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Even after Tantrum clipped off the front part of Hydra's flipper, it still worked fine as shown by the last flip Giving Tantrum 3 points for that is weak imo
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 20:28 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 14:16 |
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if only one bot deals noticeable damage, they get all the damage points
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 21:06 |
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I can see the argument by the letter of the law, and I understand the spirit of the law meant to encourage more 'aggressive' play, but it does seem a little backwards sometimes when you're rewarding ineffective aggressive play. This is probably where Control (or Strategy from the old BB days) seems like it should come in and correct for it. Part of the problem just seems to be the scale of the scores. 3 points doesn't deliver a lot of granularity. Hydra was in control for like 80-90% of the fight (at least how it looked from TV). But the way it's forced to be scored makes it seem more like they were only in control for 2/3rds of the fight. Idk necessarily how I'd want to score it. I always liked the old BB scoring that was 45 points across 3 judges (so each judge got 5 points to play around with for Aggression/Damage/Strategy), and the scoring is also aggregated between the three judges (so a split decision would've been 23-22 instead of 2 judges to 1), but I don't at all mind the new BB scoring giving increased emphasis to damage. Maybe bump it up to 7 for damage, and 5 each for aggression/control? Right now the scale is 11 points (5 for damage, 3 for agg/control) which puts damage 45% of the entire scorecard. Moving it to the 7-5-5 scale gives more granularity, while not reducing how influential damage is by that much (41% of the scorecard). It is very rare for judges to hand out 3-0 decisions for either aggression or control, since you basically have to be immobilized or barely functional to get no points - so hopefully this would give the judge more flexibility to hand out a 4-1 for when a robot feels decisively (but not dominantly) superior in a given category.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 21:14 |
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or just keep it all the same so rules lawyers have something to yell about
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 21:15 |
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Why don't the refs have a way to communicate with each other? Like a simple radio and headset combination wouldn't be difficult.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 21:15 |
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I think they do? You can see them with earpieces and talking under their masks sometimes. I'm putting it down to the chaos of Mike and the Bazillion Brazillions yelling at their respective refs
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 21:22 |
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PostNouveau posted: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 do think that's a bit unfair to Tantrum Their weapon is finnicky and relatively hard to use, compared to rotator's horizontal spinner. Soto plays as a plowbot on purpose because he knows that's his bot's strength. (To be clear, I'm okay with this and at least he's not as extreme about it as Beta used to be.) Team Tantrum plays as a plowbot a lot of the time because it's hard to tee things up right for the puncher PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Apr 9, 2022 |
# ? Apr 9, 2022 21:57 |
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Borsche69 posted:Part of the problem just seems to be the scale of the scores. 3 points doesn't deliver a lot of granularity. Hydra was in control for like 80-90% of the fight (at least how it looked from TV). But the way it's forced to be scored makes it seem more like they were only in control for 2/3rds of the fight. Probably less editing for time could help overall but I'm in agreement when it comes to granularity talk. It wouldn't make scoring easier, but I wonder if even something like "first half/second half" scoring could help make a difference. One point for being "more aggressive" in the first half, one point for being "more aggressive" in the second half, one point for overall intensity? Actually it's at the point of reliability and battery power that going four minutes might be another welcome change.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 22:35 |
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PupsOfWar posted:I do think that's a bit unfair to Tantrum Well, I mean, isn't this as they say "points decided in the pit"? Tantrum could run their spinner front all the time and ditch the punching mechanism and not have to tee things up. I do see what you're saying that this is the optimal strategy for their bot, but the build is determining the strategy. They were not assigned this build by the judges.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 22:44 |
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I think I mentioned this right at the beginning, but Tantrum's design in theory is super cool: They can hide the blade until it spins up and then reveal it only when it's at max efficacy. Other spinner often get blocked from spinning up during pins. In practice, it just never works very well though. They just have the shittiest spinner of the entire competition. Would definitely have preferred Blip winning, a flipper getting nutted would have been a huge upset.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 22:59 |
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Tantrum's spinner isn't meant to do big damage like other vertical spinners, it's more like Sawblaze's weapon where it delivers a lighter weapon in a small burst when it's in control of the other bot. It gets under the other bot and then punches it around/flips it over/knocks it out of the arena. It's a control bot first and the puncher is just a way to use that control. It's still more effective than Scorpios or Whiplash's spinners.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 23:19 |
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Fish Of Doom posted:Tantrum's spinner isn't meant to do big damage like other vertical spinners, it's more like Sawblaze's weapon where it delivers a lighter weapon in a small burst when it's in control of the other bot. It gets under the other bot and then punches it around/flips it over/knocks it out of the arena. It's a control bot first and the puncher is just a way to use that control. Talk about damning with faint praise.
