I agree with Swanny on the boring boxes, these guys will build the heavies in the future, but not if they don't get a chance to play in the arena.

Make feather fights interesting by sticking as many as you can get in there at any time, the boxes will get to play and test out their designs and the experienced bot builders will have the fun of playing with them. Was not at Worthing but in the past the feather finals are made up from the top 3 or 4 from the qualifiers, leaving say 8 machines for the final. The size of the RL arena means that they are lost. Make the final 20 machines and there will be a focus for the crowd somewhere in the mass. Judging would be a nightmare, but you want entertainment Alan, who cares who the ultimate winner is? It is not like there is a couple of grand or a championship at stake. Let the audience decide.

Alienating the new-comers by preventing their first attempts will ultimately lead to them not building better machines in the future.

Maybe it is time for new arena hazards - make the pit mechanism powerful enough to eject the feathers into the air when you have say 8 bots in there, but not enough to OOTA them - maybe we can get more suggestions going here?


Trev