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Chronojam posted:Dude loves what he does, loves the existence of the sport, and his family members actively make and sell parts designed to make better robots for everybody plus take contact work to build frames etc on their heavy machinery iirc Yeah it's this, Jake and Ray might play "villains" on screen and the producers love to play up that angle but you can tell that they're really well liked and respected back in the pits.
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# ? May 20, 2023 13:43 |
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# ? May 31, 2024 22:55 |
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Chronojam posted:BattleBots competition has way more in common with Great British Bake-off than a usual sports tournament. Team Riptide doesn't realize this, so they come off as jerks. In contrast, Ray Billings can gently caress up tons of robots but everybody's gonna cheer when he shows up. I've seen Jake and Ray turning in Battlebots youtube chat to say hi, they are complete addicts of the sport I don't have a lot to add that hasn't been said about the ep except I'm pretty stumped as to where it's going to go now but my tentative guess is that we may well see showdowns between Huge v Riptide and Minotaur v Hydra and how the hell do you project those?
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# ? May 20, 2023 14:07 |
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I've always liked Copperhead as a bot (which is good because its had 3 owners in 3 years) because they seem to have nailed down the tiny dense brick method of building a bot. I always figured if they solved any reliability issues with motors they could go all the way. Is this their year? Probably not.
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# ? May 20, 2023 14:57 |
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Well, my bracket is screwed and seeing Hypershock lose so hard to Riptide hurt me emotionally but it was still a great episode. I love the interviews at the end. The damage to Endgame was insane.
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# ? May 20, 2023 17:35 |
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I've always liked Copperhead too. Robert Cowan's YouTube channel shows how even though the outside looks the same Copperhead has various internal improvements over the years. I think they have a shot if they just send it weapon first into the weapon of whatever they are fighting. It's not a sure win or anything, but I think that's the best shot they have. That or if the driver can get next level skills to dance around their opponent.
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# ? May 20, 2023 17:36 |
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Copperhead has definitely come along way since that first season when it competed as Poison Arrow and took 10 years to spin up.
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# ? May 20, 2023 17:56 |
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Season finale in a couple days! Also a message from Team Duck. Al was hired by Battlebots for Destrucathon, and not allowed to compete for season 7, maybe a brand new bot design for season 8!
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# ? May 23, 2023 06:10 |
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No wheels huh? Is he literally just going to submit a giant brick this time?
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# ? May 23, 2023 09:48 |
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500lb version of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cGri-tA-vs
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# ? May 23, 2023 10:28 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:500lb version of this. lol I wanted to like Duck! but it needed a gatdamn weapon. I'm glad he came right out and said what so many people have been saying for years: that you almost literally cannot win matches in this sport if you cannot do damage. That's a departure from his often sour complaints about losing judges' decisions in the past. What I liked about it is that it is a brick that does not die. This season has proven the value of durability over and over again, so there's a place for that. But designing a bot with no weapon for this sport is like showing up to a hockey game with no stick.
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# ? May 23, 2023 11:20 |
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He's right to a degree but also wrong. Hydra and Claw Viper are both capable of winning the giant nut, Saw Blaze can do damage but it's not out there blowing other bots apart like Riptide or Tombstone do either. He's one of the last 8? bots left right now There is some sour grapes at play here too. Some designs are just uncompetitive. Duck isn't really great at anything except being a tank but that only takes you so far. Can't be out here blaming KE bots for you not winning anything when you'd also get washed by the other control bots too
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# ? May 23, 2023 13:58 |
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Nodoze posted:He's right to a degree but also wrong. Hydra and Claw Viper are both capable of winning the giant nut, Saw Blaze can do damage but it's not out there blowing other bots apart like Riptide or Tombstone do either. He's one of the last 8? bots left right now I'll second this, the current judging criteria is as friendly as it has ever been in the reboot era to non-KE bots. If everything's still working on your bot at the end of the fight the worst you'll do on damage is lose 3-2. Win aggression & control 2-1 and the fight's yours. Winning with control bots is harder than KE bots, but that's more down to physics than the rules.
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# ? May 23, 2023 14:11 |
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A big thing is that all of the bots are so much more reliable now. The first bunch of seasons, there was a great chance that one of the bots would just stop working, mid--match. Duck's whole thing being to break their fist on its face, and that worked, quite well, at that time. All of the best teams have it so dialed in, now, they can bounce off the ceiling and still keep working (until they lose the last of their wheels).
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# ? May 23, 2023 21:19 |
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Nodoze posted:There is some sour grapes at play here too. Some designs are just uncompetitive. Duck isn't really great at anything except being a tank but that only takes you so far. Can't be out here blaming KE bots for you not winning anything when you'd also get washed by the other control bots too My gripe with Duck was always that it was an unconvincing flipper bot especially compared to a bot like Hydra. The flipper just seemed to be an afterthought and time after time it was the first casualty and then what? And he never addressed this problem in any design.
