Your Opinion Please....

[typhoon_driver]

Interesting ideas but I do feel that the current way of doing things, ie mobile arenas is the way to go. Also I take it that by class 1 we are meaning heavyweight spinners? In which case the costs go up quite considerably both for the event organiser and the roboteer.

I honestly feel that heavyweight spinners are a pointless avenue to go down unless its for a single event each year. Featherweight spinners are fine as whilst some of the new ones coming along (my new one included) are getting towards the costs of a heavyweight robot, the vast majority of spinners and non spinners can still be built relatively cheaply.

One interesting method of raising cash for arena upkeep that the americans have employed is that when the arena polycarb needs replacing due to being too scratched etc, the roboteers buy it at 3/4 or 1/2 the original cost of the sheet. Reduces costs for the organiser and the roboteers are able to make use of the cheaper polycarb in the machines.

Also if it went down the route of having to pay a couple quid to enter an event to cover running costs I can't see many people complaining. The major difference between our sport and many others where the enthusiasts pay cash to run is that you can lose a couple hundred quid in a few seconds in the arena whereas the other sports are usually easier on the wallet.

Not sure if any of this post makes sense, I wrote it in pieces.

[widow_twanky]

Tom,

I think you missed my point a bit. I actualy don't mind admission fees, I don't mind having to pay for gas. I've no objections to helping with marketing and I've no objections to paying to use a service which is provided as part of an overall business. I have an objection to providing free capital and investment to a business in which i have no stake and does not have a coherant way of making any money other than with that finance.

My point was simply that if you're going to run a facility to do one specific function and ask people to pay for it in full then it's likely to be costly and the ability to maintain any sort of order is out of the window if every person you talk to and try and organise provides say 5-10% of the finance for your business. If you've got an overall plan and a subscription is part of that then that's a different issue. The cost will be lower and there would be a considerable amount of initial investment from EO's etc. That's how it should be. I've no objection to Jonno making millions out of his idea, good luck to him but business is about risk and reward.

Maybe i was being a bit disingeniuous with my comments because I know what Jonno said and how it came across when i read it and i also had a good idea of what was meant and could probably have read between the lines a bit more.

Andy

[widow_twanky]

Oh and by the way, I would pay good money to have somewhere to test the robots properly rather than the public tennis courts over the back of the garden!!!

[team_orr]

my 2 cents:

look guys, i love the whole venue to venue experiance, i love signing autographs and watching the little kids smile, the whole atmosphere is great, but when it comes down to it as long as i have robot to fight, and a open space then im happy, hell i could be fighting terorhurtz in a bus-station bathroom for all i care, id still go away happy, as far as im concerned the EO's have done a top-notch job making the sport what it is after robot wars went down and i applaud them for that.

as far as having a fixed venue goes i could live with it, i do like a bit of variety and even the journeys with my family and friends are fun, but if thats what we have to do to make the sport live on then hell go for it guys, but i think that if we can keep going with the event setup we have going now thats what we should stick to

jack

[craig_colliass]

I think it€™s good to talk about the different possibilities for the sport in the future, infact I think I did a thread similar to this about a year ago called,

The Future of roboting.

There were some good ideas on that thread if anyone wants to look. My view on the lets do robots in some big shed idea is, we purposefully back our selves into a ghetto type environment, were we don€™t get any exposure to the public outside the sport so few new people come in, and this makes the whole movement stagnate and then die. I can see significant problems long term with this idea and so I am not for it. :sad: :sad: Sorry Jonno.

I think I should come up with some ideas as to what we could do if I don€™t think the one put forward is going to work.

We could develop fighting robots for an all terrain environment with or without an internal camera built into the machine with a paint ball gun fitted
Paint Ball robot wars!

Or

Solar Wars
A small robot with no batteries but it would be powered via solar panel in turn powered by a powerful lamp think of the different weapons for this type of robot; you could have a shading umbrella! This would be current with the renewable scene at the moment, good for education and probably something TV could do rather than run another tired Robot Wars clone.

[team_orr]

thats an idea mate perhaps we should look into...
battleboats!
i posted a thread about it being my other hobby but didnt get any replys which is a shame cos it is a awsome hobby

[psycho_fling]

alot of people have posted about their concerns to do with new people not been able to get involved if we did go down one of the avenues

the way i see it is a paying audience is much more important than putting on a show aimed at getting a few people involved

money matters, so the focus imo should be on how do you make it break even or make a profit. This way the extra money can be used on other projects or to attract new people

[craig_colliass]

[GlenR]

Whats more important... the buzz from the show and entertaining... or building and fighting robots to the death.

Some of the roboteers in Australia have a similar setup. The fee for this year is $100AUD (~£60) and I believe some of that went to replacing the floor of their fixed location arena. They've also started beetleweights/kilobots this year. I'm sure if Glen or someone reads this they might be able to provide more info on their setup.

So to summarise, I would support such an idea

Depends on the state, but in nsw its $100 a year and the money just goes into general repairs or upgrades on the arena through the year (its in another roboteers backyard in the shed mind :P) just redid the floor with the moneys this year and we're starting a portable beetleweight arena soon just to mix it up. take it around to different builders places, have some social events etc. 7 years of doing featherweights once a month was wearing on us all a little i think. doing sportsman, normal featherweights and beetles with alot less events this year so that seems to be alot more fun so far

the few public events we have done are exciting from a builder perspective, but in the handful we've done with respectable crowds theres been no new builders as a result. so no one is really too keen on doing any more unless were asked tho the qld guys are running a tutorial + event at the state library up there so hopefully that will create some new builders.

with the hordes of builders in the uk 100 bucks a year should be able to get you a good location like the OP mentioned. im sure having it in one location wouldnt be a problem. after all for the distance it takes us to drive from sydney to melbourne for an event we could drive across your entire country haha i joke :P

[james...venom]

do you imagine the cost of a warehouse large enough to contain an arena, pits area??? thats without seating, workshop space etc. its certainly an idea for someone who loves robot wars and has plenty of spare cash to inject every year. certainly not a business.