpeg The new drive design, reusing the old wheels and with very simple tensioners consisting of 3D printed rollers and a small amount of Vaseline.

https://i.imgur.com/ZheOPWq.jpeg The wheels hanging out of the new design. This keeps some of the roller protection design, but also provides a major boost in mobility.

With the distance between the lifting motor and the lifter axle being even shorter than before, belts were no longer possible or necessary to reduce and transfer the necessary torque, so I decided to upgrade to gears instead. With some advice from Jack of Luchador and The Chilli Daddy. renown, I was able to design some double helical gears with an overall reduction of 11:16, and while I had a batch printed in some PLA-ST on my recently acquired Prusa Mk4, I was able to get a friend to print a batch in Onyx, which would stand up to basically anything the lifter could throw at them, as well as several type of weaponry. Outside of the redesigned lifter gear, I basically lifted the entire rest of the lifter assembly wholesale from the original Babróg, with the exception of properly milled antler grabbing arms (now with nails hammered into them for extra grip), and replacing the main 8mm steel lifter rod with a titanium shaft, a surprisingly cheap upgrade that saved a whopping 12g, which is more of a statement to how much weight I was chasing nearing the end of this build.

https://i.imgur.com/n525OG8.jpeg The new lifter design, as well as the new position for the motors.

For the front of the robot, things remained conceptually similar, but with small optimizations. The fork mounts were totally remade on the CNC mill, and the hardox forks were redesigned to be lighter while maintaining the same functionality. While the front panels were basically unchanged and interchangeable with Babróg V1 (plus a tiny bit of additional weight saving), the baseplate and side panels were redesigned to not stick out as far forward before, to prevent scenarios where they would warp the front of the bot following a hit, as happened in my matches against Ultra-Violence and Digestive. I was also finally able to experiment with TPU for the first time, which allowed me to print a thick TPU wedge I could use against horizontals in place of the titanium wedge. This wasn’t quite as durable as the titanium wedge, but it was wider, scraped the ground better, and was easy to replace provided I made enough spares.

https://i.imgur.com/R6rcE9L.jpeg
The new TPU config, coming in at around the same weight as the old titanium config.

https://i.imgur.com/uNCgmgj.jpeg A pretty good comparison between the positions of key internal components between the two bots. From the outside you'd never know how different they were internally.

Fitting the same fuse/link hybrid into the robot proved rather tricky with the space provided with the new design. With the back of the bot lower down and the wheels now at the same level as the link, I barely had enough space to squeeze the link in near the top of the bulkhead, still relatively far away from any nasty hits (and also with a brand new TPU link door). As for the rest of the electronics, I needed to buy a new smaller 380mAh battery to barely fit underneath the motor, and what can only be described as a shelving unit was designed to fit the drive ESCs as well as the new lifter ESC, with a small BEC just floating around on top. Getting all of the wiring to fit was somehow even more of a challenge than with the original Babróg (with a special shout out to the lifter motor wires and the transmitter), but eventually all of the components were fitted, and to my absolute relief, it all worked!

https://i.imgur.com/Ym4d4qN.jpeg
All of the electronics packed in to the robot, somehow in an even more compact state than before.

https://i.imgur.com/wPOSdMw.jpeg
The new TPU link door at the back, just barely able to fit.

And so this is the condition Babróg V2 was declared good to go. The initial tests of the bot proved promising, being easily able to lift the weight of a beetle and more with a good amount of speed, and this combined with the increased range and grippy spikes should make suplexes easier than ever to achieve. The drive meanwhile controlled just like before, and should keep everything that made the original drive so effective at controlling opponents. Barely making it into the weight limit with all of its different configs, it was ready to start competing at events again, and hopefully make the step up the original bot never managed, even if I was already aware that there was likely a long road of iteration ahead of this new Babróg as well!

https://i.imgur.com/ZVYwWfJ.jpeg
The new Babróg, ready to compete in Robot Rebellion 2024!

BBB Beetle Champs 2024:

Generally I like to do these event reports in chronological order, however Robot Rebellion is an awkward event to talk about, both because I actually don’t have all of the fights filmed on me, and the event is filmed as part of a web series online. While there’s nothing like an NDA for the event, I do appreciate the work that goes into the extra editing job, so I’ve decided to postpone that event report until all of my fights have been released (which should hopefully be at least before June 2025, fingers crossed). I will however say that I did decide to alter my design somewhat for Babróg leading up to the champs as a result of lessons learnt from Robot Rebellion.

https://i.imgur.com/ecqiBkJ.jpeg
Babróg ready to compete with its new front end setup.

The main change made to Babróg for this event was to the fork setup at the front. The metal forks I had been using up until now were good at scraping the ground, but in the current BW meta they were just too short for far too many opponents, and if I got any kind of a hit which bent the baseplate or the front piece, I would be in a situation where it was even harder to get an opponent up onto the front. I was also very impressed by the performance the TPU wedge had in some fights even where it was up against verts, and so decided to bolt long TPU forks straight onto the front of the robot. This came with a few advantages:

• I could have as many spare parts as I would bother to print.
• I could change the angle of the fork exactly so that they would press and scrape into the ground while also allowing me to keep four wheels on the ground as well.
• I could mount thinner TPU wedgelets in between the forks to stop any other forks from getting under the front of the bot that way, and these could be moved up and down depending on what I saw fit.
• Because I no longer had the weakening slots in the front piece, I could actually fit longer lifter forks into the design, giving me a few more centimetres of reach.

