Bring back the old ways!

[Scrap Daddy]

Popups in dsl are pretty cooll

[kill343gs]

Nary is going to hate me for this comment, but DSL is now 90% wedges 10% actual bot building skill.

THERE, I SAID IT. This is why I don't want to play DSL. Calling stock "broken" depends on who you ask, really. But I'm with Sage here. Stock is more of a natural selection as far as tournaments go.

[JoeBlo]

Nary is going to hate me for this comment, but DSL is now 90% wedges 10% actual bot building skill.

The last 2 dsl tournaments I won was with wedgless robots, I must be all skill by that reasoning

But again, why are we discussing this and not the zogs proposal :P

[123savethewhales]

Nary is going to hate me for this comment, but DSL is now 90% wedges 10% actual bot building skill.

No way, surely Flail SnS need to make up some of those percentages.

DSL has more types, hence more counters, and ultimately more chance of luck occurring in a tournament.  So take RIP2 a VS won because it didn't have to face any SnS.

Probably why I more or less stop participating in tournaments.

[Sage]

Nary is going to hate me for this comment, but DSL is now 90% wedges 10% actual bot building skill.

No way, surely Flail SnS need to make up some of those percentages.

DSL has more types, hence more counters, and ultimately more chance of luck occurring in a tournament.  So take RIP2 a VS won because it didn't have to face any SnS.

Probably why I more or less stop participating in tournaments.

You're part of the 10% that make up skillful builders.

[Starcore]

Perfect realism in such an unrealistic game is something that is near impossible. Even back in the day when "everybody built realistic" as you are saying, there were folks like ACAMS and Starcore that were building bots far more advanced and not so realistic. The game changed then, and I sincerely doubt it is ever going back.

RA2 is the best robot-combat simulation game in existence. However, it was developed a very long time ago and the result was a game that still did not quite match up to real building. That's what DSL was made for, a step in that direction. Building effective realistic bots in stock is nay-impossible.

And it was Starcore and ACAMS that lead the designs and concepts of DSL.
 
Even in real life robot combat, as year by year went by new parts and technologies came available.
 
ACAMS and I both tried to support and promote the concept of year by year carefully tested and reviewed parts added to the Stock portfolio but that was shut down quite harshly by flames and complaints when ACAMS made available the simpliest of improvements that fixed some missing symmetry and a simple attach point variation.
 
Consider the types of bots made in the earliest years of Battlebots and Robot Wars compared to what is built today. New efficiences, armors, weapons, battery and power systems. Double stacking an RA2 battery to represent a Li-ION battery (for example) doesn't seem that far fetched at that point does it?
 
Starcore

[Zog]

the zogs proposal :P

Ooh am I called "The Zog" now? :P

[Starcore]

I do try to build some realistic (well, DSL realistic) stock bots when I build stock. I don't personally like UBER STACKED HS. They just are ugly and make no sense.

So consider arenas with different criteria.
 
Like an arena with poles staggered (would inhibit but not prevent HS designs)
 
Or an arena with pits (would inhibit bots that could not drive well enough to avoid hazards) even if they were just shallow pits.
 
Or no side walls (would give more value to well designed rammer/pushers).
 
Or different type of arena at each round of the match (so bots needed to be well rounded capable not one-sided designs).
 
Starcore
 

[Naryar]

Nary is going to hate me for this comment, but DSL is now 90% wedges 10% actual bot building skill.

THERE, I SAID IT. This is why I don't want to play DSL. Calling stock "broken" depends on who you ask, really. But I'm with Sage here. Stock is more of a natural selection as far as tournaments go.

Why would I hate you for just giving your opinion ?

Anyways, I think you don't play and build DSL enough to have an accurate representation. DSL isn't 90% about wedges. There also is correct AI-ing, drivetrain, weapon setup, and LUCK.

[Scorpion]

If you put magically brilliant wedges that could get under everything on a bot that was built by an average noob who hasn't posted a showcase or lurked, they would be easily beaten by ANY design the top rung builders in dsl built.
So how can it be all about the wedges?

