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Robot Arena => Discussion => Topic started by: Billy5545 on May 14, 2019, 09:40:05 AM

Title: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Billy5545 on May 14, 2019, 09:40:05 AM
So, after seeing some non GTM RA2 stuffs, I decided to make a thread for things related to them, to show the rest of GTM those, as I noticed that most of the stuffs found outside of GTM are posted or linked on Discord, and there's some people who don't use it.

So first, for tourneys, there's Robotic World League by Alloftheman. RWL 2 will happen somewhere this month or next month. In addition, it will release eps when signup for RWL 2 happens. It has an intro now though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KFg5E48oUo&feature=youtu.be

Second tourney is Robottal Wars, by the Good Robottal people, who mainly operate on Youtube and Discord. Their YouTube channel if you want to watch it: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC9w0YrifKOGJhzC7cM8lIFg

And third, in the Unofficial Robot Arena 2 Facebook group, there's a Chinese RA2 AI tourney now. It doesn't have a standardized standard right now though. Pics of it and the splashes, as well as link (for link, you have to be a member of the group to see it though)
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https://www.facebook.com/groups/UnofficialRA2/permalink/926507061074266/
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: SagarisRA2 on May 14, 2019, 10:04:23 AM
Damn they like their typhoon teeth more than we do
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Hoppin on May 14, 2019, 11:59:42 AM
Damn they like their typhoon teeth more than we do

In fairness I think they've seen our stuff and gone nuts with it.

it's all our fault. We could've saved them
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: pokebro14 on May 14, 2019, 02:43:08 PM
Tbh some of this stuff is better than the bots some people here make.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Dreamcast on May 15, 2019, 12:13:51 AM
I wonder why they use so many small wedges. It's a good look but I'm not sure how it is helping from a combat standpoint.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MassimoV on May 15, 2019, 01:13:22 AM
This makes me pretty happy. Nice to know people still find this game.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Merrick on May 15, 2019, 08:29:44 AM
I wonder why they use so many small wedges. It's a good look but I'm not sure how it is helping from a combat standpoint.

Each community has their own meta, I suppose.

There's a few really good looking bots on these splashes though. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Billy5545 on May 15, 2019, 08:45:52 AM
Anyway, decided to show another non GTM RA2 tourney. There's Roboforce by Tigerex. It is a Stock tourney featuring his own bots on first main series, and the next main series will be Stock IRL too. However, Roboforce will do an Extreme series first, which is on signup now and is DSL IRL, and signup will end on June. Entry limit is basically unlimited, though be warned some of the entries may eventually be turned down. The channel if you want to watch Roboforce btw: https://m.youtube.com/user/tigerex5

Meanwhile, for my opinion on the Chinese tourney, will be a good idea if they like allow other players not from their community to participate too tbh. Maybe like a China vs The World tourney
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 15, 2019, 09:14:58 AM
Hey guys MoonSet416 (Michael Wang on FB) here.

First, our tournament does have a ruleset (although far from finalized and we are constantly tweaking it). But sorry for now I just cbb to translate it to English.

About the small wedges: they are LOW to the ground when you use them correctly. This ties into the next section as well since it plays a huge role in our meta.

The Chinese tournament runs a very very modified version of the game where spinners rule like they do in the real world (and we have a sportsman division for other bots). Here's an observation I made: since the game tournament is held quite often and there's no cost associated with rebuilding from scratch (aside from time), the robot designs evolve faster in game than in the real world <insert SAO S3 reference here>.

Our first tournament saw robots that are only tested against the game's original AI bots, and still struggled to defeat things like Shogun and got outwedged by things like Critical Emergency. Most of our robots at the time were somewhat similar to the early RW bots, with a pretty wide variety of weapons and build quality. One of the bots called Hyper Force (based on Bite Force), however, was probably the first to use hinged small wedges in China and achieved great result by basically outwedging everyone else. Paired with its vertical spinner HF did quite well.