Outside of one final reprint of a TPU wedge (much thicker and sturdier than the first attempt), I was ready to fly over!

https://i.imgur.com/tm9Z3Ph.jpeg
Babróg getting funky with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuTDlxLULt0
All fights can be found in this video, timestamps are included alongside each fight.

Fight 1 Vs. C.D.G., Demon Spirit MKII:

Fight starts at 6:04.

https://i.imgur.com/u6aK5dY.jpeg
Babróg attempting to wrangle C.D.G. Special shout out to Mike Brazier for all the mid-fight photos you'll see in this diary!

This first match was a perfect time for me to try out my new horizontal config against a pretty nasty undercutter in C.D.G., while also seeing if the setup could stay competitive against a control bot like Demon Spirit MKII. Ultimately Demon Spirit suffered from control issues throughout, and didn’t end up being much of a threat in this fight at least. C.D.G. meanwhile was landing some very decent hits on Babróg, and although I managed to flip them over, a direct hit from there on could have done some nasty damage to the lifter. Fortunately for myself C.D.G. struggled with mobility while upside down, and midway through the battle they seemed to lose their weapon. I was unable to land any grabs on either opponent due to my static arm config, but I was able to control my opponents enough to take a win via judges decision. Outside of two nice hits from C.D.G. onto the side and wedge, I had taken no critical damage, and so could take it easy enough while waiting for my round of 32 fight.

https://i.imgur.com/ohqN2tu.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/8IvZxMH.jpeg
Damage from the first fight. The new TPU wedge held up rather well, and you can see from the one rear shot that C.D.G. hits quite hard when everything engages in the right way.

Fight 2 Vs. Amethyst:

Fight starts at 59:01.

https://i.imgur.com/gmt3i6s.jpeg
Me and Amethyst pre-match.

My round of 32 match had me up against Amethyst, another undercutter style robot. This robot was one of my picks to make a deep run into this tournament owing to the nasty spinner on it, as well as the successful runs this team had made in previous tournaments with the EVA robots. Unfortunately Amethyst suffered weapon problems in its first two fights, and was never able to get its weapon up to spinning speed. This left me with a setup choice to make; I could run forks to counter the solid drive base and forks that were still working on Amethyst, or I could run the horizontal wedge to counter the spinner should it be working. Ultimately I elected to run the forks, which ended up being the right call.

Even without a working weapon, Amethyst proved to be a very effective control bot to face, getting under Babróg multiple times and threatening to dump me into the pit once or twice. I was very happy with how the new front end was working in this match, and at one point I managed to get under Amethyst in a head to head charge, something that likely would not have worked with the original Babróg. I managed two very nice lifts, one getting agonisingly close to giving me the suplex out of the arena I have been chasing for so long, but ultimately I lacked both the reach and momentum to pull it off. Eventually I managed a slightly lucky charge on Amethyst next to the pit, and some careful shoving landed me a spot in the round of 16!

https://i.imgur.com/kIvm5tz.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/lmWs5Za.jpeg
Some lifts. Plenty of good shots from this one!

Fight 3 Vs. Antithesis:

Fight starts at 1:14:30.

https://i.imgur.com/ZKkSJx8.jpeg
Me and Antithesis pre-fight.

My next match was up against arguably the standout performer of the tournament, Antithesis. This crusher had gone through numerous iterations leading up to this tournament, but the builder Jed really seemed to find the sweet spot this time round between drive power, an effective front end, and a nasty crusher capable of piercing top armour, as it had done in both of its prior fights.

https://i.imgur.com/sTwKrxX.jpeg
Antithesis with a forceful grab on me (compare this to some of the images above to see where the main lifter bolt should be).

Within seconds of the fight starting, Antithesis managed to hook onto the bolt of the lifter mechanism, and crushed the entire bulkhead right down deep into the robot (it turns out hollowing out your bulkheads can be a negative in this one particular instance). Antithesis had to let go after the 20 seconds were up, and somehow the lifter mechanism seemed to spring back into place. Afterwards we continued to have our tête-à-tête’s, but while we both had similar drive power, my TPU fork setup seemed to come out the loser against the steel forks of my opponent, and eventually Antithesis managed to hook onto the front end of my wedgelet setup, and skilfully manoeuvred me into the pit, knocking me out at the round of 16 stage of a competition once more. Fortunately I had no lasting damage from the excruciating attack from Antithesis, but if I had a nickel for everytime I lost to a crusher in the BW scene via pitting and surviving with minimal damage, despite a grab that got into the innards of the bot, then I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

https://i.imgur.com/pOtrhQD.jpeg
The more gentle bite that would ultimately take me out of the competition.

