News Flash: Paul Cumeo is not the only person guilty of over

So why is he the only one taking heat for it?

Most of my robots would be overweight before they were even halfway done being built. I confess, I am easily guilty of this crime.


And surley Im not the only one. I bet my right AND left arms and legs, all my posessions in the world [including ones I dont own] and all the MONEY in the world at least half the people on this forum have one overweight vapour.

How do they get away with it? According to the logic of one Kody Kunz, it is because they are veterans who have been here long enough and should know what they are talking about. But they dont.

Right, so all of Pauls bots would magically become underweight if somebody else entered them? Get real. I seriously think Frank could get away with entering Kustom if he slapped the weight as 100kg, but if a newbie tried to, hed be kicked out on the spot. On a more serious note, people can honestly get away with slapping high numbers on a robot without even thinking it might be overweight and nobody questioning them. I know this, because Ive done it, and Ive gotten away with it.

...The entire point of this post being, if were going on a witch hunt for overweight robots, lets be more serious about it. Theres no reason Paul should be the only one getting attacked for this. Every overweight robot should be sniffed out. Not just Pauls. Everybodys. And this would leave me guilty of quite a few things, so this post is completley unbiased, I assure you.

I suggest we start making stats more complex. Every single detail, right down to the dimensions to how many screws hold it together to what kind of soda you were drinking when you designed it. Okay, maybe not THAT accurate, but you get the idea.

Playtime with 40mm hardox and 8 LEM200s is over. I say we get more realistic around here. Who agrees?

Oh, and if anybody wants to expand on this, please do, youre more than welcome.

Its not just my logic. Get your facts straight.

You do raise an interesting point, though. Ill have more to post on this later, if I can be arsed to do so.

Very interesting point, and I thank you for defending me Antony.

But my surname is spelt CUOMO and not CUMEO

Just a question Antony:

Is it going to be difficult to include EVERY detail in a stats?

If we do what you say, the only people who are deffinately in the weight brackets are Matt F and Aaron.

Well its pretty simple, I only enter robots I calculated the weight of the parts like we would if we build a real one. Which means I do look at how much a hardox plate weighs and what weight a burkert is, and what a bosch/lem/etek/magmotor weighs en base my choice on that. I know Craig does about the same.

If you put a 15kg axe on a robot and 2 Eteks for drive, forget about Hardox on your robot for armour. If John and Nick cant pull that one of in TerrorHz we will not be able to either.

(Message edited by leorcc on December 02, 2007)

In our defense Tony&Paul, Paul was bloody new when he came here and hence his stats were off, explainable by him being new of course.

People started hammering, one harder than the other, and Paul DID come up with Nitro-Gene the other day, a great bot thats highly accepted within the parameters of vapours, and a bot that might just earn my best new robot 2007-vote!

Say all you want, and yes, people were harsh at times, but all helped Paul gradually evolve as a vapourboteer.

But like several people said, its all about calculating the total weiht of the parts youre using, I honoustly thought everyone did that?

Paul, done the maths, if you were to drop to LEM-130 and maybe lighten the axe to 8kg your in weight but 8kg would need to be the whole assembly.
Eteks are useless for drive, dont bother 6 years of trial and error i can tell you theres no way to run them well enough to give you the advantage of all that power, and another note, Eteks will only give you 15hp each if u put 48v in not 46v

I guess it is unfair that Paul is being criticized for mistakes when most of us make those same mistakes and get away with it. I€™ll admit to never properly weight checking any of my vapourbots to the degree that they should be. But when entering tournaments, nobody has ever said €œno, I€™m not accepting that€ and so I leave them as they are.

Tony, I think you are taking the €œall of mine must be overweight€ thing a little too far. Sure, some of your vapourbots are probably overweight, whether that is by a few kilos or by 50kgs. But in general I think most of your stats are ok. If you are unsure, then just ask someone.

Kody€™s logic is largely correct in my opinion. Those of us that have been doing this for quite some time know what is and isn€™t possible within those weight boundaries. But yeah, just because we€™ve done this for some time it doesn€™t mean we are always right. Its down to the tournament writer to judge if that bot is in the weight boundaries or not and judge its acceptance on that, not by who it is entered by.

But yes, maybe its time to expand on the usual €œlets stick some random parts down here and there to make some stats€ and actually start designing these things properly. This involves researching of parts, stating its true capabilities and properly tallying weights up. Until now, we have generally accepted that everything performs at its peak. But in reality this doesn€™t happen.

For quite a few years, I€™ve unsuccessfully campaigned for a universal set of stats that we should all use. Maybe its time we all come together and decide what we do and don€™t need to know. Maybe its time to scrap the current system, and instead of having 100+ tournaments and teams of 8, we have just a few fully calculated and realistic entries each.

Technically I think most people know what they are doing, and for those that don€™t we now have the likes of Leo and Craig to help out. What I€™m trying to say is, yes, it€™s time we cracked down on these unrealistic issues. But to do so, everyone is going to have to agree to change and do this properly with a whole new system to what we€™ve done over the past years.

The question remains, do we want to change to a more realistic approach or keep it the way it was designed to be - a way for those that lack the funds and knowledge to build the real things to have some fun?

