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I think that the officials need to have some latitude and not stick strictly to the rules. Regardless of why WD was stuck, you're basically unsticking it to award it the victory over a bot that's only going to be able to crab walk. Why even spend the time unsticking it if WD is ahead on the cards against a bot that's "Immobilized"? WD didn't score any points after they restarted the fight, just call a double KO and go straight to the judges.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:10
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chamois posted:I think that the officials need to have some latitude and not stick strictly to the rules. Regardless of why WD was stuck, you're basically unsticking it to award it the victory over a bot that's only going to be able to crab walk. Why even spend the time unsticking it if WD is ahead on the cards against a bot that's "Immobilized"? WD didn't score any points after they restarted the fight, just call a double KO and go straight to the judges. I generally agree with this. But this is also why I wasn’t too upset. After Minotaur lost a wheel, the match was over.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:26
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Bushido Brown posted:After Minotaur lost a wheel, the match was over. Sleeping on it, I still think this is wrong. Team Minotaur was right - they had control over the bot using the weapon to account. It was (slowly) advancing on Witch Doctor, which had to keep moving away from it (because they thought they would get counted out, but still). If it was incapped it can't have done that. At the same time though they counted out other bots much faster, or started counting out robots with more control than that, so it really just goes back to that. I think maybe remove that rule altogether and replace it with one where if neither team can (or will) engage, it's a draw or goes to the judges. If one can, keep going until the other bot can't move at all. Probably not perfect but seems like a good start to me
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Apr 8, 2022 15:33
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Someone on the reddit suggested that they call the bots back to their squares if it's ever unclear. I think that makes sense. If you say you can control your bot, you should be able to move it to a specific place within a set amount of time. If you can do that, game on.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:36
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I believe there is no such rule at all in NHRL and I think it's the better way to go. Don't let the ref count out a bot if the driver is still trying to move and the bot is moving around at all. The opponent can come in for more hits, or the driver of the stricken bot can give up and get counted out for no movement at all. Maybe you'll have the odd boring fight where a bot is limping in circles AND the other team doesn't want to engage, but it would cut way down on bullshit ref calls.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:52
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Also I guess one of the big problems is that the refs seem to be acting independently even from each other and can't confer with each other. I suspect a big factor in this is the giant perspex covid shield between the two teams which means they can't hear each other during the match If Witch Doctor held off on attacking Minotaur because their ref kept assuring them a count out was about to start then that's a problem. Also I guess if the teams had started from different sides then that other ref would have definitely counted out Minotaur halfway through the match
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Apr 8, 2022 15:53
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Hydra-Tantrum seems pretty clear-cut to me. Just compare Hydra's performance to other Hydra fights. When Hydra's drive-train isn't completely busted, it will circle the center of the box and wait until it gets a decisive flip, then close in on the other bot and keep flipping it to keep it from being able to effectively counter-attack. In other words, Hydra's fighting style involves generating an initial advantage through forcing the opponent to approach and attack it, THEN seizing the offensive and being aggressive once it generates that advantage. Tantrum's initial strategy (move in when Hydra gets hung up on the floor) was completely neutralized by Hydra not doing anything besides rotating in place during the initial stage of the match. When Tantrum saw that Hydra wasn't moving to attack and that their speed wasn't sufficient to get around to the side of Hydra, it repeatedly moved in to try to attack. Hydra did not try to move in to attack. Even after Hydra got a flip (and it got a lot of flips), it did not switch to the full-grade offensive mode that we've seen in other matches. Hydra's design trades off speed and power in movement: that's a weakness in the design. If you were to redefine its initial "waiting to be attacked" stage as "aggression," then you have defined away the bot's weakness. Later in the fight, when Tantrum was clearly in control, we saw it push Hydra around the box with ease despite having half the bot on Hydra itself: Hydra couldn't effectively push back even when Tantrum had only two wheels on the ground. Other Battlebots flippers have been much speedier and shown much more aggression in their fights. I don't think Hydra wins on aggression, and I don't think it wins the damage category or takes control 3-0, so that leaves Tantrum the winner. Hydra controlled but did not dominate in the opening portion of the match, got completely overwhelmed in the second part, and got a big flip in at the end; Tantrum effectively switched tactics in response to Hydra's refusal to drive around the box, made the new tactics work, and was not visibly impaired by any of those flips. The Witch Doctor-Minotaur fight was unsatisfying, but the outcome was pretty clear: once Witch Doctor got Minotaur on the screws, that was the turning point in the match, and when it lost a wheel that was basically the end to it. We've seen Tombstone drive around on one wheel before and be able to win, but Minotaur would have entirely depended upon Witch Doctor's aggression to be able to do anything. We've seen plenty of bots lose a fight they should have won because they kept engaging after they'd clearly won the fight, so why should Witch Doctor have performed differently, especially given that it sounds like the refs were being inconsistent in ways that kept the fight from restarting? Of course the team that's losing would like to force the winning team to come get hit in the hopes that they'll get KOed. But if Battlebots wants a fight like that to continue, they need to be really drat clear with both teams about that expectation. In the event, it was up to the refs, and they blew it. Minotaur's team designed it to have only two wheels, and one of them fell off, making it extremely difficult to maneuver. It isn't the job of the tournament runners to design their rules in such a way that this potential weakness gets covered up. Witch Doctor consistently enters the Battlebox, takes its lumps, and either gets the job done or loses gracefully, and get very little credit for that, plus they've massively improved the bot since its early, unreliable days. I can't think of a time when they suggested the rules of the tournament needed to compensate for their design weaknesses.
