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Punk - Team Electromaniac - WA
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Fish_in_a_Barrel



Joined: 30 Sep 2006
Posts: 673
Location: Perth, Western Australia


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oh, and Angus the MDF to make Punk cost $20. I dont see UHMW being that more expensive. It would probably cost less than the titanium that you lent me.

Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:51 pm 
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Knightrous
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quote:
eh already out wedged offset once or twice if i drive slow enough


Offset is easy of out wedge Laughing he only has 100mm of wedge at one end Laughing Cobra can't even out wedge RoadKill Laughing

@Mike: The Dewalt comment was related to Schmackhed...
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Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:58 pm 
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Daniel
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005
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quote:
Originally posted by dyrodium:
That's pretty expensive. I don't know why everyone thinks cutting boards are such a cheap alternative Laughing


Shall we compare titanium and farm steel? Wink

Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:05 pm 
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Knightrous
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Jolt pwns Titanium
Farm Steel pwns Jolt Laughing

I know what I would prefer to use Cool
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Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:07 pm 
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Valen
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number of farm steel bots that are something other than a wedge?
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Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:13 pm 
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Spockie-Tech
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I think we have discussed this to death before, so dont flame me back in response, but I have received quite a few comments after this last event from members of the public audience that they thought the wedge fights were

a. boring to watch or
b. unfair to the competitor who had to sacrifice armour for their weapon weight.

I personally think we need *Some* heavily armoured wedges in the competition to keep the high power spinners honest.. I dont want to mess up the rock,paper,scissors balance too much..

but I dont think it is good for the sport for an experienced skilled team to be building pure wedges.. Newbies are excusable since they havent got their weight balancing skills honed yet.

but we need to keep their numbers low or it will get boring to watch. Try to see things from the POV of an audience and offer constructive thoughts please.

(if this turns into a flame fest, I'll split it out of your build report Mike)

Perhaps we should make a rule that wedges arent allowed to be invertible (like Rat) or something to discourage people from building them ?
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Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:38 pm 
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andrew



Joined: 16 Jun 2004
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Location: Castle Hill, Sydney. N.S.W


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personally i disagree with making new rules against wedgesas the last thing we need now is more rules and especially ones that single a design out no matter how boring they can be

I had some awesome lil kids standing near me and jeff after my self ownage and arena killage against eleanore and they said to my face "you got that vertical blade robot rght" "umm yeah ill be back on in a short while", their response, "i hope so because these machines r boring" which were referring to some wedge machines doing battle

The wedge if done cool like cobra/singularity/eleanore where its fast, powerful, well driven and can dominate a match and take eontroll is really a wonder to see and a wedge combined with a weopon (say a lifter/flipper/axe can be real effective but if the entire match is purely some wedge bots slowly driving round and playing the whole "can i get under yours and maybe do something almost descent and entertaining game" then as Brett said i wouldnt watch it and would rather work on my robot

The only matches where a wedge is almost entertaining is if a solid wedge (say andrews and aarons machines) draw a spinner and hold up to the powa and such and the spinner dances around and stuff but tahts also mainly the spinner causing any sparks/action and the wedge bot purely defending itself

The way i see it, either build a wedge that can either light up the arena and cause some havok and action (like the fast, awesome wedges like cobra/elanore etc) can do or build something with a weopon
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Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:37 pm 
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Knightrous
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I built a boring well armoured wedge simply because they are damned reliable. I had ore fun at this robo wars because I was relaxed, I had very little work to do on my robot between battles and I managed to enjoy more of the event, instead of stressing out when 2 months of work on something with a weapon just got destroyed by someone with a rotating lump of steel. (Yes, I use to be one of those people).

My wedge was having a few teething problems, the drive wasn't working quite the way planned, just like a lot of other robots, but hey, shit happens. I'm here to compete, not worry about the crowd pulling out $50 notes and chasing me down like a hooker because my bot spectacularly lost. This boring wedge also taught me a lot of new things about combat and design, and I'll be employing this new knowledge to me new robot, with an active weapon.

Some people build boring bots for test beds (Plan G) and others build them because they are not well enough funded to keep repeated having their more out there designs broken by spinners (Andrew build Offset because it wasn't worth his time bring VL or Sproing to get broken by a boring spinner... And it fit in the suit case a lot easier Laughing)

So if your hating on boring bots, take a step back, and just accept that there will always be boring bots, and maybe your the cause of it.
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Post Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:04 pm 
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Valen
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Plan-G isnt boring. it may not have "style" but that isn't what makes a bot "interesting". Do you think when the crowd in the collaseum was watching a battle they were critiquing the gladiators manicure?