After the success of HF, a number of similar 4WD verticals with hinged front wedges appeared in the second tournament. At the same time a type of robot was also developed in direct response to these HF lookalikes. NKVD was a huge vertical spinner with no wedges (much like Deep Six) and was able to win a head on collision with an HF style robot by basically only contacting the opponent's weapon and having higher tip speed and bite due to its larger diameter. NKVD did have issues fighting horizontals and did not do very well, but its concept lived on. Also, robots with different configurations also emerged, some taking inspiration from Bite Force's multiple wedges (see a trend here? we really like BF for some reason... maybe it's because it won?) while some other went the path of Bombshell (S2) with completely different weapons for each configuration.

I personally think that the third season was very interesting. On the one hand you see the number of non-spinners plummet (they went to the sportsman comp), on the other hand you see a diversification inside the spinner category. You still have your old HF style 4WD spinners, but large diameter verticals definitely took over, within which there are 4WD variants, 2WD variants, and even some that change to a smaller weapon and thick wedge when fighting horizontals. The winner was surprisingly a swiss army bot with a vertical spinner mode for normal use and a flipper mode tailored to large verticals. Turns out that if you stick a sloped surface under large verticals they knock themselves out.

And that's just the weapon side of things. With the prevalence of vertical spinners, the fight for lower ground clearance was quite fierce. The formula that we have currently agreed on is hinge + some rod + small wedge. Sounds simple, but the intricacies of how to outwedge another robot with the same style of wedges is beyond me. We have seen situations where A outwedges B, B outwedges C and then C outwedges A. There is definitely a lot to be learnt here.

We are also constantly tweaking the "game balance". Two major "patches" were made to largely unify the power to weight ratio of motors and the HP to weight ratio of armor panels. More changes to come.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Team Code Red Robotics on May 15, 2019, 09:33:43 AM
I am extremely interested in what is to come for this, will this series of tournaments ever be going to GTM or will people from GTM be able to join in the future?
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 15, 2019, 10:02:33 AM
TBH I don't know at this point. We are currently in the middle of our fourth tournament and we are finalizing the game for the fifth. Once we feel like the new version is ready we will probably post it here. It would be really nice to see new comps under similar rulesets and game version though, as our version does yield significantly different results.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Hoppin on May 15, 2019, 11:15:34 AM
Hey guys MoonSet416 (Michael Wang on FB) here.

First, our tournament does have a ruleset (although far from finalized and we are constantly tweaking it). But sorry for now I just cbb to translate it to English.

About the small wedges: they are LOW to the ground when you use them correctly. This ties into the next section as well since it plays a huge role in our meta.

The Chinese tournament runs a very very modified version of the game where spinners rule like they do in the real world (and we have a sportsman division for other bots). Here's an observation I made: since the game tournament is held quite often and there's no cost associated with rebuilding from scratch (aside from time), the robot designs evolve faster in game than in the real world <insert SAO S3 reference here>.

Our first tournament saw robots that are only tested against the game's original AI bots, and still struggled to defeat things like Shogun and got outwedged by things like Critical Emergency. Most of our robots at the time were somewhat similar to the early RW bots, with a pretty wide variety of weapons and build quality. One of the bots called Hyper Force (based on Bite Force), however, was probably the first to use hinged small wedges in China and achieved great result by basically outwedging everyone else. Paired with its vertical spinner HF did quite well.

After the success of HF, a number of similar 4WD verticals with hinged front wedges appeared in the second tournament. At the same time a type of robot was also developed in direct response to these HF lookalikes. NKVD was a huge vertical spinner with no wedges (much like Deep Six) and was able to win a head on collision with an HF style robot by basically only contacting the opponent's weapon and having higher tip speed and bite due to its larger diameter. NKVD did have issues fighting horizontals and did not do very well, but its concept lived on. Also, robots with different configurations also emerged, some taking inspiration from Bite Force's multiple wedges (see a trend here? we really like BF for some reason... maybe it's because it won?) while some other went the path of Bombshell (S2) with completely different weapons for each configuration.