For me I think that a universal stat requirements and the degree of toughness on weight is slightly missing the point.

Personally, when Im lookign at stats I dont read that much into it because if we were going to be entirely accurate then there would be intimate details which frankly, tkae the fun out of the whole proceedings. Say someone entered something with chunky armour and a medium sized flywheel, my initial reaction would be to assume that its overweight if no more detail was given. However, if they merely state that the armour is only that thick on key areas, the flywheel has huge outcuts out of it and the chassis had holes drilled in it to take the weight down I might let it pass if it sounds like it could possibly be sufficient to take the required weight off.

I dont mind if people are vaguely more thorough with seeking out overweight robots, but to be honest, unless you can tell at a glance that it is, the chances are it could easily be made to be within weight.

The simple question of if you built that robot out of bits of real bots, would it be overweight is? for something that is supposed to be fun far more accessible to everyone than meticulous looking up the weight of every component.

I dont personally like the universal stats, because stats are abstract from reality. For a start stats are ore or less universal anyway, so we dont gain anythign from standardising them officially and secondly, an optimised system of stats is going to close to the American system for my liking.

I still think we should stick with the current system, I am really not interested enough to have to compensate additional rules and regulations when at the end of the day this is something for fun.

Personally I believe that in some ways we are doing the right thing with Paul in the fact that we are telling him what he is doing wrong. We perhaps might not be goign the right way about it seeing as most of the tim eI see a lot of people laughing at what he thinks is realistic, but at least we are showing him, albeit in a way almost bordering on sadistic.

if he chooses to ignore us then thats his prerogative, he will either be barred from tournaments or he will have his designs written out of contests very early in my case, as I let anyone enter unless it really is mental, but if I believe it ot be unrealistic it is more likely to get written out with a mechancial failure.

the thing about you Tony is that you really do try to get everything into weight, however I believe youve been around the forum long enough now to know what can and cant be done, so I personally dont bother to help you with your stats, as I believe youre competent, however if you believe your machines to be overweight and post them on a thread and ask us what we think, I for one would be more than happy to help.

I might not have the best designs, but on realism, and with 75% + of my designs, ease to build in reality, I think Im probably one of the forerunners within the forum. thats not arrogance, thats just knowign how much effort I pu into new designs, and how many questions I ask if I dont know the answer.

I am always happy to help anyone, but its up to people to ask for it. Paul has been asking for advice and changing his designs based on the advice given. When and if he stops payign that attention I will stop advising. Its not that hes the only one that does it, but hes the only one that asks for advice.

Just my two cents

Regards,
Will

Boys and Girls. If your vapourbot is feasable arond 100kg i am not going to complain that technically it should be 105kg. Its just that some of these vapours are so excessive that no one with a calculator and a bit of common sense can say i think this will be 100kg. Having 60kg of armour for instance, and still put a FP axe in there.

Just a tip we always use for our own builds: aim for 95kg, leaving you 5kg of buffer for nuts, bolts, repairs etc. If you look at the stats of real robots, you will find virtually no-one builds up to 100kg exactly, the ones that do are very few. For vapours it might also be a good idea, since it adds some realism.

And as someone said before, if your not sure, just ask. We will not tear into your flesh, but keep your stats sensible.

And Paul: Horspower is NOT the end all of robotbuilding, we use motors like Boshes because they are perfectly capable of doing there task of pushing 100kg robots around, and an opponent should it get in the way. Ive pushed Storm II into the Roaming Robots arena sidewall with 2 Boshes on 24V (only 1500-2000w). Using lighter motors adds the advantage to get away with lighter batteries therefore saving weight.

I think a standardized layout of stats would be nice, Im pretty tired of seeing Power: Magmotors in stats... I personally use the below and it covers all the areas need to give the writer enough information about the robot, when filled in correctly.

Name:
Weight:
Size (L/W/H):
Speed:
Ground Clearance:
Drive:
Weapon:
Armour/Chassis:
Batteries:
Notes:

Ive got a pair of clean stats located here as an example: http://crystalnode.net/vapourbots/blackandwhite.htmlhttp://crystalnode.net/vapourbots/blackandwhite.html

I think the biggest culprit in this community is the writers, they just dont check the stats half the time... Then when a few of these overweight designs pass through a few tournies, others expect to get away with it too. The old saying Cant beat em, join em follows too easily. Now if only writers were to question stats and get clarifications on things, I could see it fixing a lot of these issues. If someone says your design is overweight, and you dont think so, do the maths and prove them wrong... If you dont know the maths, ask.

Aaron - what if none of the other people on this forum dont have your mechanical knowledge?

Especially me, Ive stated before, I like robots but dont have a clue about how they work

Plenty of roboteers on these forums that can provide some answers :-)

Believe it or not, I was a noob in this game too, Ive just learnt a lot over the years, and Im still learning more and more as time goes by ;-)

Instead of just putting down some stats, and when someone says they are not right, dont get all cut and think that your being picked on. Ask why they think that your wrong, and where they think you could improve. People like Leo and Craig have a wealth of knowledge, just ask!

Sometimes the problems writers have is making comparisons between the different motor types/wheels.