It has a weapon that is powered by 2 mini-Ev's. It had radio/controller issues. At least it had a hope of doing something other than nudging somebody else around hoping that they might break themselves.

I don't mind wedges, when the wedge is a weapon.
King Cobra and Elanore were the only 2 wedges that i would count as "active", in that they were agile, mobile and hostile. No nudgebotics there. SSRat is borderline on it.

I'd be half tempted to make a rule saying your bot must be able to output at least X joules of energy per match, or do X amount of work where time is limited to 10 seconds.
Unless of course your bot will explode good. So punk is *IN*
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Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:02 am 
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Spockie-Tech
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I understand the wedge builders sentiments about resisting damage, its part of the reason we kept KE levels low in our bots in the past. We didnt want to encourage the spinner vs brick/wedge trend.

Smashing your opponent into little bits maybe entertaining for spectators, but you probably wont be seeing them again for another battle for a while, and when they do return, chances are they will have decided to armour up and weapon down in response. We dont have so many builders in Australia that we can afford to lose many. Damage is good, but not *too* much or the show will be over quick.

Destruction above reliability is good to watch, but bad for the builders. Reliability above interesting is good for the builders, but boring to watch. Striking the balance between the two is the hard part.

If you're going to build a wedge, build a *good* wedge, and that means fast and controllable. Inspector General is hardly a high budget robot, yet its just about as exciting without a weapon as with one. Eleanor was a good wedge, although I think a little more effort on visual appearance would have improved it.

Sounds like we're back to the sport vs show argument again. Wedges are undoubtably easier on the builder and probably more likely to survive the entire event and require less repairs, but if everyone works on that principle, we will have an extremely boring show. Fine if you want to compete without an Audience in your back yard. If you want big public productions, you either need to pay big $ entry fees to pay to play, or put on a good enough show that the public is willing to pay to watch it. Your choice.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that we ban wedges, hate them or anything nasty.. just passing on some of the negative feedback from our viewers (there has been plenty of good feedback as well as I have mentioned in the RoboWars Thread) and hinting that experienced builders should make an effort to have their bot do something combative except drive around slowly.
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Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:14 am 
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Knightrous
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@Jake: Was referring to when you first turned up with Plan G, a box with a bunch of belts and no weapon.
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Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:36 am 
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leo-rcc



Joined: 04 Aug 2006
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One thing I have always refused to do with any of my robots, is make them weaponless. Even Drone, my sparringpartner testbot had a prop weapon that doesn't do any damage but at least it looks like a weapon. That is just the entertainment factor for it.

I also wanted to do sacrificial armour for demonstation events. Just panels of easily replacable stuff so it looks like te robot is taking massive hits while in fact it is fine. Does nothing for the robot, but looks great.

Now in a major competition you need to balance that out a litte of course, because then it is a competition first, a show second. The BBC and Mentorn in particular had a real problem with that because to them it was a show first, competition second. There it sometimes collided between roboteers and organisation. But even then. Diotor was not dowsed in lighterfluid before it was sent into the arena without a reason. The show factor always plays a part in events with spectators.

Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:51 am 
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Glen
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you can have a wedge if you have another with a weapon, argument over Razz
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Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 6:46 am 
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Totaly_Recycled
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mm iff i can grind out 2 kgs of steel from under offsets shell make 3 x25mm x50mm rams and a pump mabe i can transform my boreing wedge Shocked

Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:35 am 
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Rotwang
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Delicate topic for me as Rob just won a comp in a very narrow decision with a wedge and the natural evolution of our sport has seen an escalation in the destructive potential of the spinners so that naturally enough causes builders to concentrate on rock bots.

The cycle will be complete when paper bots catch up.

Spider is the first of a new breed of rock paper hybrids capable of bumping heads with horizontal discs, VD’s and Thwacks on the day without taking any damage, you could barely find a scratch on him.

Stealth and Ballistic would have been splattered.

The Judging criteria is pretty good at keeping the game play balanced between the rock paper scissors, once builders catch up with the fact that a strong paper bot is a good wining strategy and wedge builders find themselves stacked against the arena walls very quickly things will change.

Don’t think there is any need to change the rules, generally the paper bot would get the style points in a wedge paper fight and he has a strategic advantage to get a knock out.

The spinner at least gets cosmetic damage points against most wedges as well as style.

The rock bot cant really do a lot other than hope its spinner opponent breaks while attacking it, if the spinner brakes it wins if it doesn’t it looses.

Pleas excuse the generalisations I know there are always exceptions I am just trying to talk general game balance.

Dumhead and I both have armoured flippers on the drawing bord so wedges beware. Cool
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Post Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:29 am 
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