Messages

21

Stock Showcases / Re: Calmarius' stock showcase

« on: March 09, 2016, 02:54:06 AM »

So far I just rearrenged the batteries and added more weapons and put the wedge holder burst motor to the farthest back into the chassis:

You could put your 4 drive motors on the blue snappers

Hmmm, so then I can just fold it inside. Never thought of that.

You see, as long as the bot's near the weight limit it won't really matter what burst motor you use

Funny, that even I said that only the weight matters (if the physics engine works like the ODE), then I said DDTs. Gonna replace that with lighter motor in the next iteration.

Ramplates are not the only protective item in this game, lawnmowers, snowplows, casters, and bracket wedges work too

Probably I will try to add lawnmowers... Eventually my bot will look like the "3-2-1 Blastoff" from Starcore. I just imported that bot to look under the hood. That robot is just ingenious. It just uses snapper2s but it's deadly, can self right and protected from front... But it's slow, an my wedge is better so I can just slide under it an rip out its guts.

You probably still won\t be able to win against robots like Mome Rath though, because that bot was specifically made to beat popups.

(of course probably I will never be able to make an AI that can do this again.)

22

Stock Showcases / Re: Calmarius' stock showcase

« on: March 07, 2016, 05:14:23 PM »

Change the wheels to rubbers to improve wedging ability

Rubber wheels are 5 units heavier than shiny wheels, also I'm using the wedge for wedging, not the chassis.
Also rubbers made me get stuck on the slightest ramp on any non-flat arena. Not good...

Use small wedges over emergency wedges, they are superior in every way

I don't know which physics engine used by the game. I have some experience with ODE. Where the ground penetration was a function of the force on the wedge, it's also a function on the joints connecting it to the main body. Regular contacts are static joints while contacts to burst motors are elastic joints. Probably that plays a great role. The actual shape doesn't matter I remember the one of heavy weight starcore robots have a tripod design with 2 wheels an one emergency wedge with 45 degrees angle to the floor. That bot's wedge was the better.

Snapper 2 burst motors mounted perpendicular to the chassis produces the best wedges with the longest extenders.

Other sources claim that DDTs produce better wedges.

You'll be able to win against HS more often if you put some armor on the front.

Thought of that. 2 small ramplates fit on the top of the wedge better that nothing... But not all HS-es strike on the same level. Probably I won't have enough weight to cover the entire wedge with ram plates.

It's better to have 3-4 razors on fewer burst motors than to have 4 burst motors with 1 razor on them, you'll have a lot more weight to use. In fact, you can just put another 2 or 3 razors on each burst motor you have now and your offensive potential will last longer since you have more weapons. 

That's probably something I'm going to experiment with.
Others suggest the damage is calculated based on the penetration depth, which is a function of the velocity.

You can stack the black batteries to save space, that way you can lower the chassis height.

I tried to stack batteries then gave up after 15 minutes, I didn't managed to do it. I also don't feel doing it is fair. While I think the lack of self collisions is intentional. The stacking, effes and axle loading glitches are probably not intended by the devs. It's almost like hacking the game and turning off collision detection altogether when building.

23

Stock Showcases / Calmarius' stock showcase

« on: March 04, 2016, 05:11:55 PM »

My first robot that can have some chance against Starcore V3 when I'm driving it is FWOD (Fast Wedge of Death).



This is a garden variety popup bot. Although it took me quite some time to research so I get the numbers right. Fairly simple design and straightforward (I guess I'm not alone who already built very much like this). The construction doesn't use any glitches.

If I counted correctly the 4 black batteries should be enough to strike all the DDTs on full power during the entire course of the match. The armor is DSA.

Pros:

- Fast. Always capable to flank two wheeled HW bots.
- High pushing power.
- The emergency wedge tend to peel off many other opponents from the ground with ease.
- The 4 DDTs with the razor cause massive amounts of damage (1000-2000 per hit when all razors hit).
- Fastest win: 5 seconds.

Cons:

- Problems with self righting, if it lands on it's side, it will be counted out.
- Weak against full body horizontal spinners. Vortex CE regularly beats me. Tough it's performs better against the Borg Queen, and other HSes with large chassis.
- Cannot KO Mome Rath and Alien Queen (nevertheless he can win against them by score ).
- Low ground clearance makes it stuck on ramps an detached bot components, very careful driving needed.
- Requires lot of skill to drive it (hard to aim, easy to lose the razors if you hit a weapon with them)

I was too lazy to apply proper paintwork. So I just painted the entire chassis to lime green.

I upload a video to Youtube every day where play at least 5 rounds against a Starcore robot on weekdays.
Then I upload a longer vid of me playing a whole season of events on Sundays:

The playlist is here:



Future plans with this:

- Improving the self righting ability.
- Adding armor to the wedge without losing the wedging ability. (So far I have no good ideas how could I place them).
- Building a middleweight and lightweight versions.