A roboteer who gives his robot not enough ground clearance risks losing the fight anyway since it gives your opponent ample leisure to find a good point of attack while your robot struggles. You should not blame it on the arena floor, it is simply a matter of how low CAN we go and get away with it ?.
Robot Wars is still partly sport and partly a tough designer/builders challenge !
Strange I dont hear people complaining about pits. So basically, a pit is OK but a raised area is not. Sorry I dont see the difference, a raised section is just a pit upside down. How about a shallow pit, 25mm deep? The reason I ask these questions is that robots are starting to develope the same way cars have, that is take away the lights, windows and badges and they all look pretty similar. Flippers are a good example there are more Cassius clones than all other flipper types put together (BTW, Cassius had the first variable height capability and it could also climb a 25 degree ramp or a 50mm step). I believe that we need to get diversity back into robot design and the simplest way to do that is put obstacles back in the arena. Hey! ive just had a great Idea, lets put Formular one onto totally circular, perfectly flat and smooth tracks. Now that would make it realy interesting.
Well that I agree with. Id like to fight in an arena with ramps and steps. I dont know how keen Id be if Id built a robot optimised for existing arenas, though.
Aurther, ask Thor about pits they know every inch of them. I suppose its the same thing, just another area to avoid, for low robots anyway. The others could drive over it to get out the way for a while to give them an advantage, but then again they would be at a disadvantage when on the flat.
Teams dont complain when there opponent drive or get shoved down the pit and they win, but no one wants to suffer the embaresment of ended up in it. Same would apply with a lump. Its good when you opponent gets stuck but not so good if you do.
Still it makes for longer fights when there is no pit to get stuck into.
My spelling today seems to be getting worse and worse. No comments Babeth please
Arthur: If robots were expected to drive out of the pit, then certainly a lump shouldnt be a problem. However, for as long as (for most robots) a pitting indicates the end of the fight, I think a single match-ending obstacle is enough.
Id certainly like to see rough terrain combat - either completely outside (with the problems of getting sand in the drive, etc.) or on a selection of ramps in the arena (so long as they dont immediately get demolished by a spinner). Id love to see this as a second event, and Id gladly build for it, but I still feel that the robots designed for a flat surface have their place.
That said, those which could *only* cope on the flat are not that common, although several would have some degree of impediment. High-rear flippers (Firestorm, Dantomkia, etc.) would be okay, as to some extent would high-rear ram bots (Tornado, King B...) Many other robots have enough movement to un-ground themselves (THz/Beta, Big Nipper, Razer, etc.)
Those which wouldnt be impeded on rough terrain *at all* are quite rare, though - Diesector probably being the best example I can think of. I dont think we can throw everything out and start from scratch - especially since rough terrain is quite a challenge, and the fights may be season 2 quality until people get the hang of it.
So I say again, run it as a new category in parallel - after all, it may turn out to be extremely dull for a reason not yet clear to us. If it catches on, everyone will move over anyway.
Whos on for it?
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Fluppet
I dont think that is at all the point of fighting robots, arenas like that are more of a techno games kind of thing, its pretty much like sayin put a raised section on an F1 track Formula one cars are not built to withstand going up different terrains, and neither are fighting robots. they are built to beat there oponent, so what would be the point in at all having a raised area?
And all this seems to be thought about with only h/w robots in mind, 25mm wud be a huge amount for a feather compared to a heavy!
There is a difference between a raised area and a pit, if that was the way it worked, would that mean if you go onto the raised platform you are out? I dont like the idea of obsticles, i build robots to beat others, not to win the obsticle course, because thats all it will turn out to be, fighting the arena! And then as you say pushers are boring, most battles would be VERY boring indeed with everybody getting stuck on the arena!!!
And flippers/wedges/lifters that scrape there fronts on the floor, why should that be stopped, its like saying that spinners cant have teeth, or spikes have to have rounded edges!
Thats my opinion on this, robots are built to fight, whatever its like(aslong as its safe)
Grant
Oh sorry Andrew, i didnt notice your post there, yes it would be good too have a seperate thibng on a 3d arena, and build whole new bots for it as a fun challenge, but that would have to be completly diferent kettle of fish!
Grant
Depends how you define rough terrain. Cayenne can cope with a bit of gravel and rough concrete. Wouldnt like to run it in mud, though.
I think how rough is something thats going to have to increase as people get the hang of it - although Im not particularly advocating mud or water hazards.
The idea, as I see it, isnt to have an obstacle to act as an arena hazard, but to get away from the concept of a robot-friendly arena and into real-world circumstances. I think thered be a greater public interest if it became clear that robots were military-grade, rather than glorified hobby devices (and nobody cares how big and nasty they are until they see them in person). Autonomy is the other thing which would make them more cool, and some intelligence to handle rough terrain is a good start towards that.
Id start with a few ramps in an arena, but, once people get the hang of that, it might be possible to be more adventurous. Dumping a load of dirt in an arena with a JCB is, if anything, less effort than setting up ramps - as would be running in a gravel pit (at a safe distance) rather than in an arena.
Im very much still talking about robotic combat, though, not just navigating some obstacles. The terrain shouldnt be an obstacle, just a feature. At the moment, roboteers manoeuvre to position there machines in their preferred places in the arena - near the house robots, near the pit, where they can get a good run-up, away from the wall, etc. Rough terrain just adds up hill, behind a boulder, on slippery sand and so on to that. It makes a difference, and encourages tactics and flexibility in the robot, but this should make the fight more exciting - not replace the combat aspect.
A robot shouldnt be defeated by a boulder (at least, once people have got the hang of this type of fighting) - a robot should be defeated by what an opponent does *with* the boulder, be that hiding behind it, pinning the robot against it, or rolling it downhill into the robot. It also affects one of my ongoing rants about full body spinners - when your weapon can get caught on things, more skill is required in how you use it, be it flipper, spinner, wedge, etc. An FBS has to be very careful not to demolish itself on a boulder (especially if the boulder is shoved into it), and cant just sit there knowing that whatever happens, once its spun up, the opponent will take a hit during an attack.
We might need a rule to stop people from deliberately chucking dirt at an opponent until it seizes up, but perhaps part of the challenge is ensuring that cant happen anyway.
Going back to Arfurs original point, my feeling is that if were going to go away from the flat arena (at least for some competitions), we should go the whole hog, not just stick a dias in the way.
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Fluppet
Well this has certainly been a good question to answer, Im very happy with all the answers, it has proved that there are people out there that would like to see obstacles. As one of the few British teams to have competed fairly regularly in BattleBots, which has a very active arena, I find that the style of robot and the way they are used is far more entertaining than the basic flat floor, there is a much greater diversity of robots in the States and because the hazards are only used for a few seconds at a time, the fights seem to run the full time more often than in the UK.
Of course, I may be just the tiniest bit biased, we have driven Mortis over all types of terrain, including rocky, sandy, stoney and mud beaches, round a tank driving range (Bovingdon) and also in pouring rain, through deep puddles, without the bodyshell (MFL Stafford), with my favourite being six inches of snow. It never let us down once.
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