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Apr 8, 2022 16:19
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Narsham posted:Hydra's design trades off speed and power in movement: that's a weakness in the design. If you were to redefine its initial "waiting to be attacked" stage as "aggression," then you have defined away the bot's weakness. Weakness in design isn't the phrasing I'd use, but you're basically saying all the thoughts I have jumbled in my head with regards to design. Like, Kenny and Chris are always saying "battles are won in the pits", but it's also true that points are awarded in the pits. In an extreme example, Deep Six should never win any aggression points, because their design doesn't care about it. In Hydra's case, they knows that running an "un-get-under-able" bot means that they'll get snagged on the floor. Choosing to deal with that by basically not moving instead of adding more ground clearance means that they willingly sacrificed those points back in the pits.
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Apr 8, 2022 16:54
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I think what gets me on it is that, to me, the screws did the damage to minotaur that caused him to lose the wheel. I've never been a fan of "arena can break you" things. Beyond that, when WD got stuck it looked minotaur was setting up to hit their side. They missed, realigned and then a hold was called. I know editing is funky is this show but if the 20 seconds before unstuck was ignored, that did rob minotaur of a chance to hit an exposed wheel of WD. In regards to the count out, if a bot has to actively avoid engaging a bot then there shouldn't be a count out because obviously engagement can happen. Either go in and finish it or face a decision where you lose all aggression points. This comes down to a ref issue and not really a judges issue.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:20
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Narsham posted:Hydra's design trades off speed and power in movement: that's a weakness in the design. If you were to redefine its initial "waiting to be attacked" stage as "aggression," then you have defined away the bot's weakness. Later in the fight, when Tantrum was clearly in control, we saw it push Hydra around the box with ease despite having half the bot on Hydra itself: Hydra couldn't effectively push back even when Tantrum had only two wheels on the ground. I think it's just been clear that Jake had a lot of major problems with Hydra for this season. If you go back to some of their 2020 season fights, Hydra is quick and mobile. For this season, Hydra struggled with flip power AND with mobility during the season. Hydra and team Whyachi are one of the few bots & teams that have the means to actually test their bots in the offseason, so really unclear what happened to them.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:22
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TheJadedOne posted:I've never been a fan of "arena can break you" things. I'd be down for just getting rid of the hazards. They're a relic from an era where you couldn't count on the bots to actually be able to damage each other and they were so fragile that the hammers and killsaws actually mattered. Nowadays, they're barely annoyance. The killsaw slots and the gap underneath the shelf did more harm than any of the actual "hazards" ever have in the modern era of battlebots.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:21
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PostNouveau posted:I'd be down for just getting rid of the hazards. They're a relic from an era where you couldn't count on the bots to actually be able to damage each other and they were so fragile that the hammers and killsaws actually mattered. Nowadays, they're barely annoyance. It seems like the primary function of the hazards is to dislodge the bots when they get stuck in the slots created by the hazards
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Apr 8, 2022 18:30
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We should be talking more about how Witch Doctor actually ran forks for the final. Probably what led to their downfall. And yes, that is me taking a picture of my monitor because I couldn't be bothered to get around Discover+'s anti screenshot technology.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:40
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No way, did they? Maybe that's why they kept talking about how they had them in their videos.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:44
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I'm happy for team Tantrum, but Aren Hill is still an rear end in a top hat for being too mean to goodest bot Rusty.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:52
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Minotaur's team put out a statement. Basically same as most people have been saying that Battlebots needs to work on the rules in the offseason.
