It's Robot Fighting Time! Battlebots Season 6 January 2022!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > It's Robot Fighting Time! Battlebots Season 6 January 2022!

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

i'm glad the full-body spinners got a reliability boost last year because uh those matchups are going to break a few things (on the ceiling)

# ¿ Jan 5, 2022 05:39

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 03:56

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

hydra triggers controversy again with a lifter attachment that allows it to flip while hiding on the shelf

"I'm actually on the ground" insists team wyachi as the referee feebly weeps in a corner

# ¿ Jan 6, 2022 01:12

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

episode 1 thoughts

lol have we seen so much actual fire on this show before all in one episode? next year the arena is just going to be surrounded in large ventilator holes and if you get a robot into one of them you automatically win

sawblaze v minotaur - probably the only fight where things worked correctly for everyone involved. this must be on the first times i've been minotaur lose the match because of like actual damage inflicted onto its innards versus it taking 90 hits and then deciding that it doesn't want to spin up the drum anymore. but what a loving tank, there should be an award for joining the "spent the entire match on fire but kept moving". sawblaze's new forks also looked legitimately useful and durable, minotaur is usually pretty good at bending those things upward but they stood their ground this time.

uppercut v gigabyte - we all knew how that was going to go. uppercut looks a bit nerfed this year, i legitimately expected it to send gigabyte into the audience but the hits were still potent. definitely more stable that prior years, and definitely a big contender for the top prize imo

switchback v gruff - i can't tell if it moved slowly because the drivers were new, the motortrain was weak / flawed, or maybe both. the design is very beautiful and i'm a big fan of new designs in a sea of spinning hunks of metal. that said this is still a spinning hunk of metal but that arm is so cool! i don't think it's going to work out well for them because i have a bad feeling it's too top heavy, meaning the arm is going to be too slow to do anything significant and it's going to be a pain to drive around the box.

captain shred v tombstone - as the thread's tombstone apologist i am deeply saddened by tombstone's horrific self-own. ray definitely said it best that there was too much that was new all at once in tombstone... a lot of what made it reliable was all that old stuff, but to fight against the Zoomer bots it had to try and upgrade where it could. i'm guessing he's going to replace a lot of the newer parts with their more reliable older counterparts, meaning that it'll just be normal tombstone for other fights. which will still be a sight to behold!!

free shipping v blacksmith - the rules doesn't say that fire couldn't just be a permanent part of your robot, so i guess they decided to make free shipping 30% flames. but blacksmith aka nj sawblaze now finally has a real weapon that wasn't its prior playdoh crap hammer to backup its relatively reliable / armored body, and while i don't see it eating pieces of other robots like sawblaze i think it'll make it relatively far! the sparks probably add damage points for its scorecard.

pain train v deep six - :sickos:

more blood for the blood god

hydra v end game - again big RIP to hydra after extensive upgrades break after one hit. end game's silly looking forward forks looks effective when they aren't getting stuck in the killsaws, otherwise this is just more evidence towards the eventual battlebots convergence to lower and lower robots for better and better ground game until all bots are flat sheets of metal. all praise our 2D battlebots future

arena thoughts: that corner is a killer for fullbody spinners, otherwise idk how the shelf is going to affect things yet.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 01:45

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

i saw hydra smoking a bit early in that match but then i remembered the factoid about having an oil filter now so for some stupid reason i thought it was simply exhaust :shepicide:

SLICK GOKU BABY posted:

Pretty sure Tombstone will be fine going forward. Captain Shred's design seemed to actually be pretty difficult for Tombstone to do anything. The angle of the body, every time Tombstone hit it, Tombstone just deflected off and likely took all the energy from the hits.

that could be said about most of the robots tombstone faces though, with everyone having an anti-tombstone angled wedge attachment sitting in their closets. tombstone is usually just more durable in being able to dish out the hits and the subsequent self-fling across the ring. the internals were sparking with the first one or two hits with their new upgrades.

that said i don't remember if they were using their spinning bar with the bolted-on teeth at the end. to be honest i think the teeth addon is a horrible idea, it can't be stronger than a unibody bar and the moment it breaks off the bar is unbalanced.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 21:06

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

Sir DonkeyPunch posted:

i want Pain Train to be good, but good lord, they just spin that eggbeater up and then cannot turn for poo poo

it was breakfast for deep six

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 03:22

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

ante posted:

Yo, sorry to bring this up from a week ago, but let's talk about metallurgy

Steel can be hard, or it can be tough, depending on alloy and heat treatment.

Hardness is like a diamond - real strong, but you can smash it up with a hammer. It's very brittle.
Toughness is more like what you might see if a car hits a lamppost. The lamppost will bend, but it'll stay in one piece. If you hit it only a little bit, it might deform slightly (like, the top of it might be visibly wobbling) and then spring back.

