IT'S ROBOT FIGHTING TIME - BattleBots making a return this Summer - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Sableye;47091003]rasberry pi powered death robots can be a thing now?[/QUOTE] Someone made a semi-autonomous robot once. Didn't work too well.

Blendo 2015.

Robot Wars was basically my childhood. Was so weird going from hearing Craig Charles doing the voiceover for that, to seeing him in the flesh in Red Dwarf, to voiceover again for Takeshi's Castle.

[QUOTE=T553412;47089716]They better bring back Grant Imahara for at least one episode.[/QUOTE] He should host it. He's not doing anything really right now, TV wise

[QUOTE=TestECull;47093468]Once in a while they have their moments, sure. Still, they tend to stifle the creativity of robot designers, who all end up either building a flipper of their own or not doing well. It becomes a game of 'Oh you don't have a flipper? Hah sucks to be you'. I want to see more variety in the designs and I want to see more carnage. Spinners, hammers, pincers, flamethrowers, hell even ramming bots, they all tend to provide entertaining shows more often than they don't. Flippers...well, they're just OP.[/QUOTE]What about lasers?

Bring back Bill Nye.

[QUOTE=RoboChimp;47096873]What about lasers?[/QUOTE] Voltage levels inside the robot are limited, so no electrical lasers there. The rules also ban lasers explicitly as they can be used as a device to blind the opponent's operator. (smoke screens and "dazzle lights" (ie strobes) are also banned for this reason)

I wish that the RobotWars video games were good, there was a lot of potential there.

This was my favorite thing ever back in the day. Few things I hope to make a return more than Battlebots. Have all of my hype. Also Grant Imahara should definitely make a return.

[QUOTE=TestECull;47092220]I hope they ban flippers. They're boring as hell to watch and stifle the creativity we saw before they came into prominence.[/QUOTE] The funny thing is that flippers didn't do jack to some of the decently constructed spinners. Zigo beat the everliving shit out of everything in it's weight class for a long time. It was mobile, and had an incredibly low center of gravity. In the heavier weight classes Wyachi crushed for a long time until that one ultra slimline bot got under it because it was simply too far off the ground. I'm still convinced that a properly designed slimline spinbot designed like Zigo, but scaled up, would have been impossible to beat. Zigo ended up losing a few games later on because it just didn't have enough mass to outright trash some of the properly reinforced wedges. Flippers and wedge bots were good ways to get into this sort of thing for cheap though.

[QUOTE=RoboChimp;47096873]What about lasers?[/QUOTE] If you can get a battlebot that has a practical laser weapon you've got a bright future with DARPA. Heh. 'Long as it's not a hazard to the spectators I wouldn't ban lasers. I honestly can't think of a harder to aim weapon system for a battlebot. [QUOTE=Zephyrs;47098052]The funny thing is that flippers didn't do jack to some of the decently constructed spinners. Zigo beat the everliving shit out of everything in it's weight class for a long time. It was mobile, and had an incredibly low center of gravity. In the heavier weight classes Wyachi crushed for a long time until that one ultra slimline bot got under it because it was simply too far off the ground. I'm still convinced that a properly designed slimline spinbot designed like Zigo, but scaled up, would have been impossible to beat. Zigo ended up losing a few games later on because it just didn't have enough mass to outright trash some of the properly reinforced wedges. Flippers and wedge bots were good ways to get into this sort of thing for cheap though.[/QUOTE] Mmhm, and over in Robot Wars Hypnodisc made short work of Wheely Big Cheese once. Just annihilated it. Firestorm also had a bad day against Hypnodisc a time or two. Still, Flipperbots are the easiest to build and be competitive with, so it tends to stifle competition. The time, effort and engineering necessary to build a championship class spinner could build five or six title-winning flipperbots, so nobody bothers to build anything else.

See, I'd clasify hynodisc as a poorly designed bot. You could flank it, and it got flipped over by several bots as a result if I recall correctly. A good spinner is a dome on the ground with as much weight as close to the ground as possible. Even if it doesn't have omnidirectional movement, you still can't flank a design like that. Put weight on a reinforced ring on the outer/lower part of the dome for maximum kinetic energy on hit. None of this stupid hammer stuff. That just breaks eventually. Zigo by and large did all of these, which is why it did so well. Other fun stuff is you can have the frame holding the spinning dome have offcenter weight in some fashion, letting you just spin to flip yourself back upright from the oscillations if someone somehow does manage to get under you. Not sure I'd agree that it's much more difficult than building a decent flipper. Definitely harder than building a wedge, but good flippers need some heavily reinforced equipment as well.

