Featherweights - Active weapon rule

[blazerbotics]

Lets see if we can get some sort of debate going on here. For those that were at Worthing, you may have seen the Featherweight final, we had only pushers and a couple with slow lifters in the final (I think due to some of the flippers breaking down before the fight), and we ended up with one of the most boring fights i have seen in a long time. Its difficult enough for the featherweights to make an impact in a heavyweight arena, and its getting harder to make the featherweight fights entertaining, we've already had to introduce Battleaxe, and in last weekends final we opened the pit from the start and had the flipper active (which we don't normally do in comp' fights) in an attempt to try and liven up the fight.

Therefore im proposing that for competitions, all robots must have an active weapon. This is something that has come up several times in the past. With the introduction of the 13.6kg weight limit a couple of years back, its easy enough. As its now getting to a point where if we have many more of the fights like the final at worthing, we would have to look at reducing the featherweight fights to one per show. I still think the feathers have a place in the show, people can relate more to the size of them, and can see them building such a thing, and with the likes of Explosion, LH2, LF2, TinyHurtz etc they do provide entertainment, but to have something like Thor and Iron Awe fighting and then going into 6/8 drill powered feathers, it just slows the whole show down.

I know people are going to say that beginners don't have the skills/money to fit a weapon, but simple weapons can be built easily and without much cost. Im not suggesting that they all go out and fit FP flippers. I don't know how the other EOs feel about it, and what they think. I would still allow machines without weapons to run in whiteboards, but the only other option i see is either dropping a featherweight fight (pushing more machines into the one fight) or letting the House Robot having more freedom (which basically more damage, being put on flipper ect), I try to be as reserved as possible with it at the moment but you have to remember, i have to look at it from and audiences point of view, at the end of the day they're paying for the arena to be there.

So let me know your thoughts, or see if this thread is going to die like nearly every other on this forum!

Alan

[mattsdragons]

i think letting the house bot put bots on the flipper etc would be great but only having oe feather fight per show would be boring for us that cant afford to build HW's. ram bots still have a place since bots like Bonx and stiff breeze are amazing bots and are both still rammers

[blazerbotics]

Bonx & Stiff breeze are good, and entertaining as they both do 15mph+ where as most drill powered bots only do a third of that.

[craig_colliass]

Is Seraph boring? :shock:
Tron is for me, and that's when I'm driving the thing!

I would say the fights are more interesting when there are more than six or seven robots starting, I don't know if it would be good for the sport, but I think the event organisers should try new things to make the shows more popular and profitable.

Good luck with the debate Alan

[teamshock]

I can see the point of introducing this rule for the competition fights as recently I have been finding the featherweights becoming more and more boring to the point where our 2 flippers Whirlwind and Heatwave are being taken apart so that the valves can be reused in our new heavyweight.

The problem that I have is that in order to make the fights entertaining for the crowd we fill the arena with about 20 robots most of them being pushers or lifters which are not that interesting even with large numbers the ones that really make the fights interesting are the flippers and axes which there are not enough of.

I understand that to try and make things more interesting we need things such as the house robots and arena flipper but I think that these may have gone a little too far in terms of power and damage. At Worthing for example Whirlwind suffered a fair bit of damage from the floor flipper very early on and as a result could not be used in any more fights and I believe that explosion suffered with the same issue which immediately removed both of the FP flippers that were at the event from the remaining fights. At other events I have also had the same problem with Battleaxe retiring our robots earlier than we would have liked.

Personally I think that the featherweight fights were much more entertaining a few years ago when you had no more that 8 or so robots in the arena with ones such as Little Flipper clearing the arena the audience reaction was much better than seeing them all hit the roof in the first fight and having no robots left for the later shows.

Hopefully this makes sense and doesn't sound too much like I'm ranting but this my view

[blazerbotics]

Seraph i would classify as having a weapon, and isn't boring. I agree more robots , the better, but it seems by the end of the event, not enough are running. Maybe we scrap the competition and just do all whiteboards for the feathers?

I understand what your saying Will, i do try and not attack the more advanced robots, but sometimes they are the only/first ones immobile, so I dont get alot of choice! I do only try and give them one hit, Battleaxe is basically as low powered as it can be, i can turn it up alot more, but dont. I have thought about having a lower power setting on the flipper for the feathers.

[Bodge Job]

Maybe you have to have a weapon, or a robot which goes over a certain speed, so the proper rambots can still fight, like Tiny Toon, because they actuly cause damage apon impacts, and it's less boring seeing them fly around the arena...

[Anttazz]

I fear that introducing this rule will be critically bad for the sport. Choosing if a robot is good enough to compete before it even enters the arena by what components it has or whether or not it has a weapon is not a good way to go I say. Afterall, the experienced guys won't be there forever and its already a complicated and expensive game to get into nevermind adding all these extra requirements and expenses onto it along the way.

It might be slightly more boring for the audiences if there are only one or two high impact active weapons such as HP flippers and axes, but it would be a lot more boring if there were no robots allowed to compete at all.

Doesn't seem like there would be any way into the sport either, I mean Beetles need an active weapon so a lot of the Feather guys are getting involved with that, but if Feathers also need an active weapon then it seems to me like what was originally jumping in at the deep end for most people has become jumping into the shark infested ocean.

[RogueTwoRobots]

I raised this as an issue a couple of years back (seemed more recent than that!) and it certainly prompted some debate:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2812

The overall impression I got was that;

a) there were a lot of people supporting it, but not as many as those against it
b) enforcing an active weapon rule could not be done by the FRA as it goes against one of the FRA's core aims (promoting the sport of robotic combat in all shapes and forms, or words to that effect) and that it should be left to the discretion of the EO whether they implement an active weapon policy.

My position on the matter remains the same; I am all for a active weapon rule for featherweights that applies for competitions only. By that, I mean if you want to enter the UK Featherweight Championships, your robot has to have a weapon. If you want to fight in whiteboards, you don't need to have a weapon.

I classed whiteboards as all fights at Roaming Robots and Robots Live! events as I've never really thought of the FW fights at these events as being competitions (at least not compared to full-combat championships) but if you run separate competition and whiteboard events then the rule could always apply to the competition side of fights, as you have proposed Alan. At the end of the day, you're the EO and it's your job to make the show interesting enough to entice the viewing public to pay up, so you're free to make that call.

Then there are the arguments that you can stick a servo on a FW with a toothpick on it and call it a weapon. Hope that stance doesn't arise in this debate as, frankly, it's a crap and out-dated way to look at such a proposal and I would hope that the roboteering community would be above that.

And just to clarify, I consider robots like Seraph to have active weapons (that goes for horizontal thwackbots as well). And I also accept that a robot like 540 was exciting to watch despite not having a weapon. But my opinion still stands.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Forgot to add, if this rule was implemented, I would be in favour of a beginner's clause. Basically, if you've built your first robot, which doesn't have a weapon, and haven't fought before (or only fought in whiteboards) then you would be granted one 'free pass' to a competition event. You'd be allowed to compete in the event without a weapon, but if you wished to enter competition events in the future, you'd have to incorporate a weapon or compete with a new weaponised bot. The logistics of regulating who has fought in what and when would be a nightmare, but it prevents total exclusion of a new roboteer (my first robot was a weaponless piece of crap but the experience of the event helped me improve future incarnations)