I personally think that the third season was very interesting. On the one hand you see the number of non-spinners plummet (they went to the sportsman comp), on the other hand you see a diversification inside the spinner category. You still have your old HF style 4WD spinners, but large diameter verticals definitely took over, within which there are 4WD variants, 2WD variants, and even some that change to a smaller weapon and thick wedge when fighting horizontals. The winner was surprisingly a swiss army bot with a vertical spinner mode for normal use and a flipper mode tailored to large verticals. Turns out that if you stick a sloped surface under large verticals they knock themselves out.

And that's just the weapon side of things. With the prevalence of vertical spinners, the fight for lower ground clearance was quite fierce. The formula that we have currently agreed on is hinge + some rod + small wedge. Sounds simple, but the intricacies of how to outwedge another robot with the same style of wedges is beyond me. We have seen situations where A outwedges B, B outwedges C and then C outwedges A. There is definitely a lot to be learnt here.

We are also constantly tweaking the "game balance". Two major "patches" were made to largely unify the power to weight ratio of motors and the HP to weight ratio of armor panels. More changes to come.

First of all on a serious note it's lovely to see how your meta and game has evolved without much if any input from us on the forum. It's an interesting observation and would love to read over your current ruleset!

A member here, GuldenFlame, ran a tournament in a similar fashion to your game type with our more strict ruleset, it's still going on I think but you can watch it here "Everything is too OP (https://gametechmods.com/forums/brackets-vids-and-awards/everything-is-too-op-sbv/)". I think if you're looking to standardize the rules, that's a good place to look, but I'd like to see the community come up with the solutions for them independently tbh.

Finally in regards to the videos and their quality. There's a few things the host can do. Firstly, install the wide screen fix for DSL, which is linked here "Wide Screen Fix for DSL (https://gametechmods.com/forums/downloads/?sa=view;down=323)" then set your resolution to your monitor using the ra2.cfg file in the base folder. This should remove the black bars on the side and wont have any stretching issues. Secondly, in the options of the game, you can disable status messages which are the status of each robot, it's entirely optional and dependent on what people prefer.

Where can we learn more about the tournament, seeing more videos for it, etc?

Thank you for updating and sharing this, hope you continue to do so.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Dreamcast on May 15, 2019, 11:34:15 AM
About the small wedges: they are LOW to the ground when you use them correctly. This ties into the next section as well since it plays a huge role in our meta.

Okay, DSL 2.1 had wedges like that, but it was generally a door/skirt hinge+skirt, which is less useful now with the thicker skirts. Both methods apply useful amounts of pressure to the ground.

The formula that we have currently agreed on is hinge + some rod + small wedge. Sounds simple, but the intricacies of how to outwedge another robot with the same style of wedges is beyond me. We have seen situations where A outwedges B, B outwedges C and then C outwedges A. There is definitely a lot to be learnt here.

Wedges are tricky. For example, some robots have wedges flush with each other. This is creating a small weakness. Wedge quality decreases as you move away from the center of the hinge.
Perhaps they are trying to make a platform for the opponent to sit on, but there are better ways of doing that. There are other factors too, such as pressure, weight distribution, and sometimes floor meshes.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Billy5545 on May 15, 2019, 11:38:34 AM
About the small wedges: they are LOW to the ground when you use them correctly. This ties into the next section as well since it plays a huge role in our meta.

Okay, DSL 2.1 had wedges like that, but it was generally a door/skirt hinge+skirt, which is less useful now with the thicker skirts. Both methods apply useful amounts of pressure to the ground.

The formula that we have currently agreed on is hinge + some rod + small wedge. Sounds simple, but the intricacies of how to outwedge another robot with the same style of wedges is beyond me. We have seen situations where A outwedges B, B outwedges C and then C outwedges A. There is definitely a lot to be learnt here.