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# ? Apr 9, 2022 23:56 |
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ante posted:I think I mentioned this right at the beginning, but Tantrum's design in theory is super cool: They can hide the blade until it spins up and then reveal it only when it's at max efficacy. Other spinner often get blocked from spinning up during pins. Given that Tantrum won the final thanks to damage done to Witch Doctor's undercarriage by that spinner, I don't agree with your "in practice" comment. They clearly opted to trade off weapon power for better stability and drive-train. The advantage of hiding the blade isn't merely being able to spin up without being foiled, it's that they can operate as an effective push-bot in ways most of the spinners have trouble doing. It's a hybrid approach: be able to engage with your weapon to deal damage, be able to tank hits effectively while remaining functional, and be able to shove wider bots around the arena. Most spinners use the spinner as their main line of defense. Tantrum doesn't. But it's clearly not doing the "Duck needs no weapon" approach to winning fights, either, and that spinner can do some effective damage. It's just that opponents can also break their weapons on Tantrum's armor, too.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 00:27 |
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Narsham posted:Given that Tantrum won the final thanks to damage done to Witch Doctor's undercarriage by that spinner, I don't agree with your "in practice" comment. I think this is the hidden strength of tantrum's weapon: it hits in hard to predict (or hard to account for) areas on a robot. It's not especially powerful, but it can be surprising when it connects.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 01:02 |
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rarbatrol posted:I think this is the hidden strength of tantrum's weapon: it hits in hard to predict (or hard to account for) areas on a robot. It's not especially powerful, but it can be surprising when it connects. its this. see where it bashed off rotator’s panel - its right above the spinner. its a weird as gently caress spot to hit without hitting the spinner first but they can do it. not many can. sawblaze is powerful in that same way because it can shove a hammer saw onto the soft bits of bot that builders hope never get hit. a big powerful weapon becomes significantly less useful when it has to hit the hard reinforced parts of a bot every time. see tombstone vs every wedge bot
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 07:07 |
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change the rules so there is no counting out for crab walking. youre either not moving or you are. the downside is more damage to each robot but there’s zero ambiguity whether a bot is in or out
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 07:10 |
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Yeah. Come to think of it, the "translational movement" rule is kind of arbitrary as far as being a measure of whether a bot is knocked out or not. If a team is limping in circles and wants to risk continuing a fight to get to time and win on points, let them. Then again, if a bot is disabled enough that it's unrealistic, put the decision on the team to tap out rather than put the decision in the hands of referees.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 10:34 |
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If a bot is crab walking in circles. It should be no problem for the other team to finish the job. No need to make the refs make the decision.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 10:41 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:If a bot is crab walking in circles. It should be no problem for the other team to finish the job. No need to make the refs make the decision. Exactly. It adds an interesting choice that a team has to make in the moment, particularly if a fight has gone on into the third minute already. You can tap out and lose but with less damage, or you can bet on the point you've already scored and hope to ride out the clock and take whatever the other bot dishes out in that time. Speaking of which, is there a reason teams can't voluntarily "tap out" as the rules are now? I've just never seen it done, not that there aren't cases where it ought to have been done.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 10:49 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:If a bot is crab walking in circles. It should be no problem for the other team to finish the job. No need to make the refs make the decision. I think Witch Doctor explanation makes sense, especially when done in the heat of a fight. They knew that if they kept engaging the countdown wouldn't start, they had a ref telling them the countdown was about to start, and they'd seen two other fights where someone didn't let the countdown start and they ended up losing the fight.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 10:51 |