What do you want Tombstone's solid bar to be like?
Well, if you anneal it to be really tough, then it'll spin around and will never truly break, but it'll be like silly putty. It'll hit another (hardened) bot, and the bar itself will be all gummy and have chunks of it mash to the side and not really do any damage.
If you temper it to be really hard, that's even worse - The whole thing will shatter. This actually happened a few seasons ago, Tombstone's bar split in half.

To be the best of both worlds, you want both - An annealed soft bar in the middle, with a hardened business end to gently caress up bot armour.

There are two ways to achieve this:

You can build a single bar, and harden only the end using some fancy heat treatment process. On something that large and heavy, this is incredibly difficult and expensive. If a bar tip gets slightly hosed up, you also can't really recondition it. You have to toss it and put a new one on. It is also hard to check to see if you've done it right.

The other method is to use a soft bar and put hardened inserts on the end. This is what they've done this season, and there are a lot of benefits. The bar is cheap and easy to make, the tips are cheap and easy to make, and there isn't a lot that can go wrong on the build side. It's easy to check that each part is hard/soft as appropriate, and if the tip gets damaged, you just bolt a new one on.

This is a similar strategy that professional machinists have been using forever for lathes or mills - They have cheap toolholder and bolt on tiny little disposable carbide inserts on the cutting side.

Obviously the issue here is that they didn't bolt the inserts on well enough. So it's a design problem, but not the one you think it is.

cool poo poo to know thanks

# ¿ Jan 16, 2022 07:07

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

flippers and mammoth got nerfed a bit this year now you can't flip / endlessly slap bots out of the ring huh

# ¿ Jan 17, 2022 04:37

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

time to give walker bots a bigger buff

1000 lbs of pure murderous metal

# ¿ Jan 18, 2022 06:46

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

Queering Wheel posted:

Maybe I'm just weird but I've always wanted a simple arena with no hazards. Just let them fight without any gimmicks getting in the way.

meh. while i hate the excessive gimmicks seen in some other shows, i'm a little hesitant on an open battlebox. mainly because i think it's going to end up selecting for exactly one type of bot with zero ground clearance, probably a vertical spinner (even moreso than what happens now).

the screws might seem pretty useless right now and the shelf's utility remains to be seen, but at least as others have mentioned the killsaw slots are wedgelet traps. it was amusing too a season or two ago when the box was so badly damaged protruding metal pieces trapped or hosed over bots.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 00:00

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

a lot of the time when your opponent is down they don't go for the horse-beating is because they don't want to unnecessarily wear down their own bot. we all remember when tombstone tried and spewed its guts everywhere.

speaking of tombstone, drat they're still really down on reliability. it wasn't too long ago when they were in their minotaur match or their witch doctor fight and were taking blow after blow.

also, sawblaze is so much fun. it's so cool to see visible and consequential damage on some of its opponents when they can't spare the armor for the top. too often in matches it's massive blows on the overarmored front/back and then the bot fails when some internal component dislodges. with sawblaze, something visibly gets cut and hosed up. upgrading their saw was the best thing they ever did.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2022 04:55

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

beta's big fat hammer is as deadly as it is fragile, definitely need to be selective when using it because the other team is just waiting to bash it off. although i think they were a little too selective last time

# ¿ Feb 1, 2022 21:19

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

the only cool thing about duck was its unibody design and the fact it simply would not die. it was boring as poo poo but hey if you want to spend $$$ on an actual brick bot that will not win, be my guest

now they effectively hosed the only thing they had going for it with their three piece design, so now its boring and fragile. the lifter legitimately looked like it was made out of wood then it snapped off

# ¿ Feb 6, 2022 14:29

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

rip duck, never scored

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 01:36

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

triple crown looks really good and if they have more time to refine it I think it could be pretty effective. The problem is seeing how much weight has to be dedicated to the drive system vs the weapon

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 01:37

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

holy poo poo what a good episode. nothing was boring and the final match was bloody and disgusting and i couldnt look away

hypershock is too big of a bot with too many massive vulnerable areas but when it works yikes

# ¿ Feb 11, 2022 06:46

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

rip ghost raptor it was not good

blip seriously has wheelie issues but drat that's a fun bot

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 05:09

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

switchback needs something to keep it from tipping, like whatever sawblaze uses

# ¿ Feb 21, 2022 22:22

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

rip sawblaze hosed up big time. idk other than that horrific self-own sawblaze can probably still put up a decent fight in a rematch, we wouldn't know since they got vaulted out asap.