Wedges are tricky. For example, some robots have wedges flush with each other. This is creating a small weakness. Wedge quality decreases as you move away from the center of the hinge.
Perhaps they are trying to make a platform for the opponent to sit on, but there are better ways of doing that. There are other factors too, such as pressure, weight distribution, and sometimes floor meshes.
To add to the wedge mechanic talk, heard before that it's basically 30% mechanics and 70% luck. For mechanics, from what I heard is that basically hinged wedge plus a balanced speed so the bot is not too slow and have enough speed to wedge and push stuff up, while not frontflipping badly on first contact
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: GIRTHQUAKE on May 15, 2019, 04:44:42 PM
China Vs GTM HYPE
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Billy5545 on May 15, 2019, 06:01:08 PM
So, RWL finally release episodes. The first 8 are released, with the 9 being worked on. Signup for RWL 2 is still not open yet though. The link to the eps: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLZ_PAJtWdXCwZlaFMsQjMLq2q6cz6Ukj
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 15, 2019, 07:27:43 PM
Hey guys MoonSet416 (Michael Wang on FB) here.

First, our tournament does have a ruleset (although far from finalized and we are constantly tweaking it). But sorry for now I just cbb to translate it to English.

About the small wedges: they are LOW to the ground when you use them correctly. This ties into the next section as well since it plays a huge role in our meta.

The Chinese tournament runs a very very modified version of the game where spinners rule like they do in the real world (and we have a sportsman division for other bots). Here's an observation I made: since the game tournament is held quite often and there's no cost associated with rebuilding from scratch (aside from time), the robot designs evolve faster in game than in the real world <insert SAO S3 reference here>.

Our first tournament saw robots that are only tested against the game's original AI bots, and still struggled to defeat things like Shogun and got outwedged by things like Critical Emergency. Most of our robots at the time were somewhat similar to the early RW bots, with a pretty wide variety of weapons and build quality. One of the bots called Hyper Force (based on Bite Force), however, was probably the first to use hinged small wedges in China and achieved great result by basically outwedging everyone else. Paired with its vertical spinner HF did quite well.

After the success of HF, a number of similar 4WD verticals with hinged front wedges appeared in the second tournament. At the same time a type of robot was also developed in direct response to these HF lookalikes. NKVD was a huge vertical spinner with no wedges (much like Deep Six) and was able to win a head on collision with an HF style robot by basically only contacting the opponent's weapon and having higher tip speed and bite due to its larger diameter. NKVD did have issues fighting horizontals and did not do very well, but its concept lived on. Also, robots with different configurations also emerged, some taking inspiration from Bite Force's multiple wedges (see a trend here? we really like BF for some reason... maybe it's because it won?) while some other went the path of Bombshell (S2) with completely different weapons for each configuration.

I personally think that the third season was very interesting. On the one hand you see the number of non-spinners plummet (they went to the sportsman comp), on the other hand you see a diversification inside the spinner category. You still have your old HF style 4WD spinners, but large diameter verticals definitely took over, within which there are 4WD variants, 2WD variants, and even some that change to a smaller weapon and thick wedge when fighting horizontals. The winner was surprisingly a swiss army bot with a vertical spinner mode for normal use and a flipper mode tailored to large verticals. Turns out that if you stick a sloped surface under large verticals they knock themselves out.

And that's just the weapon side of things. With the prevalence of vertical spinners, the fight for lower ground clearance was quite fierce. The formula that we have currently agreed on is hinge + some rod + small wedge. Sounds simple, but the intricacies of how to outwedge another robot with the same style of wedges is beyond me. We have seen situations where A outwedges B, B outwedges C and then C outwedges A. There is definitely a lot to be learnt here.

We are also constantly tweaking the "game balance". Two major "patches" were made to largely unify the power to weight ratio of motors and the HP to weight ratio of armor panels. More changes to come.

