Current Events > BattleBots 2018 discussion topic *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Petunia is such a lame bot but got the job done none the less.
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I can't watch it because it isn't showing up in my on demand menu :(
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Bomb Shell...what a disappointment this season.

To be fair that decision could have went either way.
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unclekoolaid73 posted...

Petunia is such a lame bot but got the job done none the less.

Vertical crushers never win in a flashy way, but they win. That battle was like a flashback to the glory days of Razer, one of the most dominant combat robots in history.






unclekoolaid73 posted...

Bomb Shell...what a disappointment this season.

To be fair that decision could have went either way.

Agreed on both counts. Bombshell disappointed this season, and that battle was really close. Yeti really did win it in the last ten seconds when Bombshell caught fire.

Time to watch Icewave tear another bot to pieces!
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meh
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God Dayum that went by fast!
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Holy shit, what a terrible decision. I understood the Yeti one earlier, but how the hell do you give Skorpios that decision!? They took severe damage, lost the use of their primary weapon, and did zero damage to Icewave in return! No amount of control/aggression should override that huge disadvantage in damage!

There have been some questionable but understandable decision so far, but this is the first one that I felt was completely blown. What a joke.
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That was terrible. Like 2 the two points of damage obviously go to Icewave, Skorpios definitely get the 1 point for control and the 1 point for strategy. But by the definition of the aggression rule, it is awarded for being aggressive with your primary weapon which Skorpios immediately lost. By definition that point should have went to Icewave.
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Gheb posted...

That was terrible. Like 2 the two points of damage obviously go to Icewave, Skorpios definitely get the 1 point for control and the 1 point for strategy. But by the definition of the aggression rule, it is awarded for being aggressive with your primary weapon which Skorpios immediately lost. By definition that point should have went to Icewave.

DuranOfForcena posted...

and i have to say i agree with everything Kenny Florian said about the judge's decision between Icewave and Skorpios. Icewave totally should have taken that win. it really got shafted there.

I read on the BattleBots subreddit that the "primary weapon aggression" rule may have been modified so that pushing/shoving aggression does count, but only if the bot's actual active weapon was knocked out by its opponent. After reading this, it does sound like a fair compromise between the "boring shoving matches" before the rule and the "you lose your weapon, you're fucked no matter what you do because anything you do without it means nothing" situation last season.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlebots/comments/8wrgdp/i_believe_this_is_how_they_are_scoring_aggression/

It's not the way I would have gone about it, but if this is their methodology now, then it's more understandable why Skorpios got that decision.

DuranOfForcena posted...

having not watched any of the old Battlebots or Robot Wars before the Battlebots revival on ABC, i can definitely say that Petunia fight was the first time I've seen a bot of that design be effective at all. i've only heard about the glory days of Razer before. i wonder why bots like that don't do so well anymore. is armor design that much more durable nowadays? doesn't seem like a very long time to have much advancement in that aspect of bot design.

The thing is, Razer was a control bot that didn't often win due to knockouts. It won by dominating the fight by not giving the opponent a chance to attack it or do significant damage to it, or it won by clawing opponents and dumping them into the Pit. The arena in Robot Wars has a lot more win conditions (the Pit of Oblivion and way more areas to flip opponents out of the arena) and a lot more hazards (like the floor flipper and especially the House Robots) so matches are influenced by a lot more than raw weapon power.

A crusher like Razer wouldn't fare as well in BattleBots because control bots in general don't fare as well in BattleBots compared to in Robot Wars. When there's no reasonable win condition besides knockouts (Bronco's OOTA flip on Bombshell was an anomaly, those are extremely rare) and damage is weighed so highly, weapon power is much more important and control bots rarely do as well in that environment dominated by weapons much powerful than they are. But in Robot Wars, a bot with a weaker weapon can use the environment to their advantage a lot more to close the gap. There are exceptions of course (like the aforementioned Skorpios/Icewave fight, or Bite Force vs. Tombstone in the finals a couple of years ago) but generally, raw weapon power trumps control in BattleBots.

I suppose there's also the fact that Razer was a masterpiece of engineering, and many other crushers that tried to copy the design didn't do nearly as well.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

so i guess the broadcast that i am able to watch is the Discovery Channel one, and as such doesn't have the exclusive Science channel fight each ep? is there a way for me to view those fights?