glitch is too wide but it's pretty cool and owning hydra is cool and fun

tombstone is probably dead this year, man the internal rework simply cannot take a beating at all. that's the risk when you try out new components though. maybe next year they can work more bugs out

blacksmith being a tank as usual (when the batteries don't explode, that is)

# ¿ Feb 25, 2022 04:38

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

i have zero logic for any of these choices, except for going with TOMBSTONE until at some point the gremlins kick in

# ¿ Mar 13, 2022 04:29

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

i'm on the glitch is cool and good team actually but big fuckin RIP for getting withdrawn. witch doctor got out clean

huge v uppercut was a fight i was dying for and i'm sad as hell it was recapped. even the double suicide would have been fun to see. same for the copperhead v lucky fight.

endgame doing its discount bite force thing and murdering everything it sees

bloodsport having their proud new blades murdered immediately was fun to see, although breaking both sides leading to them being stable again was actually hilarious

sawblaze giving me vibes similar to its son of wyachi fight where it just went loving ham and started ripping poo poo apart.

rip hypershock, it never scored

# ¿ Mar 18, 2022 03:27

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

Great Beer posted:

Tombstones wheels aren't being damaged. It's either the motor, gearbox, or speed controller failing. They seem to stay on just fine but one side just keeps dying.

one of the wheels was def bent

rip tombstone, def looked like they cranked up the power a lot this year but clearly the rest of the component durability didn't go up to match

# ¿ Mar 26, 2022 00:31

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

newest ep haha holy gently caress minotaur is the hype killer

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 12:25

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

it costs $50,000 to run this weapon... for 12 seconds

# ¿ Apr 6, 2022 19:32

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

the controversies weren�t the biggest deal imo.

witch doctor vs minotaur - yeah witch doctor was stuck but minotaur lost a wheel, and with how they crab walked they probably would�ve unstuck witch doctor themselves with a hit. the refs might�ve called it quick because it was the same spot that cobalt got caught in. they definitely seemed to have enough controlled movement though because they were absolutely able to shuffle towards WD. in the end the practice of hanging back when you think your opponent is dead is smart and common practice and I would�ve done the same thing in their situation, don�t want to pull a bronco situation again. overall the rules for crabwalking and getting stuck are inconsistently implemented and i wouldn�t mind seeing some more objective methods of determining each.

hydra v tantrum - i�m with tantrum on this one. hydra got the flips in but the point of that is to cause damage, get them out of the arena, or exert control. the damage was minor, they didn�t get out of the arena, and hydra likes squatting in the middle of the arena anyway so the control wasn�t much. when there was an opening tantrum came in and chewed up the lifting fork on hydra which is meaningful damage. hydra wasn�t aggressive in the slightest because his whole thing is camping the center.

the championship fight was a big letdown because of the early mobility issues of WD and also because I wanted WD to win, but tantrum is one hell of a bot that they showed that their novel weapon does really work. cool stuff.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 23:21

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

getting in flips means nothing if the flips don't do anything other than scuff paint

# ¿ Apr 8, 2022 05:02

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

some stuff from reddit that explains why this was hyped up to be the Controversy of the Decade

quote:

Ok, so some notes from filming on The Controversy, from an audience perspective:

This match took place immediately after Riptide/Sawblaze, which had a non-unstick -- they went in to check if Riptide was lodged in the wall, and determined it wasn't. Plus there's obviously the Whiplash angle

From where the audience was sitting, it was hard to see the wheel come off Minotaur, as it was between them and the shelf -- I did not notice it until a camera zoomed in during the unstick. People live shouted "Sabatoge" lol, it was a minority but some thought Trey had kicked it off.

I take no stance on whether Minotaur was denied a chance to hit Witch Doctor when they were stuck, or whether the match was paused unusually quickly. They definitely struggled with mobility to get to them. There may also have been some wonkyness about the timing of when the match was paused, versus when Minotaur actually fully made their way off the shelf, but don't remember well enough to make a comment on this. Others who were there may shed more light on this in the future.

Witch Doctor was WELL lodged in, the unstick took a good bit of time. Grumbling started then.

None of the driver POV came through to the live audience. At no point did anyone in the audience have any indication that Minotaur was on the edge of a countout. Before the match ended, Witch Doctor was being aggressively heckled as "cowards" and the like. I have heard reports from a builder on a team not involved in this match that Witch Doctor's ref was repeatedly informing them that a countout was imminent, except it never came

I would characterize Minotaur's mobility during the fight as being represented fairly in the edit, Witch Doctor did a good job corralling them in the center. However they were, with some level of difficulty, eventually able to gyro back to their starting square after the buzzer, almost landing a late hit on WD in the process which we heard Mike being pissed about. This was not shown in the edit.

