hiya,

yeah to the untrained eye.. especially from an audience point of view there isnt that much difference.

However, after the introduction of the cages, I felt that our polycarb exclusion zone was a waste of time, as there was no way any robots would ever be flipped into it, and was just a walk way around the arena.

So the polycarb is now attached to the cages, which means when we build the arena it is so much shorter in time, heavier work, but less of it. We used to have 22 polycarb sheets, we now have 12 cage/polycarb to fit which just slot into the barriers, and 5 big front poly panels for the audience to see through.

We still have the exclusion zone at the front, but originally it was only 1m, then we extended it with our flip out / drive back in to 1.5m, and now its 2m, which gives an easier walkway through with robots, and if a robot gets flipped out, it isn€™t going to hit the polycarb, much safer.

There were some other slight changes, behind the scenes which no one would know, but the basics, are going back 5 years, back to basics like the old hexagon arena, people come to see the robots fighting in the arena, and don€™t necessarily care about the other stuff.

One addition also was the antweights, they were extremely popular, and hopefully they will be with us again. They were out by the merchandise which was a great idea, who ever decided that !!!
The arena has now been put into secure storage which is another cost saving, find a manager who loves robot wars, tell him you want to put major damage and an arena in his place, and make it available for any pr work, and negotiating a good deal is easy€¦ a clear £250 saving each month. !! Just got to move out of my unit by Friday. Big task !!
It all helps.