Fra agm 2016

[Eventorizon]

As long as we don't go the drone in the air route I'm fine with whatever proposal for clusters.

No worries with that. Drones are totally useless :P

[R9000]

I still don't know why teams in Battlebots use drones - the only useable thing you can mount on them is a flamethrower, and they're useless anyway unless the opponent's made of fur or paper. As for clusters and walkers, yeah I'd say some rule change would be nice to make them properly viable - we hardly ever see them unless you count the various minibots on RW this year which seemed more just like something to do with the extra weight.

[RogueTwoRobots]

I'd like to put forward a proposal for the inclusion of drones as clusters

[adamclark]

Drones for TV usage are a great USP

[grant_ploughbot]

I would consider drones when they get to the point of being useful. At the moment, I feel drones don't add anything other than a comedy aspect thats actually quite annoying to watch and gives drones in general a bad impression. If they could genuinely do something exciting that remotely effected the outcome of a battle I think they would be great. I don't think that will be anytime soon though.

[TechAUmNu]

Then in a few years it gets to the stage where the drones can lift the other robots, and drop them in the pit...

[Runsler]

Drones are just so squishy, and with flamethrowers as only allowed non-contact-weapon (and even those aren't allowed everywhere)...
Well, hot air goes up. a flamethrower on a drone as to be mounted pointing downwards. so with flamethrowers already being quiet ineffective vs. most builds (if not holding still for a quiet long time), the drones rather burn themselves than anything else.
Even more so, if you remember the small encased area where the flame is used causes some big turbulences, in which it's almost impossible to keep a drone stable and keep aiming the flame at the enemy.

So only real use for drones now is distraction, and maybe in some cases a help in righting another bot (more or less by crashing into it).
But on clusterbots... well, make enough of the cluster airborne, thus "unhittable" for most of the fight, and the rest go really agressive to score points with the judges, it could be annoying as hell, but still rather effective in winning. Or at least it would cause someone to mount a rake.


Anyway, i like the idea of clusterbots. Mainly, because the way from feather to heavy is such a big jump, with (in europe) nothing really in between.
Now the last few days an idea came to my mind with 8 feathers fighting one heavy.
Sure, most weapons wouldn't be effective (kinda cute to try and flip or grab an 8-times as heavy bot^^). But still, i'd like to see this fight, and could be an option if you've got a local group of feather-roboteers competing against each other, but also want to look into heavy. now imagine 8 battle-proven feathers fighting together vs. one heavy. just the chaos on that fight would be fun to watch.

But yeah, there has to be a limit on how much of the cluster has to be "alive" to still make the cluster count. else there will be exploits like mini-drones somewhere under the ceiling or mini-tanks somewhere in the corners where bigger bots just can't reach them. Or being so fast the big ones can't get them.
The question now is, how big that limit should be. too high, and clusters aren't a viable option, if one hit of a big spinner not only can, but WILL kill you. too low, and there will be exploits.