If you can't watch the episode when the Science Channel itself airs it (the Wednesday after), the channel's website puts them online. You have to sign in with your cable provider to watch it, but it's there.

https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/battlebots/full-episodes
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DuranOfForcena posted...

that's very interesting to know all that about Razer too, thank you for that.

No problem. When the two series were having their original runs, I was actually way more into Robot Wars than BattleBots. After their revivals, I follow both shows equally, but I still slightly prefer Robot Wars. Both are great though.

DuranOfForcena posted...

Calwings posted...

If you can't watch the episode when the Science Channel itself airs it (the Wednesday after), the channel's website puts them online. You have to sign in with your cable provider to watch it, but it's there.

https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/battlebots/full-episodes

yeah, i don't have cable. that's why i can't watch the show when it is live.

Ouch. Then your only options are to buy the season on Amazon Video (I think it's like a $20 pass to watch the whole season) or seek out less-than-legal means.
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I 100% agree that the format that the revived Robot Wars used at first led to too many dull fights between wounded robots. I still remember a zombified Thor limping through the head-to-heads in the grand final of the first one. But in the most recent season (third in the revived series, tenth overall) they changed the format and it was much, much better. You should give that series a chance at least, and if you like it, I can send you links to some of the original Robot Wars series as well.

As for the selection process including fodder bots, it's primarily to get a variety of different bot designs and weapon types. If they just took the best bots, you'd end up with like 90% of the field being flippers or spinners, maybe an axe like Terrorhurtz here and there. Plus the fodder bots make for good comedy (Bucky) and some surprising upsets (Nuts) on occasion. Robot Wars doesn't try to present itself like a sport like BattleBots has been doing these days... which is oddly the reverse of their original runs, when Robot Wars was the one that felt more "official" while BattleBots was the one going for that grungy garage-ish feel.
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Watching that final decision match I can see why they changed the rule, but it's still unsatisfying to the audience to see a busted bot essentially hump the functional bot, get pieces of itself torn off every 45 seconds or so when the functional bot gets its weapon up to speed, and yet somehow pull off the win.

Scorpios essentially got the win for having a larger drive train that could control distance. It's like having a fly buzz around you for 3 minutes. There was no hope of causing damage; and eventually Icewave would have landed a kill shot.
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DuneMan posted...

Watching that final decision match I can see why they changed the rule, but it's still unsatisfying to the audience to see a busted bot essentially hump the functional bot, get pieces of itself torn off every 45 seconds or so when the functional bot gets its weapon up to speed, and yet somehow pull off the win.

Scorpios essentially got the win for having a larger drive train that could control distance. It's like having a fly buzz around you for 3 minutes. There was no hope of causing damage; and eventually Icewave would have landed a kill shot.

I mean, I do agree with you. Just based on the eye test view of the fight itself, Icewave won so overwhelmingly in damage that there's no way they should have lost. But by the judge's criteria, technically Skorpios won control (based on pushing Icewave around), aggression (by continuing to attack while Icewave ran away and tried to spin up), and strategy (by not letting Icewave spin up to full speed) in that battle. Based on the criteria, that's 3-2 in favor of Skorpios.
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Two bad calls in one episode.

Bombshell and Icewave were both screwed over.
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Bombshell caught fire at the end. Those final 5 seconds likely swung things in the favor of Yeti.

It's just a shame that Icewave wasn't able to pull off something like that, and lost to the 'push bot'.
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Thank goodness for my erratic sleep schedule during the summer, because I barely caught this before it purged. Anyways, here's Monsoon killing Petunia from earlier this season:


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unclekoolaid73 posted...

Huge rekd chomp.

Chomp? More like stomped!
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Daily bump.
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Fun fact: the team of UK roboteers that is competing with Monsoon in BattleBots is a combination of two separate teams that competed in UK Robot Wars as well. One of those robots they entered, Concussion, is a former grand finalist in the revived Robot Wars thanks to a powerful drum spinner. The Dutch team behind Reality in BattleBots is a similar combination of multiple teams that competed in Robot Wars, either in the Dutch spin-off or the main UK series. One of those machines, Gravity, set the record for the quickest battle in Robot Wars history, flipping Dantomkia out of the arena in just 5.8 seconds during the final series of the original Robot Wars.


(yes, this gif is the entire fight)
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I wonder what the viability of a solid sphere would be.
No internals at all, just a solid sphere of tungsten or something.

KFHEWUI posted...

unclekoolaid73 posted...

