I didnt wanna give the impression I was offended, I just wanted to create a clear difference between cheap and simple to make boxes and rammers such as Pillow Torque and Storm II for the sake of the discussion.
It's a tough discussion, the bottomline seems to be that robots that are not entertaining at all and also lack a certain effort should be discouraged. Between 7 Series of Robot Wars on tv however I have seen many spinners, axes, flippers, crushers and lifters that failed to entertain me and didnt seem to be put together very well, but also a bunch of robots without active weaponry that were very entertaining.
Thwackbots indeed can be entertaining to watch but seeing Storm II ram Steel Avenger OOTA, tbf that was one of my RW highlights (yeah, he had a lifter but he didnt exactly have to use it to perform that action). Thwackbots can also be destructive but I dont think that factor really does it, I mean flippers arent very destructive and lifters arent destructive at all, I daresay a rammer such as Storm II can deal alot more damage to a robot than a lifter can.
Im reading interesting things here, such as, like I said, encouraging entertaining robots by adding more importance to the Style catogery in Judges' Decisions, or indeed altering the arena to encourage certain types of robots.
The charm of RW always was to me that no matter how fancy those machines on the telly looked, every avarage Joe was able to set himself a budget, head to the shed and build himself one of those fighting machines. This is partly why I disliked the inactive weapon ban in Series 7 (and this was several years before I got to appreciate the rammer subtype like I do today). After giving it a good thought I think all in all Im against banning simple and cheap boxes, it may make the game (or at least certain competitions) elitist and discourage new builders. Its a good point that you may wanna make your first bot a simple box, and then try something more fancy for your second one, but telling to newcomers that they have to build not 1 but 2 robots before they can enter a certain competition is discouraging, as is telling newcomers that their first robot has to be top notch if they wish to enter with their first robot.
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