First of all on a serious note it's lovely to see how your meta and game has evolved without much if any input from us on the forum. It's an interesting observation and would love to read over your current ruleset!

A member here, GuldenFlame, ran a tournament in a similar fashion to your game type with our more strict ruleset, it's still going on I think but you can watch it here "Everything is too OP (https://gametechmods.com/forums/brackets-vids-and-awards/everything-is-too-op-sbv/)". I think if you're looking to standardize the rules, that's a good place to look, but I'd like to see the community come up with the solutions for them independently tbh.

Finally in regards to the videos and their quality. There's a few things the host can do. Firstly, install the wide screen fix for DSL, which is linked here "Wide Screen Fix for DSL (https://gametechmods.com/forums/downloads/?sa=view;down=323)" then set your resolution to your monitor using the ra2.cfg file in the base folder. This should remove the black bars on the side and wont have any stretching issues. Secondly, in the options of the game, you can disable status messages which are the status of each robot, it's entirely optional and dependent on what people prefer.

Where can we learn more about the tournament, seeing more videos for it, etc?

Thank you for updating and sharing this, hope you continue to do so.

Nice to see there's a solution to the video quality problem, I will let the host know.

About the comp itself, we are currently working on finalizing our version of the game and once we are finished, will probably upload the game. It should include AI bots of the first three tournaments so that you can see for yourself. There may be more vids uploaded to FB but not sure atm.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Mystic2000 on May 16, 2019, 01:04:38 PM
that'd be great, a couple things i was wondering looking at the chinese meta evolution you described:

1. how are horizontal spinners doing in this meta ? are tombclones more common or are overheads the majority ?
2. did anyone tried the HUGE style of design yet over in china ? seems like it'd be a even more potent counter to the small, Bite Force like verts, althought i imagine the increase in bigger diameter verticals would be very troublesome for them
3. you mentioned series 3 winner was a swiss-army with a flipper setup, are there others non-spinners that still go far despite the very spinner-heavy environment ?
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Jonzu95 on May 16, 2019, 07:14:20 PM
Not going to lie, it feels strange to see Quality RA2 content outside of GTM.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 16, 2019, 11:11:12 PM
that'd be great, a couple things i was wondering looking at the chinese meta evolution you described:

1. how are horizontal spinners doing in this meta ? are tombclones more common or are overheads the majority ?
2. did anyone tried the HUGE style of design yet over in china ? seems like it'd be a even more potent counter to the small, Bite Force like verts, althought i imagine the increase in bigger diameter verticals would be very troublesome for them
3. you mentioned series 3 winner was a swiss-army with a flipper setup, are there others non-spinners that still go far despite the very spinner-heavy environment ?

Horizontals are doing quite well for themselves, I haven't mentioned them previously because I personally only build verticals and am not familiar with them. For whatever reason tombclones are CRAP in this game, as confirmed by multiple horizontal builders in our community. Usually you see overheads or FBS. The fourth heavyweight champion is actually an FBS.

Yeah there was one HUGE style bot entered into the fourth tournament. Last time I saw it it was more like HU    GE after a fight against a vertical (reminds you of something?). Seriously though yeah large diameter verticals pretty much makes HUGE style verticals obsolete.

Our first champion was actually a flipper. In the later tournaments tho most non-spinners usually just go to the sportsman class. Wedges/flippers have seen somewhat of a resurgence as they are great counters to large verts.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Xseal3 on May 16, 2019, 11:18:05 PM
that'd be great, a couple things i was wondering looking at the chinese meta evolution you described:

1. how are horizontal spinners doing in this meta ? are tombclones more common or are overheads the majority ?
2. did anyone tried the HUGE style of design yet over in china ? seems like it'd be a even more potent counter to the small, Bite Force like verts, althought i imagine the increase in bigger diameter verticals would be very troublesome for them
3. you mentioned series 3 winner was a swiss-army with a flipper setup, are there others non-spinners that still go far despite the very spinner-heavy environment ?

tombclones did once appeared, but this kind of design was soon unseen in recent events. They tend to turn around when hitting others instead sending each others across the arena and make their tasty wheels and body vulnerable to verticals. The majority of good performance horizontals in our events now are shell spinners with teeth close to the ground or overhead bar spinners with wedges. The champion of series 4 was surprisingly a shell spinner with its typhoon teeth so close to the ground that can sometimes outwedge small wedges meta.

