indeed it was a good final. fans are already calling for the heads of the arena designers at Mentorn for the durability issues of the arena. it may say Aftershock but its got Carbide written all over it
Welcome to the Carbide Murders Everything show errrr I mean The Robot Wars Final! That's a touch unfair, I really don't hink anyone anticipated Carbide being that powerful. Plus the debris only pierced the inner barrier, it never got as far as the outer layer. Although I expect next year both inner and outer will be made of the same thickness. Holy Smeg Carbide
The new Apollo (redesigned after this series of Robotwars was filmed) looks good. Iirc, 5 tonnes of flip (up from 1), tougher armour and 20mph top speed (up from 12). It was fighting in the Robots Live competition a couple of weeks ago and managed to flip their 1000Kg "Goliath" house robot.
Short of welding the floor plates together I don't see how they can stop that. Make it out of 100mm Hardox with twelve point mountings?
So it's official, robot wars is now spin to win. Can't even flip the spinners properly as the rotational intertia of the disk keeps them level, although it does cause all kinds of funky effects when you do manage to topple them. I'm wondering if one could fashion some kind of strong fabric overarmour designed to gunk up/jam the spinners.
Here's a video they made during Robots Live a couple of weeks ago. It's a general tour but they talk about and show the new Apollo at 8:50. Goliath can be seen at 10:08 As they say in the vid, it looks very similar with minor changes to the shape but major performance upgrades (and armour upgrades too, I think I heard it said somewhere). https://www.facebook.com/apollorobot/videos/616780135113360/ Edit: Here's another of them test driving the new Apollo with the old motors installed, after switching from chain drive. https://www.facebook.com/apollorobot/videos/629862777138429/
Someone did this on Battlebots, and it was deemed an entanglement device, and illegal so the match was restarted
Called it. Although it was a rather enjoyable final. Top marks to Aftershock for keeping themselves in the game for so long though, they took some serious hits and had a hell of a lot of repairs to do, but still got a working machine - complete with weapon - out to the arena. Even if they had to gaffer tape their armour on!
Can't imagine how badly the people in that corner must have jumped when Aftershock's side armour hit the inner wall. When they replace that wall section of the wall, it'd be nice if they could cut that section of the panel out and put it in a display case. If Ironside 3 was made a bit sturdier, it may have been able to duke it out with Carbide a bit more as team Carbide mentioned their chain almost got a direct hit by that massive spinning bar. I quite enjoyed the fight with Eruption vs Carbide as they managed to hold their own for a good amount of time. I don't know if team Eruption noticed but they could have taken advantage of a minor flaw with Carbide's own power... with the recoil from team Carbide's hits sending their own robot into the air, Eruption could have took the fight nearer the low walls to make Carbide knock themselves out of the arena. There were a couple of robots this series with chain weapons, so I guess it could be possible for someone next series to make their weapon tangle in with the spinning disc to jam it... then all they'd need is more weight and drive power to drag Carbide into the pit.
Rule changes, some interesting bits http://robotwars.wikia.com/wiki/Robot_Wars:_Series_10 I foresee sacrificial chains or similar would totally disable carbide though drum spinners may simply snap or spit out chains, whos knows.
Tbh I think weapons like these simply began to fall out of use once the robots got more and more effective armour and weaponry. Pneumatic spikes and drills/saws can't really do much against a hard-ox plated robot. Dead Metal is a good example here, the saw can only ever inflict fairly minor damage in a small timeframe. If you were to put that weapon on a normal sized robot it would just be useless. Similarly crushers are slow. That worked fine in the original series as the robots were slower and their weapons weak, but now it must be very very difficult to get a grip on a robot with a powerful flipper or a spinner like Carbide's. A single mis-hit from Carbide would just shred the crushing arm, as it did with Coyote. I think team Razor were very lucky to go out the way they did in Season 1, would have been a shame to see that iconic robot obliterated. I'm mixed about entanglement devices. On one hand I think they do need to exist, spinners are just such efficient weapons. On the other hand, I worry that it will diminish the spectacle? My example would be a bot like Tornado that could win via dodgy legal tactics, but at the complete expense of the viewer's excitement.
There's also the problem of turning it into rock-paper-scissors. Entangler beats spinner, spinner beats flipper, and flipper beats entangler.
True, theres not much you can do about a hardox plate within the rules bar a dirty great spinning blade same goes for anything that will grip the other robot, though saying that Total control from battle bots didn't do too bad bar using a gift wrapped net to stop a spinner. I agree they are needed to stop the rampage of spinners but if they fully disable the other bots primary weapon it will detract from the spectacle because everyone wants to see carnage. The videos Yadda linked, one built with a car tyre as armour. Its not such a bad idea though I would have thought a LGV/HGV steel banded tyre would make more sense Synthetic rubber absorbs a fair amount of force, has steel or Kevlar re enforcement and could be to a point used as a sacrificial layer. Take four of five old tyres in an you have a disposable armour system which should mean they other bots weapon is still in play. So perhaps a soft armour would be the way to go? Gabriel was a terrible bot but nothing could break it because the polycarb bent and absorbed attacks rather than taking any significant damage. Trouble with spinners is their initial attack usually throws both bots away, Only exception I can recall was cracks an smash which without weapons were barely high enough for the blade, flippers are always vulnerable to spinners the flip needs to be the leading edge which always takes the impact damaging it. Push bots will be thrown back like everything else an the weapons spin up too quick to allow a rapid re attack. Axe bots rely on being close so again they are thrown back and if the axe gets near the spinner its likely to be sheared off. I think the current ruling wont do much, spinners will remain top its just going to be a case of who brings the biggest chunk of metal that can spin up quickly which at the moment, is carbide. Walkers is pointless with a spinner around itll be like attacking an octopus with a strimmer (theres a horrifying image). List of next seasons contestants I cant see any walkers or shufflebots even though they get a more generous weight limit.
I think the kind of robot to beat the spinners will be a Tornado style high speed brick. Mostly armour, big motors, use big motors to ram the armour into spinners continuously until something breaks in the spinner. Of course the armour belt would have be both very thick, easily replaceable and a single piece of metal, or it would split.
Armouring against spinners without entanglers seems entirely possible. Eruption was happily taking multiple head-on hits from Carbine with minimal effect, but once Carbide started hitting the sides chunks were removed. Those 'ribs' were probably key, structures like that absorb impacts gradually.
