Arena hazards?

What’s everyone’s feelings about arena hazards?

Backstory; I was planning to build a battle box for testing purposes, then realised for an extra few quid in materials I could build a full arena, planning on having on edge as full drop-off and a rounded corner “pit” with corner stops to prevent simply ramming and driving along a wall (sketch to follow shortly) but I’ve been looking at turning the other corner into a sort of radius ramp (almost like a quarter pipe) to maybe allow some sort of area to shunt opponents and turn them over/confuse/etc...

Hopefully I can make it removable to make the arena more versatile, and it will be made from offcuts and will only cost some time.

Really I just want to know if anyone would like that sort of thing or would I be wasting my time?

Edit: the current design allows for a 40% drop-off, the rules state 50% but I have seen quite a few mentions of it not being too important anymore, would this be suitable?

Is the arena for AW or BW?

This will be for AW, walking before I start to run and all that... although the idea of a BW arena hasn't been discounted yet...

This sounds good, I especially like the quarter pipe side idea as I think it will suit more unorthodox designs. Regarding the 50% drop off rule I wouldn't worry about it. There was talk about changing it in the rules update vote a few months ago & even now most of the arenas I've fought in are less than 50%.

Now that I think about it an arena with all of the dropout zones behind quarter pipes could be very interesting...

Sounds intriguing, I'd like to see the sketch. The 50% drop off thing I thought only applied to arenas being used for AWS (it is one of the reasons why the BotFest one doesn't meet the criterion for it).

I’m literally re-sketching the floor plan now, we’ll, once I’ve made coffee...

Good to know it’s only for AWS events though, I’ll leave it as is :mrgreen:

Now, coffee is made, I’ll get this sketch finalised and post a pic, see what we all think :eek:

Attachment 9267

For some reason I can’t change the orientation on my phone...

So apologies about the quality of the artwork, I’ll spare you all the concept work and present the ‘finished’ design! I still can’t decide whether to use this kind of pyramid shape, or go for something that wraps around the corner however, this may be a decision to be made at the time... or I might make both and try them out.

The battle box will become part of the ramp, and will be 1m square with a fighting area roughly 85x90cm minus pit and ramp.

not shown is the extra level for sumo/games, because I haven’t designed it yet...

We've not followed the 50% rule for a long time even in AWS arenas, the rules were just never 'fixed' to reflect it.

I thought I’d read that somewhere, thanks for clearing that up Alex.

Final question (probably:uhoh:) would it be better to use white lighting or colours? Already planning on a red glow for the pit areas, and was thinking of lighting in the corners a la Robot Wars, is plain white too boring?

Remember that too much 'blue' light causes effects in camera sensors and makes everything go violet in the picture.

Noted, I had a look at some older series of Robot Wars and there were some (s3 springs to mind?) that were horrendously lit, I just want everyone to be able to see clearly.

I guess they were trying to make it more grungy for Series 3 at the time but with all the palaver with the production at the time, things had to change in Series 4.