Yes, some people did tried HUGE style design. However they often struggle to move due to the RA2 mechanism.

Till now, a well made flipper could definitely have a place in plenty of spinners. As the champion of our first event is a flipper, and the 3rd place of series 2 is a flipper. Sawbots also have great potential of winning as long as they have good wedges. The recent patch that buffs armor hp might make some difference since non spinners before is too easy to be trashed by mighty spinners.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: botbuster on May 17, 2019, 02:17:01 AM
What is the weight limit for the Sportsman class?
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 17, 2019, 03:48:29 AM
Just FYI Xseal3 is the host of the Chinese events.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Mystic2000 on May 17, 2019, 03:55:03 AM
i wonder how bots like Valkyrie would work
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 17, 2019, 04:12:21 AM
IIRC there was an unexplained influx of similar offset undercutters in the second tournament. I don't remember any of them doing too well.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Badnik96 on May 17, 2019, 02:26:15 PM
ngl i like the way these chinese tournaments operate more than gtm's
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 18, 2019, 08:18:34 AM
Huh... So I didn't know IRL building was a thing here. Since now I do, I actually have smth to share.

During the first Chinese tournament, there was kind of like an IRL tournament, but separate to the main one. It was different from IRL in that parts clipping into one another was allowed, but the robots must resemble an actual robot that exists. With the focus on mimicking the looks of real robots, some builders put so many tiny parts into their robots that the game would just crash during a match. The Chinese "IRL" was then cancelled due to that reason.

Through competing in the tournaments I realised something: there's a limit to human ability Looking like a real life robot and functioning like a real robot are sometimes very different. Take the example of any spinner robot. The motors in our version is significantly more powerful than the stock ones (which contributes a lot to the spinner meta, but spinner meta itself is realistic, at least in China), and these motors still struggle to match the spinner motors in the real world. With the slow speed comes greater bite depth across the board and single tooth blades become totally unnecessary. Lower speed also decreases gyro effects on spinners, allowing them to be made larger and heavier without affecting the drivability. The bar spinner of Bite Force is usually regarded as on the lighter side of the spectrum, and in our version of the game a 100cm DSL bar + 2 Typhoon teeth would also be considered light. However, even on the largest chassis available in game the 100cm DSL weapon still looks way out of proportion if it was judged by the standards of real life. Instead of resemblance, I personally prefer "functional representation". If a part in game serves the same purpose as a part in real life, then no matter how crazy it looks in game I would still use it.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: TheRoboteer on May 18, 2019, 08:33:46 AM
Huh... So I didn't know IRL building was a thing here. Since now I do, I actually have smth to share.

During the first Chinese tournament, there was kind of like an IRL tournament, but separate to the main one. It was different from IRL in that parts clipping into one another was allowed, but the robots must resemble an actual robot that exists. With the focus on mimicking the looks of real robots, some builders put so many tiny parts into their robots that the game would just crash during a match. The Chinese "IRL" was then cancelled due to that reason.