Fight 4 Vs. Bob Toss, Fatal Deviation, Siren:

Fight starts at 1:43:06.

Normally once I get eliminated from a tournament around the top 32/16 stage (read: everytime), I like to throw Babróg into a spinner melee to test the robots durability, but since I already had a good idea of how durable this iteration of the robot was, and I was going to be going to another tournament in a short time anyway (Battle in the Burgh 4), I decided instead to enter a non-spinner whiteboard. However, I did find another way to spice up this match. Throughout the day I had been providing commentary for many of the fights throughout the tournament, and there was a group decision that I would provide live commentary for the fight that I was currently competing in.

https://i.imgur.com/yIUk9yM.jpeg
The chaos of the start of the fight.

The other competitors in this whiteboard were all lifters, including the bricky Fatal Deviation, the angular Siren, and the artistic Bob Toss along with its minibot Beat the Devil. This match was pretty hectic even without trying to provide my own commentary, with each machine managing some decent shoves of their own. I failed a few times to get an effective suplex on my opponents, though I was generally able to shove opponents around. The fight started to favour me once the pit button was pressed, and a fortunate shove on Bob Toss eliminated one of my opponents. Shortly after, I managed to flip both Siren and Fatal Deviation with a single flip, something which I reckon would have been impossible with the old setup. Siren was shoved into the pit shortly after, and in what may have been my favourite move in the tournament so far, I managed to suplex Fatal Deviation straight into the pit itself. I finally attempted to suplex Beat the Devil out of the arena, but failing that and running low on time, I elected instead to shove my final opponent into the pit.

Conclusion:

This was another really fun event for me, and provided me with further info at what this new Babróg is good and bad at. The positives to take away were ones I had previously established at Robot Rebellion, but could be confirmed once again. The new lifter has been a direct upgrade from the original machine, with stalling and slipping as issues being removed entirely. The additional length of the lifter forks has been a small upgrade, but it does seem to have made scoring a grab as opposed to a lift slightly more consistent. The new TPU parts have also performed very well, with the new front end capable of actually matching some modern day forked front ends, and the TPU wedge looks to straddle a decent balance between taking hits while remaining viable against fork-heavy designs.

Some design limitations do remain however; the horizontal config continues to struggle at hooking onto and lifting opponents, my drive platform continues to lose effectiveness fast once an opponent gets under me (though the cutouts at the rear do grant me a small amount of additional control), and I can still get out-wedged by control bots in head on scenarios. Many of these issues are hard to solve due to my design goals, since Babróg has always been designed to counter spinning weapons over control-based designs, and this tankiness comes at the cost of recessed internals that limit the angles at which I can effectively drive. This competition ultimately didn’t give me too many opportunities to face spinners, though the fact I performed as well as I did against so many control bots does give me some confidence regarding this platform going forward.

And that was the BBB Beetle Champs 2024. Once again, my thanks to all the folks who do all of the behind the scenes work, and to all of the competitors who put on a hell of a show. Special congrats to Antithesis for the remarkable run the robot had this time round, Impulse for its great performances as a control bot against some nasty spinners, and Frenzy for its entertaining run to the championship! I look forward to updating you all on how I performed in Burgh, probably my most anticipated competition of the entire year!

https://i.imgur.com/A4f2cDo.jpeg
The crushed bulkhead the day after the tournament. No visible signs of damage at all, it's mad how the elastic properties of HDPE play out sometime.

Battle In The Burgh 4:

My final event for 2024 was one that had been on my bucket list for a long time, Battle In The Burgh. Any excuse to go to Scotland was always appreciated (helps to have family in Edinburgh to stay with!), and the idea of a multi-day event always appeals to me. Unfortunately this iteration of the competition had to be shortened down to a single day, but the field still seemed like a super interesting one, with a lot of heavy hitters and robots you usually don’t see as often in English events. Babróg went over almost literally untouched from BBB Champs, save for a quick once-over of everything to replace any cracked prints, clean out any pulleys, and to tighten or replace any screws needing attention.

The format for BITB 4 (or “Burgh”, as the cool kids would call it. Allegedly. Possibly.) was a fight night format, where every robot would compete in three 1v1 matches, drawn at random at the start of the day. Points were awarded for wins, and victories via judges decisions were worth less than KO’s. From there, the top 16 scorers would move on to a single-elimination bracket until a winner was crowned. There would also be a tag-team competition available for those who were knocked out before the top 8, so based on previous pedigree I was a shoe in for taking part in that.

https://i.imgur.com/KnkvnwX.jpg
Babróg ready for its first fight!

Fight 1 Vs. 3 Robots In A Trench Coat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh5vomIzIu4
Fight starts at 00:00.

My first match was against my pit neighbour, 3 Robots In A Trench Coat, a modular design capable of swapping its internal components between three different armour and weapon configurations. I was actually asked by the builder Alys which config she should run, and I answered honestly that the wide TPU config would be the most effective in getting underneath and beaching me. This would also be a solid test for my new TPU wedgelets config in how effectively I could get underneath such a squirrely opponent, even when I may not have the reach advantage.

https://i.imgur.com/O93FOzU.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/Yhgc297.jpeg
Some pretty intense back and forth between the two of us in this fight. Full credit to Reese from RBS Media for the fantastic fight photos!

