Talon's IRL bots

[Talon]

Hey guys!

I'm fairly new to the RA2 scene but I'm loving it so far. I've been using DSL 3 Beta 1 and have come up with a few designs I thought I'd share with you!

I'll post them all in seperate posts so they can be permalinked to if necessary!

Bot List:


Cutting Edge IV

Blade

Icepick

Lift

FrostLight

Hazard II

Wheely Cheesy Idea

[Naryar]

You should start a showcase by posting bots, not merely posting your intent to post bots...

Although you are new and there are much, much worse misbehavings there.

Anyways, expect advice and criticism.

[Talon]

This is my first uber-successful bot, able to win all 9 tournaments in a year against Paranioa's AI pack: Cutting Edge IV

Three-quarter view



Top-down view showing the motor used for the circular saw weapon



Side view shows the drive wheels and runners above and below the disc used to stop it snarling on the arena floor. These have surprisingly little friction!



Cutaway view with top armour removed so you can see the internals. The chassis is deliberately wider than necessary for more leverage in turns - I found it helps for getting alongside other bots and out of their weapon's range.



The bot itself is extremely lightly armoured, but because of the perfect panel fit this doesn't really matter. So far I've not come up against any enemy bots that are able to penetrate the extender armour panels before they themselves are cut apart by the saw.

I also have some pictures of Cutting Edge IV's older siblings:





The original Cutting Edge started life as a vertical blade weapon, but I realised the efficiency of the disc over a lawnmower blade at applying constant damage in a ramming situation. I heavily armoured the bot with steel which also helped weigh the blade down, and the set-back runners allowed enemy flippers and wedge bots to get under the blade where they would then sustain heavy damage. I also used discs to armour the wheels though this isn't hugely effective - I found wider set wheels in the 2nd version helped evade damage better than armouring and sustaining in this version.

Cutting Edge relied on chassis armour, for which it used 10mm of Steel. Later experience has shown me that this is not necessarily the ideal armour for a bot, so from this point on most of my designs switched to applique armour panels on extender bars!





Cutting Edge II was the first version with the new hull and the angled armour plating, however a lot of it was armoured with thin polycarbonate skirts and the disc itself was over-armoured. The motor was also quite vulnerable which I fixed with an additional rectangular armour plate, however I couldn't bear the way it looked. Cutting Edge III was very much an incremental update, rearmouring the disc slightly and switching the motor from the left to the right - all of the AI kinetic weapons in Paranioa's AI pack spin their blades/flywheels anticlockwise, and the motor on the left of my bot was taking the brunt of the force if the armour failed.

I hope you enjoy this bot and will post more shortly!

[Talon]

You should start a showcase by posting bots, not merely posting your intent to post bots...

Although you are new and there are much, much worse misbehavings there.

Anyways, expect advice and criticism.

Sorry, I had the next post written in a Notepad file ready to go but it froze up thanks to a concurrent RA2 window and I had to rewrite it from scratch!

[090901]

those are dope man

[Philippa]

Pretty cool.

[rnifnuf]

These bots are really cool, although the third bot worries me a bit, because if the discs are touching the ground, the bot will move very slowly.

Please stick around! I would love to see more of what you come up with.

[ty4er]

ooh, very nice man

[Talon]

These bots are really cool, although the third bot worries me a bit, because if the discs are touching the ground, the bot will move very slowly.

Please stick around! I would love to see more of what you come up with.

It's not very clear in the pictures but all three bot designs have runners that touch the ground on both sides of the disc to prevent contact.

Glad you like them! :)

EDIT: Do you mean the disc armour on the wheels? I guess I don't read so good!!

Yeah the bot was a bit wobbly thanks to those which is one of the reasons why Cutting Edge IV dropped them and went back to regular armoured motorcycle wheels!

[Lemonism]

Woah, these are very cool. Good work here dude
Love how well the armour plates all fit together, it shows that you put real effort and consideration into these.
Give these some nice skins (the ones with visible chassis anyway) and they'll be perfect in my book.