Through competing in the tournaments I realised something: there's a limit to human ability Looking like a real life robot and functioning like a real robot are sometimes very different. Take the example of any spinner robot. The motors in our version is significantly more powerful than the stock ones (which contributes a lot to the spinner meta, but spinner meta itself is realistic, at least in China), and these motors still struggle to match the spinner motors in the real world. With the slow speed comes greater bite depth across the board and single tooth blades become totally unnecessary. Lower speed also decreases gyro effects on spinners, allowing them to be made larger and heavier without affecting the drivability. The bar spinner of Bite Force is usually regarded as on the lighter side of the spectrum, and in our version of the game a 100cm DSL bar + 2 Typhoon teeth would also be considered light. However, even on the largest chassis available in game the 100cm DSL weapon still looks way out of proportion if it was judged by the standards of real life. Instead of resemblance, I personally prefer "functional representation". If a part in game serves the same purpose as a part in real life, then no matter how crazy it looks in game I would still use it.
On our side, IRL generally focuses more on the "looks like real bots" than "fights like real bots", though there we do attempt to try and cover both bases as best as possible. Our spinners motors for example tend not to be buffed (though there is one tournament that has experimented with increasing their power), so our spinners don't really launch opponents like real spinners do. As you mention in your post, single tooth spinners, which are very common in real robots, don't really work in RA2, but nonetheless our IRL ruleset tends to encourage using fewer teeth rather than more, for the reasons that most real bots tend towards smaller numbers of teeth, and also to try to avoid spinners being totally dominant (Vertical spinners are still by far the strongest bot type in most arenas for us, even with these limits.

I think your ruleset and how you go about your tournaments is really interesting, and I'd very much like to see in more detail how exactly the 'meta' in Chinese tournaments works out. Would it be possible to record the next tournament that happens in your community? I think a lot of people here, me included, would be intrigued to see how it plays out.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 18, 2019, 09:13:02 AM
Interestingly there was one overhead spinner once equipped with a balanced (god knows how he did that) single toothed weapon. IIRC it was described as "unstable and sometimes hitting too hard" and never actually used.

The videos of the second, third and fourth tournament are all there in my hard drive (in low quality), I just have to upload them through my unstable internet connection. Btw what's an upload site that you guys usually use?
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: TheRoboteer on May 18, 2019, 09:17:45 AM
Interestingly there was one overhead spinner once equipped with a balanced (god knows how he did that) single toothed weapon. IIRC it was described as "unstable and sometimes hitting too hard" and never actually used.

The videos of the second, third and fourth tournament are all there in my hard drive (in low quality), I just have to upload them through my unstable internet connection. Btw what's an upload site that you guys usually use?
I've built a few single tooth discs myself and yeah they're a real nightmare to balance, you pretty much have to do it by trial and error.

In terms of uploading we normally use YouTube, but as far as I'm aware that may not be available in China. I'd just upload them to any site you're familiar with and post a link here.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Mystic2000 on May 18, 2019, 10:21:58 AM
another issue with single tooth is that sometimes you end up with so much bite your bar almost completely stops dead and you have to get all the way back up to speed, which may be what that builder described as hitting too hard

and yeah like you mentioned, i did notice you seemed to focus more on the fighting and competition aspect than the art and showcase side of things which is more our focus, but it's interesting that game stability was one of the factors, i was wondering with that, are the boosted motors you use causing any instability problems (axles going mad, spinners going completely out of control and spazzing out, havok explosions) ?

i also think the sportsman class idea is really neat and something i'm suprised GTM has barely ever used (the closest being a UK live event style tournament that never actually happened), is it just spinners banned or are there additional restrictions like real life sportsman ?
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: MoonSet416 on May 18, 2019, 10:29:22 AM
According to Xseal3, when the motors spin up to or above a certain speed, the actual rpm will in game will start to go crazy and fluctuate a lot. If not for this we would probably have gone crazy with the motors lol. I'm someone who puts a 5kg disc on a featherweight so more weapon is more better.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Xseal3 on May 18, 2019, 12:34:08 PM
Interestingly there was one overhead spinner once equipped with a balanced (god knows how he did that) single toothed weapon. IIRC it was described as "unstable and sometimes hitting too hard" and never actually used.

The videos of the second, third and fourth tournament are all there in my hard drive (in low quality), I just have to upload them through my unstable internet connection. Btw what's an upload site that you guys usually use?