This was a fight of sweaty palms for both of us I reckon. 3 Robots had an advantage in raw drive power, but this left the robot to wheelie quite a lot, even with a large magnet embedded in the central wedge. My main goal was to keep my front end pointed at 3 Robots at all times, as if they got around me, I could get pushed into the pit very quickly. Getting a solid lift on 3 Robots proved remarkably tricky due to its shape, as well as how often a wheel tended to be on the ground. This was one of my more boring drives, but control was the aim for me, and I felt like that was the major factor that pushed the fight in my favour. 3 Robots did manage some very nice slams on Babróg, and both of us danced around the pit numerous times, but ultimately it ended up going to the judges, and Babróg managed to start the competition off with a win.

Fight 2 Vs. Dearc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZgJs0tsRXw
Fight starts at 9:21.

My second match was against another control bot in Dearc, run by Chris Thompson, and designed by Ari Callister. Given that Ari’s other robot, Frenzy, had won the last competition I was at, I knew that Dearc would be a solid bot, and it’s a credit to Chris that he got the bot working as well as he did going into this fight after surviving a full distance fight against the nasty horizontal spinner Just a Wee Slice. Dearc would run its long forks in this match, so this would be another major test as to how well Babróg could perform against metal forks.

https://i.imgur.com/87exnKG.jpg
Me and Dearc coming together.

The start of the fight proved pretty cagey, I seemed to have a small advantage in the ground game, but I was unable to get a decent grab on Dearc, while they managed a single good grab on me, but were unable to convert it to anything major. I felt like I was starting to build some momentum in my favour, but unfortunately I seemed to lose a side of drive a little over halfway into the fight. All I could do at this stage was to keep my front facing Dearc at all costs, and this led to the one and only suplex I would achieve in the match. The fight ultimately went to the judges once more, and by a split decision, I had done just about enough to secure my second win.

After the fight, I was left with the time-consuming process of dismantling the broken drive side and to see what was the issue. I finally discovered that the failure was that the metal teeth on the pinion gear had been completely stripped, removing the connection from the motor to the gearbox. On one hand, I was happy that the failure was not in the same manner as previous failures such as plastic gears failing or the pinion coming loose from the shaft, but this did have me wondering how much I could use each drive setup before they needed to be replaced. I do also suspect that the gearbox may not have been entirely centered on the motor, and that may have been a cause of the increased wear, but I feel like I would need to get some more data before jumping too early to conclusions.

https://i.imgur.com/GSCPwJb.jpg
The completely rounded out pinion. Trust me, getting this out was a pain.

Fight 3 Vs. Medusa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EUD6U_19iA
"Fight" starts at 00:42.

My final fight night match was meant to be against Medusa, a very solidly built horizontal spinner. I saw this as a perfect time to test out my new TPU horizontal setup, although with all of the repairs I needed to do with the motor replacement, I was slightly concerned that I would run out of time to make it to the match. The repairs were eventually completed however, and I was ready to complete. Unfortunately, Medusa has sustained too much damage to its electronics in its previous matches, and so with my proof of functionality, I took a third win via technicality. Not the cleanest run of fights I have ever had, but I was happy to have made it in a very healthy state to the round of 16!

Fight 4 Vs. Daisy (the Cow):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5CxL9sKMY
Fight starts at 00:00.

My top 16 match was against Daisy (the Cow), another lifter bot which interestingly ran a shuffler mechanism for drive, allowing the robot to be heavier than standard designs. From previous matches, I had noticed that while Daisy was invertible, it couldn’t use its lifter to self-right, so once I secured the first lift, I wasn’t going to go for another unless I knew I could take full advantage of it. I had one scary moment near the pit where my fork nearly got stuck on one of the lips of it, but I managed to free myself. Eventually I got another nice lift, went for the pit button, but instead managed to suplex Daisy out of the arena, scoring my first suplex OotA and making it past the top 16 for the first time in one move!

Fight 5 Vs. Just a Wee Slice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5CxL9sKMY
Fight starts at 7:59.

My quarter-final matchup would finally put me up against a spinner for the first time this tournament, and it was a nasty one in Just a Wee Slice. This horizontal spinner had put basically all of its weight possible into its weapon setup, and had landed some nasty blows against other competitors, including fellow control bot Bubblegum Lift which it had beaten in its round of 16 draw. I was originally going to run the new TPU wedge against him, but after a short conversation with Thomas Weatherley of Baby Dead Bod fame, I decided to run my (slightly worn at this point) titanium wedge, a decision I reckon in hindsight was critical to my performance in this battle.

https://i.imgur.com/sBaP7eA.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/AIWxjKX.jpg
A lot of dynamic shots from this fight!

