Damn they like their typhoon teeth more than we do
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.
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.
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 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.
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 contactAbout 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.
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.
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 ?
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 ?
Huh... So I didn't know IRL building was a thing here. Since now I do, I actually have smth to share.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.
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 abilityLooking 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.
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.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.
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?
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?
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 ?
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, interestinglra2 was right all along, you only had to listen