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Apr 8, 2022 19:59
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TheJadedOne posted:I think what gets me on it is that, to me, the screws did the damage to minotaur that caused him to lose the wheel. I've never been a fan of "arena can break you" things. Beyond that, when WD got stuck it looked minotaur was setting up to hit their side. They missed, realigned and then a hold was called. I know editing is funky is this show but if the 20 seconds before unstuck was ignored, that did rob minotaur of a chance to hit an exposed wheel of WD. In regards to the count out, if a bot has to actively avoid engaging a bot then there shouldn't be a count out because obviously engagement can happen. Either go in and finish it or face a decision where you lose all aggression points. This comes down to a ref issue and not really a judges issue. I can't imagine the screws did that lol. It had to be some bad material in the axle that had been under repeated stress from all the big hits throughout the tournament that just finally gave way. When the thing comes off like that, it was either going to fall off on its own later in the match or maybe one more hit from either Minotaur/Witch Doctor. Its kinda like concussions in a way - big hits do a lot of damage but the structural integrity can just degrade over time from repeated impacts
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Apr 8, 2022 21:03
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PostNouveau posted:I'd be down for just getting rid of the hazards. They're a relic from an era where you couldn't count on the bots to actually be able to damage each other and they were so fragile that the hammers and killsaws actually mattered. Nowadays, they're barely annoyance. Mostly agreed. I still like the screws and hammers, but they've always been the least obtrusive hazards anyway (outside of HUGE getting a wheel stuck or having to wait for the screws to reverse to free someone)
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Apr 8, 2022 21:05
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I'm alright with getting rid of the kill-saws as long as everyone understands they would be strengthening the Fork Meta hammers are good and should stay screws I'm 50/50 on, they're rarely great but rarely ruin things the upper deck i feel is okay in theory but bad in implementation. If they could rebuild it in such a way as to get rid of all the weird seams and stanchions, I feel it would be fine. You need to keep some sort of hazards and exploitable geometry unless you want to just abolish control bots entirely.
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Apr 8, 2022 23:54
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Eliminate the Deck but leave some protrusions to create short corners. Starting squares should be depressed by 10mm, to counter the ground meta. Either you waste weight on some sort of moveable skirt/fork, or you design with enough ground clearance to escape it.
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Apr 9, 2022 00:08
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PupsOfWar posted:abolish control bots entirely. 
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Apr 9, 2022 00:42
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Qwijib0 posted:Eliminate the Deck but leave some protrusions to create short corners. Starting squares should be depressed by 10mm, to counter the ground meta. Either you waste weight on some sort of moveable skirt/fork, or you design with enough ground clearance to escape it. most bots with forks and skirts could just reverse out so they'd just be slowing their box rush a bit or making themselves more vulnerable to an opponent's (which may be enough of a penalty to accomplish what you're trying to do)
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Apr 9, 2022 01:10
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oh jay posted:We should be talking more about how Witch Doctor actually ran forks for the final. Probably what led to their downfall. Windows Snipping tool gets around it!
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Apr 9, 2022 02:59
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I'll be honest, I really dont think Tantrum was the best bot this year
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Apr 9, 2022 03:13
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The Glumslinger posted:I'll be honest, I really dont think Tantrum was the best bot this year That's the magic of a tournament. You don't actually have to be the best to win. You just have to beat the teams that eliminated the best...
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Apr 9, 2022 03:30
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The Glumslinger posted:I'll be honest, I really dont think Tantrum was the best bot this year yeah but next year we'll see Rusty win
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Apr 9, 2022 03:32
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Tunicate posted:yeah but next year we'll see Rusty win Rusty as a long con would be amazing tbh
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Apr 9, 2022 03:47
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we're proud to introduce rusty 3.0, it got the chomp treatment and now it's 500lbs of pure walking metal death
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Apr 9, 2022 05:10
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TomR posted:Also the dumb shelf wasn't bolted down so bots kept bumping into it, popping it up in the air, and then the drat thing lands on them clamping the bot in place. That was also my takeaway namaste
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Apr 9, 2022 05:32
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TomR posted:Also the dumb shelf wasn't bolted down so bots kept bumping into it, popping it up in the air, and then the drat thing lands on them clamping the bot in place. The problem likely isn't that it wasn't bolted down. The problem is that the name of the game is how low your forks can go... So if there is any gap at all along the battlebox border, someone is going to get stuck under it... The shelf increases the battlebox from having 4 sides to get stuck under effectively to 8 sides... And one can probably assume that it was half assed implemented unlike the normal rails around the box that have been heavily tested. Can't have any gaps between the floors and the rails, someone will get under it, push it up, and gently caress it up for every fight after.