Right off the bat, I noticed that Just a Wee Slice was bouncing off the titanium wedge as opposed to the plastic, which was a major confidence boost for myself. While dangerous, at certain speeds, I could almost “dribble” Just a Wee Slice around into the arena wall to slow it down, and the more dramatic hits it would score against me wouldn’t do any lasting damage. The static grabber arm was taking the hits just like it should, although I was certainly taking more and more damage to the lifter forks, and even the lifter gear as Just a Wee Slice kept ricocheting into the taller parts of the robot. Eventually, my lifter mechanism was actually disabled, though I was still able to corral my opponent thanks to the static arm, and I started to get better at keeping Just a Wee Slice under pressure while it tried to get up to speed again. Once the pit went down, my chances of success went up dramatically, and after a few close calls, I finally managed to hook onto the rear of Just a Wee Slice, and with some careful driving, got them into the pit, securing a round in the top 4 in triumphant fashion!

https://i.imgur.com/sTKLF9E.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/juvzpPX.jpg
Babróg finally getting Just a Wee Slice into a vulnerable postion.

The damage in this fight was certainly significant, but most of it was exclusive to the horizontal config. There were plenty of slices into the top and side panels, but nothing some light carving with a box cutter couldn’t fix. The main lifter gear had actually cracked across some of the teeth, but none of the teeth engaged during a standard lift in that orientation, and I had a spare I could swap to anyway. The lifter forks had taken a proper beating, and the reason I lost the ability to lift was because one of the lifter forks had been bent underneath the front panel. This may have been an asset however; normally this config does not allow any grabbing motion, but because the lifting fork was stuck in place, I was able to bend the threaded bar connecting the grabbing arm to the forks just enough to bring the grabbing arm down on Just a Wee Slice, which is likely what made the difference in securing the win!

https://i.imgur.com/ETaEHVB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/hnGNaVB.jpg
Some decent damage from the match, mainly against the front and top plates, the lifter forks, and the lifter gear.

Fight 6 Vs. Ray:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5CxL9sKMY
Fight starts at 16:04.

My semi-final match was against fellow control bot Ray, whose builder Pip was also having their own dream run in the competition. This would actually be a rematch from BBB Brawl 2022, where I managed to take the win via an early flipping, and controlling the match from there. Me and Pip have been friends for years, and I reckon we were both happy to have made it so far, and would both want to see whoever made it through to win. However, I regret to say that at this stage of the competition, once I flipped Ray, I had no intention of righting him, and so was able to control the match rather anticlimactically from there. Without a self-righter, Ray was unable to use that wedge to any effect, and after an OK lift I rather clumsily “suggested” Ray out of the arena. Probably one of the lamer fights in my career, but it was wonderful that we both made it as far as we had, and I tried to take that positive momentum into the final match of the tournament!

https://i.imgur.com/yHFiGAm.jpg
Potentially my lamest win, but flipping a wedge-y opponent after having a win all but assured has cost me a grand final position before, with Barróg Doom at the 2019 UK Featherweight Champs!

Fight 7 Vs. Prototype:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5CxL9sKMY
Fight starts at 19:51.

Typical to the rest of the tournament, my final match was against another control bot, this being the front-hinged flipper of Prototype. Designed to be a beetleweight version of Team Immersion’s design seen in other weight classes, this bot had been skillfully driven and maintained by Will Owen throughout the day, and was on the verge of taking a tournament victory at the first time of asking. From previous experience I knew these robots tended to have an incredibly effective ground game (just ask any of the wooden floors these bots compete at), so this would be the ultimate test to see if my new TPU forks could keep up with the best.

https://i.imgur.com/8Bzhsep.jpg
Two control bots duking it out.

The fight started relatively evenly, with Prototype likely having a small edge in head to head engagements, though we were both quick enough to avoid any major shoves from the other. Eventually I get a nice suplex on Prototype and am able to pin them while upside down for 10 seconds to buy me some time and secure some points from the judges. Things seemed to be going well for me, but then unfortunately I end up getting a fork stuck under the pit, and Prototype immediately goes for the pit button as a result. I was trying everything I could to try and free myself as the siren was going down, but fortunately, the half-second where the latch under the pit releases and the flap falls was just enough to drive away, despite Prototype’s best efforts. I’m then able to get a suplex off of Prototype and guide them bit by bit into the pit, securing the victory and taking my first overall event win in the beetleweight category as a result!

https://i.imgur.com/nGGuYLW.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/3KFgBPl.jpg
Potentially "the money shots" of the tournament, certainly for Babróg at least!

Fight 8/Gladiator:

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

I was already ecstatic from taking the win, but as soon as we were unloaded from the arena they were already packing the arena for the final fight of the event, a gladiator where the last robot moving would take the win. Eager to see how well the standard config would fare against horizontal spinners, and to see where the limits are of the smaller battery, I decided to throw Babróg back into the arena with no modifications from the last fight, not even a battery swap.

