Ok, I have give this a thought, the fact that I understand both points of view doesnt make things that much easier for me.

There€™s several reasons we€™re making (and liking) vapours rather than realies. Yeah, time and money are a big issue, but there€™s also the fact that we aren€™t all technical experts. Yeah, we could do research and try to understand it, but at the end of the day making an actual working robot is pure beta science, and not everyone has a knack for that. We all have in common that we LOVED RobotWars and have all kinda creative ideas, we dont have a knack for beta sciences in common, sadly.

This game basically is about the question €œwhat robot would you build if you had the resources to do so?€. We USED to be happy with a rough description, things like €œheavy motors€ and €œstrong armour€ were sufficient. When something came along that looked TOTALLY impossible (€œeight heavy motors and very very thick armour€), we told each other that, those were simple days.

Now we came as far as EXACTLY describing what our robots can do. LEM-130€™s are existing motors of which we can look up the specifications. 4 Mm. of Hardox is something else we can look up and research. I like it that way. But stating specifically WHAT kind of batteries you have (apart from the voltage) doesnt add ANYTHING to the descriptive powers of your stats. Adding however what amount of WEIGHT the batteries take, DOES.

The fact many people dont add batteries in their stats MAY cause them to neglect them, which means their robot would suddenly be 15 kg overweight. That is something that should never happen. But when you would take Alex H€™s bots as an example, you€™ll see that the stats in itself make for ~90 kg worth of robot, wouldnt that mean that batteries ARE in fact there, especially seeing the motor specifics do mention a voltage.

I once went wrong with batteries myself, Aaron advised me this:
quote:

4 x S28-400 Magmotor isnt actually lighter then 2 x LEM130s. The saving is in the batteries. Your two LEMs on 48v will need 12.8KG of 3600 NiCD batteries, 36v youll need 9.6KG. On 24v the Magmotor makes more power them the LEM130 (1.5Kw) anyway :P You can run 4 x S28-400s on 4.8KG of batteries (24v x 3 Packs).

I now live by those numbers, and I think anyone neglecting batteries in their stats SHOULD. Leo was gonna convert numbers like these into a new battery system but if he€™s not gonna do it I hope someone else might. Like I said, I€™m considering batteries as it is, I€™d be more than happy to write €œ12.8KG of 48v batteries considered€ in my stats, and I think it would help SEVERAL people in making their bots more realistic if they did so too. Realism, even in the simpler days, has ALWAYS been what we wanted, ALWAYS.

Standardised stats vs let every tournament writer decide what he wants.
By far most vapourboteers think it should be up the tournament writer who decides what is needed. Lets see where this discussion got started (or rather, revived), ah, yes, it was in fact in C&B3, a tournament where the writer DOES ask us for providing batteries in the stats. I was surprised at how many people actually entered stats WITHOUT batteries, Kody let them all pass, even though he would check all vapours personally.

If Kody would agree with people saying stuff like €œ12.8KG of 48v batteries considered€, than I think we have one helluva solution on our hands, since everyone should be considering battery weight anyway, wetter they understand batteries or not.