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Railing Kill posted:Exactly. It adds an interesting choice that a team has to make in the moment, particularly if a fight has gone on into the third minute already. You can tap out and lose but with less damage, or you can bet on the point you've already scored and hope to ride out the clock and take whatever the other bot dishes out in that time. Tapping out was an option in CC-era because there were so many bots due to it being an open competition and it was single elimination. Here's an example of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyRRCtOIoxg Now that it's invitational only, producers feel 'obligated' to get a good fight. That being said, I don't think it's that big of a deal since nearly most of the time a builder can just shut their bot down and claim to be immobilized not to mention there are so many gentlemen's agreements among the builders on how far they want to take a fight if x happens.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 14:10 |
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Somebody mentioned “invitational”. Well there’s your problem. GTFO.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 18:20 |
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Well my bracket got thorougly busted lol Really thought Witch Doctor was gonna take it after that Sawblaze fight. Cobalt should stop sticking things like that to the front of their bot, I think every time they've lost it's been due to those front additions. So, yeah, they have helped them at least once, but with the way their weapon is oriented, if the addition *doesn't* work they just prevent them from hitting the other bot. Also can I just mention how tired I am of hearing "impress the selection committee" and "strength of schedule", I get that it's a way to make sure the most popular bots get more camera time even if they perform like rear end but I vastly prefer the Robot Wars format where each episode sends one bot to the finals/semi-finals.
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# ? Apr 10, 2022 23:08 |
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Esoter1c posted:That was a great episode, definitely some upsets. I managed to get the worst bracket two years running, but I wonder who won overall. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Apr 10, 2022 |
# ? Apr 10, 2022 23:35 |
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Everyone keeps talking about Tantrum chewing on Hydra's nose without mentioning that it had also taken off about half of the side skirt. Going in from the side was working.
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# ? Apr 11, 2022 01:30 |
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I think the Hydra/Tantrum fight is a case where the judging rules don't align with how a lot of people would judge a fight on vibes. Hydra flips are more flashy, but it's similar to a hammer bot that scores a ton of hits but doesn't do any real damage. I can't think of a way to fix this. No set of rules will be perfect and I remember a ton of fights where either bot could have a legit claim on winning a fight based on vibes alone. And I agree with getting rid of controlled movement altogether. What's the worst thing that happens? Two bots come out and hit each other in the first 10 seconds and spend the rest of the 3 minutes driving around in circles unable to get to each other? So what, send it to the judges and if it's too boring for TV show the initial hit and a bit of them shambling around and explain that's what happened for the rest of the fight.
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# ? Apr 11, 2022 13:22 |
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TomR posted:I think the Hydra/Tantrum fight is a case where the judging rules don't align with how a lot of people would judge a fight on vibes. Hydra flips are more flashy, but it's similar to a hammer bot that scores a ton of hits but doesn't do any real damage. I can't think of a way to fix this. No set of rules will be perfect and I remember a ton of fights where either bot could have a legit claim on winning a fight based on vibes alone. The TV money is it all though. Without the TV and lesser sponsor money we’re still just searching for it and watching it on the webs. Not saying I’m a fan of that, but it’s where we are.