So much happened in this fight that it was honestly hard to keep track of it all. Babróg managed to get several suplexes on opponents, and took some direct shots from horizontals with minimal damage outside of some bent bolts. I was trying to drive conservatively to save the battery, but whenever an opportunity presented itself I seemed to have enough pushing power throughout the match. Eventually the fight came down to a three way battle between myself, Just a Wee Slice, and 3 Robots, and despite a few direct hits, I was eventually able to get Just a Wee Slice stuck in a position where it couldn’t drive back down. Unfortunately after some back and forth shoving with 3 Robots, they managed to shove me down into the pit and take the win. Would have been nice to have won to complete the clean sweep, but I was just amazed that Babróg had made it as far as it had on only a 380mAh 4S battery!

https://i.imgur.com/jMqsjKp.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/I5LRa5Z.jpg
Babróg post-gladiator. No photos of the bot in between the final and the gladiator, but no damage was suffered in the grand final, so a comparison would be pointless.

Conclusion:

Battle In The Burgh 4 went about as well as it could have for me, and I was just absolutely delighted to finally have a decent result under my belt, and be able to justify so many of the design decisions I have made over the past few years, particularly with the new Babróg. The lifter continued to work wonders, often able to lift two opponents simultaneously, and although the 37mm brushed motor would likely be the first place to look if I wanted to save weight, I’m happy to stick with it given its power and reliability, at least until the brushless equivalents become as dependable. The TPU wedgelets perform exactly to my needs as of right now; they scraped the ground without impacting mobility too much, were durable even when taking hits from horizontal spinners, and could compete with a range of both metal and other TPU forks, wedges, and wedgelets, and all without having needed one replacement over the past two events. The drive also continues to provide sufficient control while remaining competitive in pushing matches, which is especially impressive given how many of my opponents were using more powerful drive systems such as Ranglebox Mars’ or Repeat Max’s, so I don’t have to worry about the headache that would be fitting these larger assemblies into Babróg just yet.

There are definitely some design considerations to keep in mind for myself going forward however. The only mechanical failure I suffered during this event was one side of drive going during the Dearc fight, which had been the first drive failure I had since I believe Brawl 2023. For the first time, the failure point didn’t seem to be down to plastic gears or an insufficient shaft, but rather a metal component wearing itself down (although there is still a small possibility that the gearbox may not have been perfectly concentric on the motor, causing excessive wear). There really isn’t a lot that I can do to strengthen the motor further beyond replacing the shafts after a few events, though I am unsure exactly how many events this drive setup participated in. A more frustrating matter was in how long it took to fix the issue: Babróg’s motor mounting has always been more for weight and durability over easy access, but removing the wheel, motor, and ESC’s took basically all of the time I had between my second and third fights, and this may not be time I would have had if this failure occurred later on in the bracket, much less having any time left for other repairs. Weight will be the main issue in redesigning this mounting system to be more modular, but this may be necessary to prevent an embarrassing loss in the future. I also have to acknowledge that in the past two events, Babróg has only really faced horizontal spinners, and while it has performed admirably against them, it’s performance is still a pretty glaring unknown given how much verts make up the metagame nowadays. My performances against control bots should be a decent indication that my ground game should be competitive against verts given the design similarities, but once again, more data is needed.

And that concludes this rather long event report! Once again, it has been such an amazing feeling to finally have a win under my belt, and I intend to keep iterating on Babróg to suplex my way through to more victories. It has also been really cool to see many of the design tricks I have been using in this weight class appearing in other builds, such as the increased amount of grab-and-lifters and front-mounted TPU wedgelets, though I can by no means take total credit for these changes. I’m just happy to see control bots finally seem to retake their place in the meta after so many years of near-total spinner dominance, and look forward to more of these designs achieving success. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend BBB Brawl 2024 due to flights being too expensive as a result of a Six Nations match, but I hope to be able to compete at a multi-day event within the next few months, and have an entirely new design planned for later this year, using a design I’ve never tried before. Special thanks once again to all of the crew who made BITB possible, including the organisers, marshalls, and commentators. Also special shout outs to Ray and 3 Robots for their remarkable runs, Percussive Maintenance XL for continuing to develop beetleweight axes way past what a lot of us believed to be possible, and Sabretooth for designing a melty-brain twin horizontal and (mostly) getting it functional!

https://i.imgur.com/nPeMUNj.jpg
Babróg finally victorious at a beetleweight event!

Robot Rebellion 2024:

So this build log has been slightly delayed for a couple of different reasons, but there is a lot to cover, so hopefully this one will be worth the wait! Like previous years, this event had us running a Babróg and a Schnake, except this time both robots were totally new and untested going into this weekend, with this being Babróg’s second iteration and Schnake’s third. I’ve already gone into detail with the changes made to both designs in previous posts (basically the only change to Babróg from here and future events was the fork arrangement), but suffice to say I was quietly confident the changes should hopefully allow one of our robots to get back into the top 16.

https://i.imgur.com/X9CBxK9.jpeg
Our pit table this year, in a somewhat organised state.

Babróg: Fight 1 Vs. Yomi

https://youtu.be/vfW5VVRXKPA?si=jr7585XIl2TqenSi&t=510
Fight starts at 8:30.