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Apr 9, 2022 09:48
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One of the refs put out a statementquote:To the BattleBots community, I want to address a couple of points that pertain to last night's finals. First, I can assure you that the producers have never asked the refs (or anyone that I know of) to manipulate the fights in anyway. As refs, our goal is always to be as consistent as possible and follow the rules. Of course, we are not perfect and the referees themselves don't always agree. Some of what we do is subjective but we believe that we follow the rules to the best of our abilities. We understand that being a referee is not easy and that we need to be able to take criticism. We are completely open to that, are always listening and learning. But no, the fights are not manipulated by the referees in anyway. The most challenging part of BattleBots is dealing with controlled movement. As I read through many of the social media post, I see lots of different opinions/viewpoints on who won last nights fight between Minotaur and Witch Doctor. I (ref John) believe Minotaur should've been counted out. Obviously, the other ref did not. Looking back at the fight, I think Dave (the other referee) made the right call to let it go. I was also the one that called the time out to unstick. Unfortunately, the numerous and sticks that have happened both in this season and many of the seasons past have never been shown on TV and have always been edited out. So I don't blame fans one bit for feeling like the rules have been manipulated because they had never seen that before. But there have been many times we've called timeouts to unstick. And let's remember, the rule state that the unstick timeouts can be called in specific situations and not in others. So I believe we've been consistent with that but from a fan standpoint it may not look that way. And that is totally fair criticism. During the Minotaur v. Witch Doctor fight, an edit was made to shorten the time (I guess for TV) that it looked like the timeout was called immediately. It was not called immediately however, I probably could've given it another two or three seconds. Always learning lessons. If you read the rules you will clearly see that certain places in the arena allow for a referee to call a time out and to unstick. There are also times when the BattleBots officials feel that it is not safe to unstick and therefore send it to the judges. Sometimes this makes television and sometimes it doesn't. But in no way does it change the outcome of any of the fights. Maybe you agree with the decisions of the referees or maybe you don't. Certainly we welcome any and all feedback. We have thick skin and we've been doing this for a long time. He's not as quick to call and end to a paragraph as he is to call for an end to a fight! Edit: Team Witch Doctor statement: quote:That’s a wrap on BattleBots Season 6! We’ll post more about the full episode this week, but we wanted to address a question we’ve seen a lot on social media - why didn’t we engage Minotaur in the second half of our fight? PostNouveau fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 13:58
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I do hope teams don't drop out because of what happened either because of how Battlebots is run or the toxic audience. It would suck to lose Witch Doctor, Minotaur, and other prominent teams. We already lost Bite Force.
halokiller fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 17:54
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If the organizers can't get a grip on the toxic, misogynistic crap, then they don't deserve to have those teams around, or to have the de facto "major league" of the sport. I just got a chance to finish watching the finals and the saddest, most infuriating thing was hearing about the crowd's gross reaction toward women. Anyone yelling "c**t" from the stands should have been thrown out and banned from BB events, preferably televised doing so to make an example to others.  My two cents about the matches themselves: Minotaur v. Witch Doctor: Minotaur got done dirty by the stoppage and to some extent the scorecards, but Witch Doctor would have equal grounds to be salty if the decision went against them, given that they were told for half of the fight that their opponent was about to be counted out. I had Minotaur winning on points before the stoppage, but it's hard to say anything conclusively about the second half because of the refs miscommunicating so badly with both teams. Surely a better way to coordinate the refs and teams can be put into place for this sort of thing. What a clusterfuck. Also: the upper deck is poo poo and needs to be completely overhauled. I actually like the idea of shaped areas in the arena to facilitate control bots, but this wasn't the way to do it. It almost never got utilized as it was intended, and just fouled up a bunch of matches along the way. Put some marked, uneven spots in the floor to challenge the ground game, put some shaped parts for control bots and flippers to get ring outs, remove the saws. The hammers I can take or leave, but I guess they're good for the diversity of the meta as they are a way for control bots to score points for anything besides control. Tantrum v. Hydra: Tantrum won, straight up. As a couple people here have said, even if you give Hydra points for control by dictating movement from the center of the arena (which is questionable in its own right), it wasn't aggressive nearly as much as Tantrum nor did it score any damage on Tantrum. Jake can say, "driving in circles isn't aggeession" all he wants, but doing the same at the center of the box isn't either, and he lost on damage to boot. It's not like boxing where you get points for clear shots. You get points for damage, and Tantrum is just a tough lil' brick with a hard chin. There's something to be said for trying to win the damage category during design by making a tough robot. Good for them. Witch Doctor v. Tantrum: What a way to go. I like Witch Doctor, and it's one of like two other bots I like almost as much as Minotaur. They had a hard road to get to the finals, and I feel even worse for them now knowing how the team captain was treated during their match with Minotaur. Still, my daughter and I both agreed that it would have been nice to see either bot win (although my daughter was leaning toward Tantrum because it has those cute eyeballs). I also like the idea of asking bots to return to their respective starting boxes to show controlled movement. It wouldn't totally eliminate weird cases, but it certainly would reduce them.