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# ? May 23, 2023 22:32 |
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Didn't a bunch of teams adopt a lot of Duck's internal engineering? Is it fair to say Duck is one of the reasons every bot is so tough these days?
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# ? May 23, 2023 22:36 |
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ewe2 posted:My gripe with Duck was always that it was an unconvincing flipper bot especially compared to a bot like Hydra. The flipper just seemed to be an afterthought and time after time it was the first casualty and then what? And he never addressed this problem in any design. Lifter vs flipper. But Duck! still compares poorly to Whiplash, whether or not they run the spinner.
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# ? May 23, 2023 22:39 |
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PostNouveau posted:Didn't a bunch of teams adopt a lot of Duck's internal engineering? Is it fair to say Duck is one of the reasons every bot is so tough these days? Mostly its that there was a bad batch of motor drivers a few years back which made every bot that used them liable to halt and catch fire
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# ? May 23, 2023 23:31 |
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ewe2 posted:My gripe with Duck was always that it was an unconvincing flipper bot especially compared to a bot like Hydra. The flipper just seemed to be an afterthought and time after time it was the first casualty and then what? And he never addressed this problem in any design. It was an afterthought. He took his existing heavyweight design Whoops! and added a lifter mechanism to it to meet BattleBots requirements.
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# ? May 24, 2023 02:56 |
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Great Beer posted:It was an afterthought. He took his existing heavyweight design Whoops! and added a lifter mechanism to it to meet BattleBots requirements. Duck before the flipper was just a box with a beak, and a watching a box with a beak win was hilarious. All other versions of Duck were inferior, because they were less ridiculous.
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# ? May 24, 2023 03:43 |
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oh jay posted:Lifter vs flipper. But Duck! still compares poorly to Whiplash, whether or not they run the spinner. Ah right that makes more sense but agreed, it's still lame. sweet geek swag posted:Duck before the flipper was just a box with a beak, and a watching a box with a beak win was hilarious. All other versions of Duck were inferior, because they were less ridiculous. There are many funny designs like that in NHRL competition still and I do enjoy that side of it up to a point but the joke wears thin if you're expecting to seriously compete at the Battlebots level. At least he recognized that. Also did anyone else catch the damage Malice did to Minotaur, they broke their weapon bearings which no one else had done in 20 years or something.
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# ? May 24, 2023 08:59 |
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Malice had a really good season. It's nice to see a team that's been plugging away for years make a breakthrough like that.
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# ? May 24, 2023 20:06 |
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Yea, Team Malice is a really cool team. And them cheering as Faruq announced Minotaur as the winner is truly great. Never was 100% sure what to think of Team Malice, but 100% on board with them in the future, hopefully they can get their reliability down and be a real force in championship VIII!
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# ? May 24, 2023 20:25 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:Yea, Team Malice is a really cool team. And them cheering as Faruq announced Minotaur as the winner is truly great. Never was 100% sure what to think of Team Malice, but 100% on board with them in the future, hopefully they can get their reliability down and be a real force in championship VIII! Not only are they, as a team, fans of the sport, but they put a lot of time and effort into supporting other teams at both the local and national level. On reliability, they were testing some new weapon structure stuff at Robogames and it seemed to work very well.
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# ? May 24, 2023 22:46 |
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ewe2 posted:Ah right that makes more sense but agreed, it's still lame. You can have one Duck, and it makes the competition more fun, but if you have six Ducks that would be really bad.
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# ? May 24, 2023 23:26 |
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PostNouveau posted:Didn't a bunch of teams adopt a lot of Duck's internal engineering? Is it fair to say Duck is one of the reasons every bot is so tough these days? They showed the little montage last week of the ABC season 1 bots. As a whole, the bots have just gotten tougher. Unlikely adapting to Duck as much as just adapting to all the vertical spinners.
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# ? May 25, 2023 11:03 |
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I just watched the first bout of this week's episode and let me just say without spoiling anything: they should frame that whole fight and put it in a goddamn museum. What a fight.
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# ? May 25, 2023 11:54 |
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How much time is there between fights normally? I assume during the regular season there's a few days because of so many fights but as they get towards the playoffs how much time do they get? Do they fill the rest of the card with a bunch of fights we don't see?
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# ? May 25, 2023 12:16 |
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The rulebook gives a minimum time. But they do the Champions tournaments alongside the championship bracket. Which is 5 - 8 bot brackets, so 35 fights. The golden bolt champions final last season at least was filmed after the championship, not sure for this season.