My first match allowed me to try out my new horizontal config against Yomi, a French horizontal spinner. I did still have the titanium wedge at my disposal, but I had seen others do well with TPU wedges in the years since, and this wedge design would scrape the ground much more efficiently, which could be handy in fights where both horizontals and verts were present. I was pretty happy with how the machine worked in this first match; the robot drove as well as it had before, and the lifter was noticeably faster, though because of the horizontal config I had no motion in the arm with which to grab. The TPU withstood the early whacks from Yomi quite nicely, and I was able to keep the pressure on pretty consistently, preventing him from spinning up until his weapon seemed to lose some power and a wheel fell off. From there all that was left to do was to open the pit, and finish the fight. Not Babróg at its absolute best, but a win from fight 1 is always welcome, and it was a far better performance than Babróg 1’s first outing!

https://i.imgur.com/SxN5RQ0.jpg
Babróg post-Yomi. pleasantly surprised at how well the TPU wedge held out, even if Yomi only really ever managed to land a few key hits.

Babróg: Fight 2 Vs. Schism

https://youtu.be/vfW5VVRXKPA?si=0rMwNNuPAKFQACS6&t=818
Fight starts at 13:38.

My second match would be the long awaited fight between me and Jack Tweedy himself, as he was competing this year with the hammersaw Schism. Schism’s weapon wasn’t too scary for me to face against since I had 10mm of HDPE on the front and back of the robot, but Schism also had an excellent ground game with long forks and a strong drive, and Babróg was still somewhat susceptible to being beached even with some of the new changes.

This match was an exciting one. Things remained pretty calm in the first half, although once Schism got their forks under me, especially from the side, I was basically stuck, which meant that Schism could land some blows that, while not damaging, were certainly scoring some points. Babróg did get some grabs in this match, but due to Schism’s awkward shape, it was able to wriggle itself out freely no problem, and the extra minibot Schism had only made things even trickier. Once the halfway point of the match came I figured a pitting was the only way I could take a win, and while there were some close calls from us both, the fight ultimately went the distance, and the judges called the fight quite rightly for Schism.

https://i.imgur.com/QvMx0lo.jpeg
Babróg after fighting Schism. The whacks definitely had some energy, but 10mm was always gonna be super hard for a hammersaw to tear through. Having such a thick top plate does strengthen the rest of the robot greatly at least.

Babróg: Fight 3 Vs. Digestive

https://youtu.be/vfW5VVRXKPA?si=vkyGODJqHA773Nx8&t=1591
Fight starts at 26:31.

My final fight would be against Digestive, a nasty vertical spinner. If you’ll remember from the 2023 Champs, Babróg V1’s fight against Digestive was the primary motivator for many of the changes I would make, so this fight had the potential to give me a direct like-for-like comparison on how both robots would do, and if my upgrades would truly make a difference.

The fight almost started in disaster, with Babróg getting knocked on its front with the lifter all the way extended. This was a known issue, and it can technically right itself from this position, but I was definitely in panic mode here trying to avoid a count-out. Fortunately, Rob was a massive sport here, and actually helped to get me back on my wheels without using the disc, which I did massively appreciate. From here, the fight seemed to get absolutely mental; I finally started to get under Digestive more often, and even ended up tossing it a few times thanks to its own weapon’s energy, while Digestive started to land some massive hits of its own on the front of Babróg. Ultimately, after a few good exchanges, Babróg got a fork stuck under the arena wall for a second, which was just enough time for Digestive to land a final hit, knocking Babróg out of the arena for good.

This cracker of a fight was the first time the main body of Babróg took damage, and I’d argue it took it rather well. The back and sides took some impact, and while there was some tearing of plastic all of the internals were just fine. The forks had done a decent job, although you could definitely see how warped they became once knocked, though I was ultimately happy with how they held up. Ground game wise though it was still clear that I only had a small chance of getting under Digestive in a head on engagement, and I could see how much of an advantage it was for Digestive to have such a reach in comparison. This was the fight that would affirm my decision to move to TPU forks for Babróg at Burgh 4 and beyond.

https://i.imgur.com/CVKpbwl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/qsPfsrB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/JO9cDdT.jpg
Babróg post-Digestive. The front held together decently well. The main frame is slightly bent, but still super solid, and you can really see how the energy from some hits gets transmitted through the forks.

Babróg: Fight 4 Vs. Toucan, KOS-MOS V2, The Barber Surgeon

https://youtu.be/Cf9Lkf764Xc?si=BY-oM8tFXR5kv9jJ&t=330
Fight starts at 5:30.

Babróg would get its own control fight rumble against a lifter, an axebot, and a wedge in Toucan, KOS-MOS V2, and The Barber Surgeon respectively. I was able to start this match off with a nice suplex on Toucan, the first in a fight for the new machine! I spent a lot of this match trying to right The Barber Surgeon, but unfortunately its geometry didn’t make that easy for me to do. This left me and Toucan to tussle it out, which was a lot of fun, and Babróg finally felt like it was working like a good control bot should, but unfortunately a misjudgement on my behalf ended up with me half driving, half getting shoved into the pit. Bit of a shame, but it was only a whiteboard, and it was great to get some decent fight time in.

