Hi Mike,

Lucy and Mark have already given the majority of the key points. For a first build, both of your bots look brilliant, well done!

As people have already said, definitely enter an event when all this virus malarkey blows over. The vast majority of learning is through actually doing and competing, figuring out which part of your bot works and which can be improved. The entire community is super welcoming and helpful at events too. I recommend Robodojo Sportsman for your first few events as you will likely not take too much damage.

HDPE is very good as armour. Trent Plastics and Direct Plastics are good sources for these if you look to improve on your chopping boards.

Upgraded ESC's are certainly required before any attempt at a competitive battle, batteries too. I'm thinking Life batteries and maybe 80A ESC's if ranglebox.com can get more stocks. But I'm open to suggestions for alternatives you good people use and recommend.
I would recommend LiPos rather than LiFe. As Lucy said, extra power and less weight. You have to take a few extra safety precautions in to account, but treat them with respect and you will be fine.

In terms of ESCs, I run two Hobbywing 880 80A Dual ESCs in Bread Dead Redemption. They require a tiny bit of reprogramming to make them suitable, but they have been very good to me so far. They are a single ESC wired in with 2 parallel inputs, so they are relatively cheap, but both motors have to go in the same direction. Not an issue if you use one per side in 4WD.

I'll put a video link to my test run below. That is using 4x Argos 12v drills with those ESCs on a 3S LiPo battery. Would be similar performance to what you expect from yours!



Hope to see you at an event soon!