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# ? May 25, 2023 12:55 |
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Quarters Sawblaze-Minotaur: All-timer of a fight. Minotaur almost pulled off scissors beating rock there. That sequence of Minotaur with a flaming rear end flipping Sawblaze over looked like they were gonna do it. WD-Huge: Dull fight. WD was pretty durable in getting its face whacked over and over, but Huge's weapon didn't break so I am beginning to think no one left can counter Huge. Ribbot-Hydra: This is the oddest fight of the night. Just tentatively poking each other the first half. Seems like a pretty good strategy by Ribbot! Riptide-Copperhead: This is a lot to put on a high school student on hours' notice. I don't think I would have done it, just for the kid's sake. Riptide has had pretty easy drives so far, but as this fight showed any fight can turn into a 3-minute technical. Hopefully the kid didn't take it too hard. Surprised Riptide did not appeal the split decision. lol at the new captain calling being weighed 3 times "adversity". Semis Sawblaze-Ribbot: lol at the minute-long do si do. Sawblaze has been popping so many batteries. Ah, Riptide did appeal. Makes sense. Copperhead-Huge: Copperhead at least trying something different by spinning backward Finals Sawblaze is probably the best counter left for Huge, but still hard to picture a Sawblaze win before the fight. It can't do the one thing it's best at: scoop and slam. I think this "death of the 4wd verts" package is premature. The dominance of those bots makes Huge most effective because the playoff field was packed with bots Huge is designed to beat. Cradle attachment does not seem like a good idea to me. You're not going to stop the weapon dead, allowing you to shove Huge around by the weapon. Sawblaze is pretty good at deflecting blows geometrically, but now you're just giving Huge a target. The big ears are great, though. Boy, did those put in a lot of work. Really hard to say who won there. I do not envy the judges. Really glad the attachment was ultimately not a throw by Sawblaze. That was a great final. Jesus these slo mo shots. Sawblaze sniped 3 of the 4 weapon belts on Huge it looks like. Interesting to see (essentially) a control bot finally win in the most destructive era of the sport. PostNouveau fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 25, 2023 |
# ? May 25, 2023 14:35 |
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PostNouveau posted:Quarters Thought on the finals matchup: Sawblaze/Huge is probably my favorite final of the entire reboot. I'd put decent odds that this match could rate as the best BattleBots final outright. Such a good match.
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# ? May 25, 2023 14:45 |
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Well that first fight was nothing but amazing, one of the best easily. So then. Considering his dad's views on autism, what's the chances that Ethan wasn't vaccinated against COVID? Is being vaccinated a requirement to be allowed to compete? Bertha the Toaster fucked around with this message at 15:47 on May 25, 2023 |
# ? May 25, 2023 15:34 |
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Bertha the Toaster posted:Well that first fight was nothing but amazing, one of the best easily. Spoiler tags, even if it's not a fight result it's a narrative surprise in the episode. I'd say chances are probably high.
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# ? May 25, 2023 15:45 |
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Oh, yeah, sorry. I have spoilers off so I kind of forget they exist.
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# ? May 25, 2023 15:48 |
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PostNouveau posted:Quarters Ribbot - Hydra spoiler The floor was so hosed up that the floor won the ground game. The forks on both bots kept getting stuck on the floor. Quite comical really. So many bot fights in 13 days of filming, floor didn't stand a chance.
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# ? May 25, 2023 16:11 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:Ribbot - Hydra spoiler The floor was so hosed up that the floor won the ground game. The forks on both bots kept getting stuck on the floor. Quite comical really. So many bot fights in 13 days of filming, floor didn't stand a chance. I think Ribbot used this to their advantage really well. Hydra couldn't give chase, so they just locked horns and waited for their opening.
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# ? May 25, 2023 16:16 |
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Easy enough for me to say this but I feel like Hydra should have pulled back to sit on top of the slots for the blades so that Ribbot's forks had a chance of getting stuck similar to what happened to End Game. Edit: Just about to watch the final I don't care who wins, they both deserve it and I love that the two bots to get this far are ones that break the 4WD vert meta. Bertha the Toaster fucked around with this message at 16:37 on May 25, 2023 |
# ? May 25, 2023 16:35 |
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More like the grand finally am I right? It was a good long season! Fully ditching the bracket now, it's completely destroyed lmao Noooooo Minotaur They were so close! That fight was amazing holy poo poo. I really want these guys to win one year. Well Covid's not good. Again though what is the matter with the editors? Well that's unfortunate for WD. Better luck next year. Lol that standoff. See ya Hydra It was close, sucks for Ethan, but lol gently caress you Riptide Wow that first shot just annihilated Ribbot, holy poo poo Man, Huge is really dialed in this year. Congrats to Sawblaze! Not the finals I expected this year, nice to see things shaken up a bit.
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# ? May 25, 2023 16:42 |
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Holy poo poo. What a show
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# ? May 25, 2023 19:01 |
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loving hell, fight of the year from Minotaur/sawblaze.
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# ? May 25, 2023 19:42 |
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# ? May 31, 2024 22:55 |
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This was pretty easily the best year of the show imho. Great finale, and my favorite finale fight.
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# ? May 25, 2023 23:22 |