Babróg: Fight 5 Vs. Unstoppable Force, Ice Breaker, Freak

https://youtu.be/Cf9Lkf764Xc?si=BPyE4gIst79FBZD9&t=959
Fight starts at 15:59.

Before the event was over, I really wanted to see if this new Babróg possessed the same durability as the original one, and this whiteboard match was the perfect excuse, going against a collection of incredibly hard hitting spinners of all shapes and sizes. Babróg started this one out strongly, the TPU wedge able to get in under everyone, landing a suplex, and taking hits from Freak head on. After a few good shoves Ice Breaked landed several monstrous hit on me, but to my delight Babróg seemed unfazed by the impacts. Fortunately I managed to recover quick enough, and while Ice Breaker was pre-occupied with finishing Freak off, I managed to get a lucky shove in and toss Ice Breaker out as well, taking a surprise win!

https://i.imgur.com/D4Pr2te.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/TKtyG0E.jpg
Some fantastic images from this fight courtesy of Stuart Camp!

This was a great match to see what worked and what didn’t with Babróg, and in this one I flipped, self-righted, got under things, and could take the hits when necessary. The wedge held up remarkably well all things considered, and despite several nasty hits to the back, the battery remained safe, and even with some light twisting, the machine performed like nothing was ever wrong with it. I’m very glad I took part in this fight, especially given how much of a gamble it was, since Babróg’s next fight basically took place right afterwards, and was one I really needed to take part in.

https://i.imgur.com/P0dXTPu.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/gnla12H.jpg
Babróg after the match. The front took the hits pretty well, with the rear still holding out decently.

Babróg: Fight 6 Vs. Data Breach, Sniper, Monterey Jack

https://youtu.be/KKap96w-FP4?si=C4ZzKwZOyh5p6CvS&t=649
Fight starts at 10:49.

So as part of Robot Rebellion 2024, the main side event taking place this year was a homage to the greatest robot combat show to come from China, This is Fighting Robots, and due to my ahem eclectic personality, I was made one of the team captains. There is so much I could talk about regarding this entire competition, but basically the only thing you need to know was that what you saw in the final edit was only about half of the shenanigans I got up to. Regardless, I did end up in an actual fight as part of this event, and this put me up against the two control bots of Data Breach and Monterey Jack, and the horizontal undercutter of Sniper.

https://i.imgur.com/12rEt6F.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/lq3igMZ.jpg
The key moment of the match, and me taking the loss in a respecable and dignified manner.

I was already slightly at a disadvantage since my wedge no longer sat flush with the floor thanks to Ice Breaker’s fine work, but Babróg still drove well, and I think I may have suplexed Data Breach, though it’s not too clear in the edited video. This soon became a fight between me and Sniper, whose spinner was finally tearing genuine chunks out of my TPU wedge. Eventually I managed to outlast Sniper’s weapon, but even then Sniper had a very respectable drive system, and managed a great shove on me, sending me into the pit and taking the win. As can be seen, Sniper’s spinner was perfectly positioned to peel away at the side panels, and while the robot still could drive in a straight line, it’s pretty clear this frame would be retired after this event.

https://i.imgur.com/crgLCxI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/0iO45u5.jpg
The damage to the sides and rear of Babróg. These areas could be bulked up, but weight is always paramount with these competitions, and nothing has failed catastrophically yet, so I'll likely keep this armour arrangement going for now.

Conclusion:

Robot Rebellion was once again a very busy, frenetic, and fun event, and left us with a lot to ponder about for the future. Tournament wise, we basically ended up matching our results from last year, each finishing our heats in third place, but I’d argue that these beetleweights were significant improvements from their predecessors.

The new Babróg may not have gotten the ultimate results, but I was happy with all of the upgrades I had made. The new lifter motor was far more consistent at tossing opponents than the old servo, and while some self-righting woes did remain, this was still a bot that got stuck far less often. The durability of the design remained through the reworking, and the robot remains a machine I have no problems throwing into any battle. The TPU wedge was also a very effective generalist option against spinners, and while arguably no match for the titanium against a straight horizontal, I do intend to bring them to events going forward. The drive system continues to have the beans to remain competitive, and even the smaller battery posed no issues for me. The one change I would make with this design going forward however was the fork system. The forks were still a decent option at getting underneath an opponent, but it became clear at this event how weak it could be against the longer metal forks used by others. Due to the recessed lifter design, I can only have fork so long before they hinder my ability to grab an opponent, so I would need a more novel approach to solve this issue (which you can see in by Battle in the Burgh 4 event report!).

And that’s it, finally done! This one took far longer than it should, mostly on my end being busy with a ton of other personal issues, but even if I’m taking a break from building for the next few months, I can at least use this time to get through the gigantic backlog that was robot combat for me in 2025. A massive shout out to all of the people running Robot Rebellion, and to Jevan and all his crew for the mammoth task of getting the web series edited, it was definitely worth the wait!

https://i.imgur.com/Cfy6DF9.jpg
Babróg looking forward to a relaxing few months without fighting in its future!