[QUOTE=Zephyrs;47099353]See, I'd clasify hynodisc as a poorly designed bot. You could flank it, and it got flipped over by several bots as a result if I recall correctly. A good spinner is a dome on the ground with as much weight as close to the ground as possible. Even if it doesn't have omnidirectional movement, you still can't flank a design like that. Put weight on a reinforced ring on the outer/lower part of the dome for maximum kinetic energy on hit. None of this stupid hammer stuff. That just breaks eventually. Zigo by and large did all of these, which is why it did so well. Other fun stuff is you can have the frame holding the spinning dome have offcenter weight in some fashion, letting you just spin to flip yourself back upright from the oscillations if someone somehow does manage to get under you. Not sure I'd agree that it's much more difficult than building a decent flipper. Definitely harder than building a wedge, but good flippers need some heavily reinforced equipment as well.[/QUOTE] [video=youtube;J3Kp70VKT4M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Kp70VKT4M[/video] Exactly right, this final ended quite abruptly

[QUOTE=BANNED USER;47089421]I watched BattleBots before Celebrity Deathmatch and Jackass on MTV all the time back in the day, good times. This rules!![/QUOTE] I use to sneak out of bed and watch this at midnight reruns. My parents almost always catch me but damn it was cool

[video=youtube;ZQlGgKfZQck]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQlGgKfZQck[/video] bots like pussycat that don't get affected at all by flippers are pretty cool

Flipper bots are so boring to watch imo. Wasn't it sometimes common to have 2 flipper or wedge bots fight each other? Some of the best matches are when the bots get utterly annihilated.

I hope Ziggo and Diesector come back. Also Biohazard, even though most of his fights were boring, he was pretty iconic for me.

I just want Nightmare back. And Matador. Oh and Mecha Catbot, and Snowplow, and Biohazard, and Overkill, and Sallad.

[QUOTE=PaperBurrito;47103520]I just want Nightmare back.[/QUOTE] Well I guess every competition needs it's food. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQFYzyrfrP0[/media]

Oh god yes, I remember Razor winning most of its fights with its hydrolic pick that could pierce anything Shit was OP

[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;47106655]Oh god yes, I remember Razor winning most of its fights with its hydrolic pick that could pierce anything Shit was OP[/QUOTE] Funnily enough, despite him winning that match, he failed to pierce the hide of Drillzilla when they fought for the world championship some years ago. Which isn't surprising, since Drillzilla was essentially a 350 lbs. block of aluminum alloy. :v: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E0XNUuPq9U[/media] It was a pretty close fight, both sides had significant strengths and weaknesses, Razers being that claw (strength, but it still couldn't pierce Drillzilla's armor) and their lack of driving power (they didn't have the brute-force to move Drillzilla around when they had them grabbed by the legs), Drillzilla's being their weight/armor, but they lacked any sufficient offensive weaponry (it's armed with a drill, but I've seriously never seen them use it to any effect, they mostly won by just brute-forcing their opponents around the arena).

Razer vs Tazbot was also quite a bad match-up for Razer

I'm currently taking a robot programming course at uni, so watching this again will be an inspiration for me!

I don't remember if they were actually any good but I used to love the idea of Gemini.

[QUOTE=squids_eye;47108579]I don't remember if they were actually any good but I used to love the idea of Gemini.[/QUOTE] The problem with multi-bots is that the individual robots themselves have no real punch to them, as each one can only be half the weight (for two) of a normal robot combatant (the total weight of the robots can't exceed that of a single machine for that weight-class). So instead of having one big, 250 lbs. robot slamming head-first into their opponent (which can cause more damage than you think), you have two 125 lbs. robots which, even if they were fast, don't have the mass to be able to slam an opponent around. Multi-bots are a purely tactical decision, as your opponent can only focus on one target at a time (unless it's a full-body spinner).

[QUOTE=squids_eye;47108579]I don't remember if they were actually any good but I used to love the idea of Gemini.[/QUOTE] [T]http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/megaman/images/6/65/Geminiman.png[/t] ??

So any thoughts on the first ep? I'm finding somewhere to watch it.

[QUOTE=Zeb Brown;48021196]So any thoughts on the first ep? I'm finding somewhere to watch it.[/QUOTE] if you find it, please pm or post it here, I've been looking for it too

the first ep premieres 15 minutes ago when the first ep is over (Aka broacasted to the entire united states, so we gotta wait till like midnight or 1 AM EST due to time zones) it will either be here: [url]http://abc.go.com/shows/battlebots[/url] or on your local on-demand cable box thing

[QUOTE=Wii60;48021319]the first ep premieres 15 minutes ago when the first ep is over (Aka broacasted to the entire united states, so we gotta wait till like midnight or 1 AM EST due to time zones) it will either be here: [url]http://abc.go.com/shows/battlebots[/url] or on your local on-demand cable box thing[/QUOTE] Oh I thought it was already over, thanks for the info.