[Naryar]

If you put magically brilliant wedges that could get under everything on a bot that was built by an average noob who hasn't posted a showcase or lurked, they would be easily beaten by ANY design the top rung builders in dsl built.
So how can it be all about the wedges?

My point exactly. If magically brilliant wedges that can get under everything even exist in this game...

[123savethewhales]

My point exactly. If magically brilliant wedges that can get under everything even exist in this game...

T- Minus Arm Wedge.

Putting that on a n00b bot does not prevent it from getting killed by VS/Flail SnS.

[Scorpion]

My point exactly. If magically brilliant wedges that can get under everything even exist in this game...

T- Minus Arm Wedge.

Putting that on a n00b bot does not prevent it from getting killed by VS/Flail SnS.

Pretty much any well built bot type would beat the n00b.
There's so many mistakes to be made that would leave the n00b bot even with the wedge easy to beat.

[powerrave]

in the tounaments i entered where i was free to build anything i wanted (so not counting BTTB in as i was stuck to a certain design) i never entered a bot with a wedge. i wasn't into building those in DSL back then. now i do build them, but i also still build other bot type's that don't use a wedge. even with the upcoming tournament from from jonzu, i'm planning to enter a wedgeless bot while i do have wedged BW bots (looking at Nightbox3 for now).
whichever way you look at it, DSL does require some actual building skill.

[Scorpion]

Both of them take skill
Stock's more about glitching skills and DSl's more about creativity, ofcourse they are both massively influenced by other things aswell though.

Another reason I prefer DSL is because I find it easier to think up bots in the DSL way of thinking.
I can't imagine bot ideas aswell in stock as DSL because I don't think like that (ATM atleast) but others will find thinking up stock style bots easier.

All in all, stock or DSL, is all about opinion.

[Scrap Daddy]

New question: which is harder?

Stock.

[Somebody]

Both are hard for different reasons, but I agree for stock.

[Sage]

yep, mentioned this already when I said people pushing for realism in stock were too lazy to get better at it. and then went to DSL.

[Natef]

I play DSL because I suck at stock, and I perfer to build realistic bots.

[R0B0SH4RK]

Yay a debate.

Anyways,

Both of them take skill
Stock's more about glitching skills and DSl's more about creativity, ofcourse they are both massively influenced by other things aswell though.

While I agree with you on your first point, I have to point out that being successful in Stock takes much, much more creativity than being successful in DSL. Think about it like this: components are like letters of the alphabet. Stock gives us lets say 5, while DSL gives us 20. Using DSL's 20 letters, it's fairly easy to spell a wide range of vastly different words, although you will also get many that mean basically the same thing. With Stock, however, we've been able to use the same 5 letters to 'spell' horizontal spinner, rammer, popup, drum, hammer, poker, etc. All of these words still exist in the DSL vocabulary, but for the most part, if 'spelling' popup in DSL takes five letters, you'll be able to use seven new ones to spell HS.

I hope that makes as much sense to you guys as it does in my head :P

DSL is more about variety. You have a wide array of available components, and this tends to give the illusion of creativity. While it is creative to a certain extent, using different components to construct the same things is not nearly as creative as using the same components to construct different things.

Also,

If you put magically brilliant wedges that could get under everything on a bot that was built by an average noob who hasn't posted a showcase or lurked, they would be easily beaten by ANY design the top rung builders in dsl built.
So how can it be all about the wedges?

This hypothetical bot would defeat 4 of the 6 BBEANS champions, regardless of weight class or game version. It's a bit too much about wedges. At least in Stock, it's a little more fairly balanced, but wedges play a bit too large of a role there too. Ideally, I'd like to see a rammers and VS be a bit more effective, but they really won't be just because of how both Stock and DSL work.

Of course, I've been a Stock guy my whole time here, and I like to think that I've been one of the guys who's continuously pushed the limits of what we thought possible, so "returning to the old ways" kinda seems like it's undermining all of the steps forward that Sage and Pwn and Scrap and myself, and Inf and Pys before us, and eFFe and Luigica and FB and CB before them, and way back to Starcore and ACAMS and co. back at the beginning have been working on making. "The old ways" weren't necessarily the best ways - just like I think the old forums weren't as absolutely spectacular as many of us have made them out to be.