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# ? Apr 11, 2022 23:11 |
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TomR posted:I think the Hydra/Tantrum fight is a case where the judging rules don't align with how a lot of people would judge a fight on vibes. Hydra flips are more flashy, but it's similar to a hammer bot that scores a ton of hits but doesn't do any real damage. I can't think of a way to fix this. No set of rules will be perfect and I remember a ton of fights where either bot could have a legit claim on winning a fight based on vibes alone. Hydra flips can be plenty effective, with the bot internals giving out on the opponent, the opponent getting stuck somewhere, or the favorite "opponent lands on their side and can't deal with that." Tantrum simply took them without caring, and Hydra only got one flip that was anywhere near the sides of the battlebox. Certainly scores more KOs than most hammer bots.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 00:08 |
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Narsham posted:Hydra flips can be plenty effective, with the bot internals giving out on the opponent, the opponent getting stuck somewhere, or the favorite "opponent lands on their side and can't deal with that." Tantrum simply took them without caring, and Hydra only got one flip that was anywhere near the sides of the battlebox. Certainly scores more KOs than most hammer bots. Yeah I meant in the specific case of flinging Tantrum in the air this match didn't seem to do much real damage because of how tough Tantrum was. I'm sure there are weaker bots that Hydra would destroy with a flip, just like how there used to be weak bots that a hammer would wreck. And Otteration, I mean a single match could end up boring from changing the rules the way I would like. I doubt every match would go that way.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 02:11 |
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The problem with the Hydra / Tantrum fight is Hydra's flips are way more flashy on screen than Tantrum's Spinner. But all Hydra did was spin around the center of the box and flip Tantrum a bunch which did nothing to Tantrum. It's hard to argue that you should win the control or aggression points if all you are doing is hanging out in the middle of the box waiting for the other team to decide when and how to engage.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 04:42 |
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i'd have given the Bloodsport vs Claw Viper fight to Claw Viper
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 06:32 |
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Meanwhile in NHRL highlight reels... Creator of NHRL entered a very serious bot... Some 2x4s, tape and liquid nitrogen in coffee cups? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuLvHEElrcE Also here is the flaming inflatable penguin fight from Joe from team Smeeee (no idea how to spell his last name so) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNodm-h1Wbs SLICK GOKU BABY fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Apr 12, 2022 |
# ? Apr 12, 2022 13:42 |
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The NHRL looks like so much fun. I love seeing the unconventional bots.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 14:22 |
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TomR posted:The NHRL looks like so much fun. I love seeing the unconventional bots. Someone made an application for next season for a robot you see a fair amount of in the NHRL lower weight divisions, but I don't think has ever been attempted at 250 lbs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLCBpzJVusE It's a "melty brain", which is close a full-body spinner but it has that type of movement like Glitch and Shatter where it can go anywhere without having to rotate. I believe bots that kind of look like this like Gigabyte and Captain Shredderator are "full body" spinners in that they have a rotating shell on the outside of the bot. Hoping these guys get accepted so we get a new bot type next year.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 15:09 |
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PostNouveau posted:Someone made an application for next season for a robot you see a fair amount of in the NHRL lower weight divisions, but I don't think has ever been attempted at 250 lbs. KennyMan666 fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Apr 12, 2022 |
# ? Apr 12, 2022 16:14 |
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A modern melty brains on BattleBots would be pretty nuts. I think one of the problems is BB has a rule against weapons spinning too fast but I don't know the specifics. I'd love to see it happen.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 17:03 |
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Tip speed is capped at 250mph, which is a super strange way to do it, because that doesn't specify the actual energies. I hear it's an insurance requirement for the poly carb arena walls. There was that insane chain bot a couple years ago (hella?) that got DQed last minute for being too insane, but the exact reasons seemed nebulous and arbitrary
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 18:44 |
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HellaChopper.
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 18:55 |
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ante posted:Tip speed is capped at 250mph, which is a super strange way to do it, because that doesn't specify the actual energies. I hear it's an insurance requirement for the poly carb arena walls. It also kept exploding itself iirc
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 21:33 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 14:16 |
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KennyMan666 posted:It's been done at heavyweight (specifically, 97 kgs/214 lbs)! Nuts 2 in the third season of the Robot Wars revival was the robot that pioneered the meltybrain system (the show even making it sound like team captain Rory Mangles was the guy who invented it, which I'm not sure if it's really the case, but at the very least he was the first to get it to work), in the process making it the first combat robot that actually made flails work as a weapon. It did ridiculously well, making it to the finals and finishing joint third with Behemoth, in the process also becoming the first robot to actually beat Carbide since the beginning of the previous season, with a perfect shot to their weapon chain. Carbide got their revenge, but had to weld on a shield for their weapon chain specifically for the rematch with Nuts 2, and several hits were landed on it. was it really a melty? every fight I've ever seen it in just has it spinning dead in place; maybe slightly drifting in a direction. every hit it seemed to get was because someone drove into it
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# ? Apr 12, 2022 21:39 |