Build Rules 2011

[ady]

think flippers have a bit of advantage their sorry, if you had higher walls then 2mm is ok, can understand robochallenges concerns fully as they have to look at it commercially.
i had a spinner which i sold as it was expensive to fix, never won anything, wedges were a pain, and it could only be used twice a year. yeah it looked great when it damaged something and felt good knowing it made other competitors nervous to have something destructive, but i would rather have the feeling of winning.
when i had prize money from a RR event for my wedge back in 2007, was i bothered whether the crowd found it boring ummmmm no, sorry!! and also when im driving a wedge against a spinner it aint boring for me!

but i also appreciate a bored crowd would mean less ticket sales and nowhere for me to fight.
A wedge against spinner aint boring, but aload of wedges is, but so is a load of flippers. My new fw for the next robochallenge event is a storm 2 basically, a wedge with a lifter.

the reason for this, it will be reliable, invertible, cheap to fix, was cheap to build and it will do pretty well in competition, and even if the lifter fails it will keep going. it has a 5mm steel wedge, box section, 10mm hdpe sides, 5mm lid and base and thats it, and i would throw it in with any spinner without a second thought tbh.

the advantages of wedges is a member of the audience would think i could build one of those and maybe get more people started.

remember we dont all have access to lots of £££, cnc's,lathes,titanium and hardox at our disposal.

I wouldnt have a spinner again as mentioned above, i wouldnt have a axe as the best i seen was little hitter and as much as i panicked watching it hit my wedge again and again, when i got it back to the pit i was surprised how little it damaged my lid. (so as i dont have their knowledge or expertise im sure mine would be pretty pants) I wouldnt build a crusher as i havent a clue how to make a good one in a fw, maybe could build a flipper but unless i have access to titanium which i dont, dont know how i would make a strong robot in the weight with my knowledge.

in my opinion if you build a spinner, flipper or axe you compromise your armour when on a budget, which means more expense as more damage sustained.

what would be good is if someone made a weapon kit you could buy off the shelf, a fw flipper kit, axe kit or spinner kit at a decent price, i believe that would change things. Most robots are built around the weapon anyway.

my comments might sound selfish by not pleasing the crowd but at the end of the day i have seen plenty of roboteers at an event, pick up their prizes,money,trophies or just their robots and leave, i always offered to help dismantle the arena.

[Mouldy]

Clive.. what can i say i like fire... ... ive still got a nice hair free arm lol.

Id deffo be up for flame throwers just because they look awesome... the problem is your going to end up charring the polycarbonate walls... making them hard to see through / not as strong.

[james...venom]

Your right venom is now over 7 years old and is required for show. I think it would do very well in competition already if it wasn't for the spinners. I am looking at building a new machine however it shouldn't have ground clearance problems when it comes to opponents so new ruling wouldn't really affect it. I'm simply trying to get a more diverse set of robots in the arena. People will only build them if they are competitive and in the current rules that is extremely difficult. I would say a panic attack machine would be in the lifter flipper section.

The question is do people want to see more variety and diversi in robots? If so we need to do something about it.

[rallikas]

The question is do people want to see more variety and diversi in robots? If so we need to do something about it.

Special prizes for coolest/unusual weapons?

[psycho_fling]

speaking from experience building a crusher robot isn't too difficult to get into the weight limit perfecting the various bits of the design is the harder bit

[xtreme]

Yes you can build a crusher style robot in 13.6kg but you cant make a good effective one in 13.6kg without spending loads of money or being sponsored, So how would people win with a crusher than cant actually crush anything?

[joey_picus]

Drop them in the pit?

[Mouldy]

don't see the point in biasing it so crushers will always do better? 360 doesn't damage things like tiny toon... doesn't mean we should change the rules so they have thinner armor..I just see it as more of a challenge... I don't see the point in changing all the rules and making it more complex while making battles easier for certain types...

If you want to make a weapon such as a crusher u will fight someone eventually whos armor you'll damage...

toonimator only had thin polycarb... you could make somthing that could go through that...weed had 1.5mm ali... venom could go through that.

...changing the arena so its harder to navigate.. will basically just write of most the machines out there today.

[xtreme]

We cant make our robots purposefully worse than they are really, it means everyone has to make there robots worse for just 1 or 2 events a year or build a completely new robot for them events. And say everyone made there flipper robots with 2mm ground clearance and all the spinners and boxes had 4mm ground clearance, if there ever was a world championship all the other robots scraping the floor would easily beat any of the uk machines. And say in the uk champs a flipper with 2mm ground clearance goes up against a crusher or axe robot with 0mm ground clearance it makes it impossible for the flipper to win, and with a vert spinner having 4mm ground clearance it wouldnt get under any other robot to get engagement. Without people just been able to build the best robot they possibly can theres always sombody thats going to think its unfair. There was a box, a flipper and a spinner on the podium this year, you cant get much more diverse.
I think that if there definately has to be some rule change the only thing that can be done without giving out robots a disadvantage over the robots in the rest of the world is to do what was done in robot was and have an active weapon rule, its been discussed for years on this forum too, But this is unfair to people with boxes at the moment. But its the only way without purposefully making our robots worse.

[psychostorm]

don't see the point in biasing it so crushers will always do better? 360 doesn't damage things like tiny toon... doesn't mean we should change the rules so they have thinner armor..I just see it as more of a challenge... I don't see the point in changing all the rules and making it more complex while making battles easier for certain types...

If you want to make a weapon such as a crusher u will fight someone eventually whos armor you'll damage...

toonimator only had thin polycarb... you could make somthing that could go through that...weed had 1.5mm ali... venom could go through that.

Kaiser had 3mm ali lid, both Beauty machines have no armour above 5cm. TBH things are already going much more the way of the crusher and axe in their absence as is.

what would be good is if someone made a weapon kit you could buy off the shelf, a fw flipper kit, axe kit or spinner kit at a decent price, i believe that would change things. Most robots are built around the weapon anyway.

A belter of an idea here. Prehaps those crushers, clampers and axes might get built more if there was more help towards making them?