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SolarFire2 posted:Chiming in with my usual 'Duck! sucks and should not be allowed in the tournament' post. Given the number of bots that shut down ten seconds into the fight because of a loose wire, Duck’s ability to take a licking is impressive and shouldn’t be discounted. Tombstone forces designers who want to win to figure out how to beat it, and that’s been good for design. The problem with Duck is that not enough designers are thinking about how to beat it: overcoming an effective and reliable defensive bot should be on the list, but there’s still a few designers who seem to plan for the opponent’s bot failing instead of theirs winning. Duck isn’t the problem, the problem is that more than one team has a bot with no winning strategy beyond “don’t lose.”
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Dec 3, 2021 16:05
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Borsche69 posted:Yeah, but that doesn't really explain why a robot like Witch Doctor can zoom around really fast while a robot like Duck (which could presumably allocate more weight to its drive train) looked sluggish and slow. Even though they upgraded the lifter slightly, Duck's strength should still just be its resilience and its drive, and it didn't seem to have the latter. Look again at the very start of the fight. Duck trundles out, takes a few hits, and then suddenly speeds up massively and barely avoids ramming itself into the spikes. That suggests something might have been amiss with speed control.
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Jan 21, 2022 16:11
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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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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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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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