Featherweights - Active weapon rule

[teamstorm]

All, I don't post often but think I have a unique perspective on this as I spend my time at an event interacting with the audience.

It was me that said to Alan we have a problem here when I realised that we have an all-box final. The problem with the Featherweights that day was two fold.....

1) There are too many robots in the arena for the audience to keep track of. This ruins the 'story' of the fight, the audience ultimatley want a story to be told, a perfect fight would be knife edge after knife edge of 2 or three robots fighting. With so many in there, you can clearly see the audience loose interest.

2) With no robots with active weapons you've now got the double problem of not just lots of robots, but lots of robots that do very little. At Worthing the audience switched off, totally, people were talking to each other as the fight went on in the audience, kids were dis-interested and it took a real effort to get them back for the Heavyweight final.

The problem is that viewed individually, you can argue that a robot doesn't need an active weapon for lots of reasons.... which have already been discussed above, however when you put all those non active weapon bots together in a group, it just doesn't work (fact).

We need to entertian an audience, and we need to make what we do look like fun both to sustain the ticket sales, and bring new builders into the game. Alan's idea is a good one, the problem with feathers in a heavy arena is that they quickly get lost.


I don't want to see active weapons made a requirement either - but a simple lifter or anything that moves isn't that hard to do, and I'd hope that people soon want to move on from building a rambot to something more exciting rather than people have to be forced into it via a rule change at events.

[Ellis]

As I've said, never been to an event, but I've viewed my fair amount of fights online. I personally dislike it (as a member of the audience, be it a virtual audience) when there are 8 robots in a single fight. I can't see what is going on, all strategy is lost and I zone out. For me it's the strategy that keeps the fight interesting. I would prefer to see 2 or 3 boxes head to head than 8 flippers in one go.

I think the robots are fine, I think the arena is (mostly) fine. I think the way the fights are planned out is the problem. Lots of robots = no strategy / impossible to follow each robot = disinterest.

[john]

Just scrap the competition and just have white boards but limit the amount of boxes allowed to enter and get all the flippers in there to flip out the boxes and then go and take out the axes.

But seriously, where is the wiki the FRA were meant to be making how many months ago? Having guides where people can learn from would help and encourage people to make robots with weapons.

On July 4th Kane wrote to a reply of mine asking if there was any news on the wiki.

The new website is just about ready, and this includes full editing so people can create, edit and publish pages on the site.

If it takes over 2 months to launch a just about ready website then I really do worry about the FRA...

Don't wait for the FRA to do anything Alan as the sport will be dead by the time they do something, but obviously boxes can't be banned as they are the starting point and some are actually decent, just make them all be fast lol.

[psychostorm]

Well, at least we know what the problems are...

Alan, that plan sounds a lot like a league system - well worth trying out at Kidderminster as what works for the heavyweights doesn't necessarily work for the featherweights.

Ed, I'm quite glad you wrote as I've been thinking a lot about that duty myself. I've considered commentating such videos for YouTube & I feel I would somewhat be sharing jobs slightly.

The person who wields the microphone is ultimately relied upon by the audience to highlight the moments worth seeing. Only trouble being, the current number of featherweights would require a speed worthy of the grand national!

When it doesn't happen, you are left not saying very much & lacking in the very enthusiasm the show needs you to promote. Ed is too much an educated gentlemen to stoop to the trivia, corny puns & general mocking myself or J Pearce would.

You (plural) say limit machines to 4 or less RW style battles but that would be unfair to those who have travelled for hours upon hours for... one fight? That sounds more like the show section needs a review.

You say weapon less machines do little but that is surely is general statement. Flippers & Axes are generally 1 (very popular) trick ponies.

Speaking of popular, has anyone considered the crazy idea of actually asking the audiences?

[Danjr1]

Make the arenas spinner safe and you'll get competitors from the robochallenge events. This solves a number of problems:
1. Gives the people who have built these things somewhere else to compete
2. Means the fights will ultimately have more destruction
3. Doesn't alienate anyone and invites a part of our own community which has been excluded for a long time
4. It isn't up to the competitors to improve the show. The current breed of non-spinner featherweights are a creation of the event limitations

Anyway, we could say the same about the heavyweights. Put a ban on flippers and make them have destructive weapons

[craig_colliass]

I don't think too many robots is the issue (you don't normally hear the commentator on the grand national say there are too many horses!) Use words like mayhem, carnage, slaughter, destruction, brutal oppression, just watch the news you will come up with more

I agree with those who advise the opposite have as many robots in the fight as you can and ask the audience to judge who was first ,second and third, Points are awarded, and the one with the most points over the weekend wins the prize.

[geeza]

Also when I was on the FRA committee I was opposed to a ban on non active weaponed robots, but I also think that the final on Sunday was boring and it is getting harder to judge as each event goes by. I agree that a box is the start for almost all roboteers these days, but I think that the time has come for some of those guys to thinking about evolving and upping the game. It is clear to me when I tech check you all that some builders out there can build an impressive robot, so get on with putting an electric axe on the top if you have no experience with pneumatics.

Dan and others the cost of building a heavyweight sized spinner proof arena is out of any current EOs budgets can this idea be forgotten by roboteers unless someone actually has a costing, business plan and someone with the funds to do it. RL arena sturcture is not capable of housing the necessary weight of polycarb required for spinners.

I think at Kidderminster we should put all the into 3 fights out of the 4. This will help limit the numbers in the arena and possibly seed the robots with weapons so they are evenly split so there is always an active weapon in the arena. Then as Alan said judge the top 3 and proceed to the event winner on a points system from the 3 fights. I want to avoid: 1) having every FW in all the fights as it will be too many, thinking about arming and disarming. 2) having too many broken robots by the time the final show comes around.

[PJ-27]

Dan and others the cost of building a heavyweight sized spinner proof arena is out of any current EOs budgets can this idea be forgotten by roboteers unless someone actually has a costing, business plan and someone with the funds to do it

What about FW's?

Plus, can't afford to house 'interesting' robots? Don't whinge when boxes turn up. I do stand by my earlier point though of, the lack of spinners making RL and RR a great place to start.

[blazerbotics]

The FRA arena guidlines state that then arena has to be baciscally the same for running FW and HW spinners, a quick guess off the top of my head your looking at £30'000+ to upgrade our arena to be spinner proof, plus a couple of grand every event to cover the additional transport and crew required. Also if we were to run spinners in every show, the rate of robots getting destroyed would increase and we would end up with more boxes to defend against the spinners. The fact that spinners dont run at most events should encourage people to build more interesting robots as you cont have to worry about protecting against spinners.

[PJ-27]

Agreed.