The live audience after this match was an AWFUL, toxic environment, I cannot overstate this enough. The editors masked it drat well. We could not hear either interview over the booing, heckling, and threats of physical violence being directed by name at Andrea and also specifically Lisa Winter out of the unanimous judges for Reasons. I was legitimately concerned that somebody was going to charge the stage. Among the images burned in my mind are a grown man ripping a WD sign out of a little girl's hands, and the 8 year old kid next to me screaming "C--TS! F---ING C--TS!" because his dad was. Never felt more ashamed to be part of the Battlebots fandom. Any posts trying to replicate this team-targeted vitriol, or implicate BB in whatever culture war they're fighting or trying to systemically promote an agenda rather than just being a TV show with poorly written, poorly enforced, inconsistent rules, is getting nuked on sight.

After the match, two members of Minotaur (I couldn't tell who), hung back and got into a full shouting match with Greg Munson

# ¿ Apr 8, 2022 05:03

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

we're proud to introduce rusty 3.0, it got the chomp treatment and now it's 500lbs of pure walking metal death

# ¿ Apr 9, 2022 05:10

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

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

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 07:07

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

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

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 07:10

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

friendship ended with TOMBSTONE, HYPERSHOCK is my best friend now

good job to madcatter for basically surviving the beatdown of the century though, the drat thing kept moving

# ¿ Aug 9, 2022 04:05

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

I will always believe in huge

# ¿ Aug 10, 2022 16:30

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

i kept asking myself "there's no way they can keep falling upwards" but god drat they did

no idea how Rotator the Tank decided to die immediately to a shot that it's endured hundreds of times before

# ¿ Aug 20, 2022 02:05

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

Sad news!!

# ¿ Aug 24, 2022 17:59

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

I know based off the judging criteria (which I didn't know was so descriptive, which is good) bloodsport lost, but drat it really felt like they were cheated when I watched. I hate it when it devolves into a shoving match and the shover wins.

Blacksmith is going down the right road by turning their useless saw into a less useless saw, but drat it's still not very good. They need to shove a sawblaze style saw on that thing and go to town, but honestly they looked a little less durable already with their new setup. I'm guessing something in their chassis or elsewhere is just too heavy and too much went from armor to weapon. :shrug:

# ¿ Aug 29, 2022 16:54

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

A+ driving as usual from whiplash. It's a bot that would fester in the bottom of any ranking because of it's control bot design but incredible driving just brings it to the big leagues. I think they should've made their front forks be able to break off if needed to (a bit like endgame) because if that fork was not in the way it could've controlled the fight a bit better and maybe had a better outcome.

Ghost Raptor Reliability Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

When I saw that perfect phoenix was running a tiny bar and shed nearly 100 lbs from its max, I knew it was going to be tough. Nice that it was able to stick together in one piece (mostly), though.

Black Dragon always has some weird issue that ends up leading to a loss. It probably needs a redesign.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2022 02:58

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

good fights!! big hits all around.

tombstone as usual killing itself in only ways that tombstone can do. it's actually cool to watch this after knowing the results of the amazon re:mars event + his recent YT interview, but it's still unfortunate because the crazy gyro that it suicides with is also what makes it badass

witch doctor is forever cursed (heh)

discount bite force wins with those absolutely ridiculous long forks. at some point somebody is going to enter a bot that has forks longer than the body just because.

keep forgetting how absolutely dense tantrum is. it's the same weight as everyone else but so much smaller. it's better at being a useful brick than duck is.

ribbot getting owned is always fun

hypershock doing incredibly hypershock things but you can see the massive improvements to reliability they've made.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2022 05:22

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

massive news - ray billings is out for this upcoming season to focus on his hand injury. no tombstone or perfect phoenix this season is going to be weird, but i wish him the best!

# ¿ Sep 12, 2022 21:43

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

Did he drill a hole through his hand or something

hand vs saw, check out 11:47 in this interview

SLICK GOKU BABY posted:

Cool little interview with Ray Billings ahead of tomorrow nights Golden Bolt tournament. Some good information on Tombstone and some stuff he struggled with the bot design! There's no mention of the golden bolt or the tournament, but it's possible there is a slight spoiler in there if you read between lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGT21iPlEc8

# ¿ Sep 12, 2022 22:31

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 03:56

logikv9: Mar 5, 2009; Ham Wrangler

they'll probably hype up swamp thing as the new tombstone replacement for the upcoming season, as it shares one of the same builders w/ tombstone (rick russ).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vbwYMOXzw8

# ¿ Sep 12, 2022 22:57

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > It's Robot Fighting Time! Battlebots Season 6 January 2022!