[rnifnuf]

EDIT: Do you mean the disc armour on the wheels? I guess I don't read so good!!

Yeah the bot was a bit wobbly thanks to those which is one of the reasons why Cutting Edge IV dropped them and went back to regular armoured motorcycle wheels!

Yes, I was referring to the disc armor attached to the wheels. If the disc radius is larger than that of the wheel, the disc will touch the ground instead of the wheel, thus making the drive useless.

[Badnik96]

I was not expecting something that good.

Nice work dude

[Talon]

Thanks very much to all so far!

I'd like to share with you my current favourite bot, if I may, simply named Blade.



Blade is a hammer bot, again protected almost entirely by extender-mounted armour panels. The split double panel nose has a ground clearance of 0, and it wins roughly half of the "wedge wars" that it encounters, however due to the two E-Tek Drive motors this bot has enough maneuverability to access the vulnerable sides of nearly any opponent.



While Blade does sacrifice some damage output by using the Icepick instead of a Razor Tip, the length of the weapon head actually functions as a self-righting mechanism should the bot fall onto its near-vertical rear armour plates. Thanks to the double-headed icepick, Blade does not fear flipper or wedge bots!



Internally, Blade is tightly packed thanks to the inclusion of a Wide Medium burst piston and the two huge E-Tek Drives. Most of the other internal space is taken up by batteries, and fitting in extender mounting bolts was quite a challenge! Eventually I was able to get a good armour layout mounted on the chassis however and the result is an almost indestructible bot that packs a mean punch, with the power to push almost any other bot around the arena.

If you're interested, you can see Blade take on Paranoia's AI bot "Crop Circles" in a matchup here

[Philippa]

Looks pretty messy to me, the panels on the front don't look too hot like that.

[Naryar]

why is it called blade when it doesn't have a blade

[Talon]

why is it called blade when it doesn't have a blade

Fair point! It started life with a fire axe but it was modified!

[Talon]

Hi All!

I wanted to share with you the evolution of the inappropriately-named Blade - Icepick

Yeah the name sucks. When I'm developing a bot I name them all after their weapons and sometimes I just can't think of a new one!



Icepick is a heavyweight with thin titanium chassis surrounded by a steel armoured framework of form-fitting panels, and fronted by a split prow. The prow allows the icepick weapon to come down on the opposition with huge force, but also provides two points of contact for pushing around opponents when the ramp is not able to get underneath them. This rarely happens however, as the ramp is extremely effective and defeats all but the lowest of wedge bots.



The ramp itself is flanked by steel armour leading back to the front of the N1 wheels - and mounted on these are six medium beater bars - a surprisingly effective weapon! The inclusion of two E-Tek Drives for the powertrain give this bot absolutely unparalleled pushing power and speed, and so far none of its opponents have been able to keep up with it or counter it's extremely potent flanking ability.



The rear is as heavily armoured as the front to protect from overhead or kinetic attacks, though I do wish I had some armour panels that were able to fit in better with the top shell. This was the best I could do considering that almost all the armour on this bot is mounted to the chassis by only 3 attachment bolts and nearly every armour panel is the 7th item in an extender chain.



The top armour has been carefully surrounded with steel extenders upon which most of the forward superstructure is attached, and the weapon fires from just underneath their attach points.



This image shows just how little space has been "wasted" inside the hull - the E-Teks are right up against four interior walls of the bot per side which left very few options for mounting armour. Ant cells are stacked 5-high on either side of the weapon to provide it's full load of 92 amps, and an additional 4 ant cells are stacked ahead of the motors to allow the robot to maintain it's high agility for the duration of battle.

You can see Icepick duking it out with another player in Multiplayer here.

[Philippa]

Pretty cool, man.

[Reier]

diggin the hubs

[RedAce]

Whoa. Sick bots dude!