I'm the one made that single tooth spinner...I did my best to make it balance, but it was still a little bit shaky. In functional aspect, single tooth weapons won't provide noticeable advantage over double teeth one because the rpm is not high enough(compare to real life). Single tooth weapons also have issue about the tooth durability since one tooth needs to take all the damage. Single tooth weapons usually tend to be heavier than double teeth one at same length because the mass on the longer side contribute much more moi than the shorter side.
At last I decided to not use the single tooth bar at the championship but used the symmetrical bar. The single tooth bar looks much cooler though.
btw single tooth weapons start to make noticeable difference when weapon rpm is more than about 5000, but in RA2 we tend to make weapon motors top speed under 1800 rpm or they sometimes go crazy.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Xseal3 on May 18, 2019, 01:12:18 PM
another issue with single tooth is that sometimes you end up with so much bite your bar almost completely stops dead and you have to get all the way back up to speed, which may be what that builder described as hitting too hard

and yeah like you mentioned, i did notice you seemed to focus more on the fighting and competition aspect than the art and showcase side of things which is more our focus, but it's interesting that game stability was one of the factors, i was wondering with that, are the boosted motors you use causing any instability problems (axles going mad, spinners going completely out of control and spazzing out, havok explosions) ?

i also think the sportsman class idea is really neat and something i'm suprised GTM has barely ever used (the closest being a UK live event style tournament that never actually happened), is it just spinners banned or are there additional restrictions like real life sportsman ?

There are people who can make really good replica of real bots in our community, but only for showcases. The instability issue I think are mostly caused by overlapping components, and replicas usually have plenty of them. In our ruleset you are still required to make your bots look like one in real world. for example, bulkheads to hold vertical spinners are required although they don't have functional use in ra2. Robots also needs to be real world functionable. For example, spinning blades that cut through its own wheels are not allowed.

In our later patches some motors are actually nerfed for better game stability, and the version we use now are unlikely to crash because of overpowered motors.

In our sportsman class,
High damage weapons like typhoon tooth are banned.(while hammerbot can have 1 on their weapon).
High power spin motors like perm or etek are banned.
You can have sections that touch the ground width up to 40cm.
The rest of outer sides of the robot shall not touch the ground.
Robots somehow are too destructive might be banned.
Robots that purely for fun but unlikely to win over others might be allowed to use banned components.
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Mystic2000 on May 18, 2019, 01:48:07 PM
so it's essentially competitive IRL in how it works, you can tryhard all you like but you have the realism restrictions of real life, interesting

i can imagine a bunch of people enter some pretty crazy designs in sportsman lol, what's the most odd thing you've seen in this class ?

Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Mr. AS on May 19, 2019, 01:59:52 AM
so it's essentially competitive IRL in how it works, you can tryhard all you like but you have the realism restrictions of real life, interesting
lra2 was right all along, you only had to listen
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Billy5545 on May 20, 2019, 06:23:18 AM
New ep of Robottal Wars:
https://youtu.be/wTrE_vR8L7U
Title: Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
Post by: Billy5545 on August 05, 2019, 10:40:55 PM
Reviving this. So, showing vids of first ep of tourneys

Squadrents (Parsec): https://youtu.be/MnItiW4yris
RA2: PLE (Parsec): https://youtu.be/lMb9FAc7Gyg
RoboDestruction (Stock IRL): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mySrNhy_oe0
Roboforce Extreme (DSL IRL): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_q00pe5msE
(Ep 9) Robotic World League: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57-vhI8O8uI&lc=z23zcrl5iqz4sja5104t1aokgokrrlu5rxys324yrxnlbk0h00410

Also splashes for a tourney called Arena Champions, made by a non GTM RA2 user called IdiotBrickDoctor
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Also, there's a Discord server called Design Sharing Hub, for sharing designs of any bots
https://discord.gg/jPx6Ue