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Apr 9, 2022 18:50
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Here's my alternative count-out procedure: on top of 'no motion at all for 10 seconds causing an automatic loss', either team may, at any time, put down their controller for 20 seconds and start a countdown for their opponent to hit them. If the opponent can't hit an uncontrolled robot in 20 seconds, it loses instantly for not being capable of basic robot combat. If the robot DOES land a hit, the other team picks up their controllers and continue the match.
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Apr 9, 2022 19:19
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I don't like adding little minigames to prove controlled movement into the fight. Breaks up the flow of the match too much. Just lay down a clear rule about what qualifies as controlled movement and leave everything else alone.
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Apr 9, 2022 19:22
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For some context, I was both heavily involved in writing the current judging criteria and have been involved in a lot of discussions with BB surrounding rules going into last season and continuing through now. On the Minotaur/Witch Doctor fight, most of the issues come from the unstick coming faster than expected and ref miscommunication after the fight restarted. Neither team should get the blame here. I'd expect significant changes to both the unstick and mobility rules for next season. With Hydra/Tantrum, based on the judging criteria the judges got the match correct. Damage is about as objective as is practical for a combat event, and while Hydra got in a bunch of flips, they didn't do any noticeable damage. From what I was told, Tantrum showed weapon function after the fight was concluded so the only non-cosmetic damage was the front portion of Hydra's flipper being broken off. By the rules, that's a 3-2 on damage. On control, by the criteria you'd likely rate Hydra at "significant" and Tantrum at "moderate", so that's 2-1 for Hydra. Aggression seems to be the main point of debate, and for that I'll go with some quotes right from the judges guide: quote:Aggression Definitions Hydra spent a great deal of the fight effectively pivoting in place waiting for Tantrum to make a move. Similarly quote:Aggression Factors Tantrum's repeated attempts to attack a nearly stationary Hydra in spite of Hydra winning the ground war and sending Tantrum flying hits the "boldness" category. In my opinion, if Hydra had spent more time chasing down Tantrum instead of letting Tantrum dictate the pace of the fight they'd have won, however with the fight that happened, it's easy to score aggression 2-1 for Tantrum. In general, the current judging criteria is designed to reward a robot being on the attack. If the fight goes to the judges, you want to be the robot that spent the fight going for hits. MikeNCR fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 19:42
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MikeNCR posted:In my opinion, if Hydra had spent more time chasing down Tantrum instead of letting Tantrum dictate the pace of the fight they'd have won, however with the fight that happened, it's easy to score aggression 2-1 for Tantrum. I think practically speaking, if they'd tried chasing tantrum Hydra would have done a lot worse, given their drivetrain and super low ground clearance
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Apr 9, 2022 19:52
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Tunicate posted:I think practically speaking, if they'd tried chasing tantrum Hydra would have done a lot worse, given their drivetrain and super low ground clearance Yep, Hydra bet on being able to play defense and the flips breaking their opponent, Tantrum didn't break and that made the difference. It's a strategy call that had been working for them, but didn't this time.
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Apr 9, 2022 19:57
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I'm sure Hydra attempted more flips than Tantrum threw "punches" in that fight. Tantrum is a lot like Rotator in that way; they spend a lot of time playing as a wedge/brick/control/whatever you want to call it bot and not using their weapon. Hydra should be winning on frequency factor and a lot of Tantrum's charges would fall into the "love tap" category. I think most of the time these aggression factors would get pretty fuzzy for the judges, but both teams in that fight had activated weapons instead of constantly running ones, so it makes the lines a lot clearer. PostNouveau fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 20:02
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PostNouveau posted:Hydra should be winning on frequency factor That's not what "aggression" means tho Who is more aggressive, the matador, or the bull?
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Apr 9, 2022 20:11
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