Huge rekd chomp.

Chomp? More like stomped!

I have a complicated view of Chomp. Like by all accounts it's an incredibly impressive bot from a technical perspective. But for a fighting robot, it is the definition of over-engineered. You don't need half of the advanced stuff they put in there because it clearly doesn't work as well as it should considering most of it doesn't work.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

you know, that does make me wonder, if BattleBots had more or a slightly larger out-of-bounds zone(s), would strong flipperbots like Bronco, or like this Gravity or even Apollo whom I remember flipped multiple housebots in the first reboot season of RW, be more prevalent, popular, and/or considered competitive? i know there are some people who think that spinners are too dominant in BattleBots. i think adjusting the out-of-bounds zones could bring some balance to that.

They absolutely would, because flipping an opponent out of the arena would be a viable win condition instead of just a freak occurrence. The old Robot Wars had low walls all around the arena, and once Chaos 2 became the first to accomplish the feat in series 3, it became a popular way for flippers to win battles. Later in the series' life, it got to a point where flipper bots actually became too common. The over-saturation of "boring flipper wedges" and quick OOTA fights is part of what led to the show being cancelled.

Meanwhile, BattleBots is the opposite, where there's little-to-no chance for an OOTA flip. Flipper bots don't have a reliable win condition, so they have to hope for winning the judges decision on control/aggression, being matched up with an opponent that can't self-right, or (more relevant in the new series) tanking a spinner until it kills itself.

The revived Robot Wars found the perfect balance (in my opinion) where the corners had high walls that made it impossible to flip opponents out, but the center part of the four side walls was lower, creating a "trench" which allowed for OOTA flips to win battles. Flippers were quite strong, but only the most skilled drivers, such as the teams behind Apollo and (see gif below) Eruption, could frequently get OOTA flips.



If BattleBots had a similar arena, we'd see some more flippers like Bronco enter and do well, but they still wouldn't take over and outnumber the spinners.

Questionmarktarius posted...

I wonder what the viability of a solid sphere would be.
No internals at all, just a solid sphere of tungsten or something.

DUCK is basically a big block of solid Titanium on wheels, with only the little lifting plow on front for an active weapon. That's the closest we've seen to "impenetrable fortress for opponents to kill themselves crashing their weapons into" in BattleBots so far.
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Gheb posted...

KFHEWUI posted...

unclekoolaid73 posted...

Huge rekd chomp.

Chomp? More like stomped!

I have a complicated view of Chomp. Like by all accounts it's an incredibly impressive bot from a technical perspective. But for a fighting robot, it is the definition of over-engineered. You don't need half of the advanced stuff they put in there because it clearly doesn't work as well as it should considering most of it doesn't work.

Exactly how I feel about Chomp.
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I'm so pissed off at myself. I was feeling sick earlier today and took a nap to rest it off, but I accidentally slept too long and missed this week's BattleBots episode. I'll have to find it online or wait for the Science Channel re-run on the 25th. According to the broadcast schedule posted on the BattleBots Facebook page, after this week there's a two week break for the Discovery Channel premieres (I know one of them is due to Shark Week) and one more week without a Science Channel re-run before they both get back on track.



I'll try to keep this topic bumped until after the break, but if not, I'll make a new one in three weeks after this break, and I'll tag everyone who posted in this one.
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@Calwings
If you do catch it online there are some nice moments. There's a great .gif moment involving a drone, and an absolute thundercrack of a blow in the match between Monsoon and Son of Whyachi. The main event was between Bronco and Duck; just seeing the lineup announcement had me thinking it was going to be a total mismatch.

Sidenote - apparently there is an ongoing bet between the support staff at Battlebots as to whether Bronco will be to launch a bot 16 feet into the air to take out one of the arena light fixtures. I can totally see that happening if they catch a bot at the right angle. They've already cleared 14 feet.
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That sounds amazing. I did find the episode (or at least, a supercut of the fights without all the filler stuff in the rest of the show) so I'll try to watch it tomorrow and make some gifs. I definitely expected bots to fly, whether it was Bronco flipping them or a spinner knocking them into the air, and it sounds like I got my wish.
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Bronco is just insanely powerful. My goodness.
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The funny thing is Bronco's pneumatic flipper wasn't firing 100% in that match. After the first few flips the power was noticeably decreased. But in the end it was just the amount needed to sandwich Duck in front of the judge's table.
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