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Messages - MoonSet416

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1
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 30, 2019, 08:23:34 PM »
Sorry the new version is still WIP. Please understand that this version is meant for the fifth event, so we are trying to get as much as we can into the thing. We are currently working on putting RWmod features in there (more armor thickness options, some realistic looking weapons, etc.)

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Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 22, 2019, 09:55:04 PM »
Just updated the third tournament. Have a look.

3
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 21, 2019, 07:32:33 PM »
The horizontal clamp I mentioned was more like two wedge-claws that flank the target when activated without the robot itself flanking the target (given that the target isn't too wide). The vertical clamp IIRC made an appearance in season 2 and was called Bite A Piece. BAP was more like most real life clamp-lifters and later went on to participate in the sportsman competition to great effect.

4
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 21, 2019, 07:27:46 PM »
Maybe you could release the RACOON AI after you put up everything you said you are going to add (RACOON 3 and 4, RACOON's DSL and Ruleset)?
Yeah we're doing it, it just takes time. We would like to do it right with the first try. Video release isn't really handled by me unfortunately, will let the person in charge know.

5
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 21, 2019, 09:37:46 AM »
Some of these bots are really cool.
Some of them could use some colour with the DSC coloured parts but overall I really like these.

Yep, with the balancing changes brought by the latest version (still WIP as we are add stuff from RWmod and some of our own stuff), using those colorful IRL plates makes total sense now. I will probably keep my black and white color scheme though because I can't be bothered to scroll down the menu B&W just looks cool.

6
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 20, 2019, 10:11:56 AM »
Yeah big spinner vs big wedge is always nice to watch. Rammers are rare in our tournament though because AIs cannot effectively drive robots that are too fast for some reason. Clampers have seen some limited success. Z3 is a horizontal clamper with a vertical, which did quite well. Where clampers see the most success was actually in the sportsman division. In open division clampers will have to fight for lower ground clearance, which is a fight they might win, but when they win they are in general less efficient at exploiting the fact that they just got under their opponents, compared to let's say a vert. And a lot other weapon types are pretty much in the same boat (in game and in real life). It is hard to justify not to put a vertical spinner on a wedge. We then created a sportsman division for pretty much the same reasons as in the real world. But then within the sportsman division there's still a meta, players just had to find the next best thing, and clampers seems to be just that.

7
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 20, 2019, 09:03:13 AM »
Aha, we noticed the same thing with robots not able to tank too many hits. The versions you see being played in those videos were on a slightly older version, with boosted motors and boosted HP for a select few components (namely DSL bars, the sides of FBS spinners, and weapon teeth). However, these components are quite limited in what shape can be made out of them. The new version we are currently working on (hopefully will be uploaded to here and used in the fifth tournament) includes an extensive rebalancing to most parts that could be used as armor, with IRL plates/wedges being the main focus. Most of the components in the current version have the same HP to weight ratio if they are the same archetype, for example an IRL plate and a DSL bar (modified in this version with all damage numbers removed so it's just pure armor) both have like 5000HP per kg or smth like that.

Another thing we are currently working on is the ruleset itself. In the fourth tournament in particular there were two consecutive fights where AI basically misbehaved and altered the outcome of those fights. In one of the fights one robot ran into the wall for no reason while ignoring the opponent, which wasn't in the same direction at all. We are still discussing if they should be treated like physics malfunctions like robots clipping into the ground, as AI malfunctions are harder for the average player to spot beforehand (in fact, most players in our community cannot write AI so the actual fight would be the first time they see their bot driven by AI), and can change the outcome of a fight in an unfair way, just like physics bugs.

8
Discussion / Re: Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 19, 2019, 09:15:52 PM »
Yeah that would be great. We are currently working on finalizing our version and uploading it so that you guys can see what works in the altered version and hopefully enter some machines into our comp. Rulesets will also be translated at some point and be uploaded.

As for the tournaments here on GTM, our community members have expressed quite some interest in the tournaments you guys are running here (and some robots we have are already kinda IRL-compliant).

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Discussion / Chinese RACOON Tournament (Video Links Included)
« on: May 19, 2019, 04:06:23 AM »
This thread includes:
RACOON Tournament1, splash, videos
RACOON Tournament2, splash, videos
RACOON Tournament3, splash, videos

This thread will include in the future:
RACOON Tournament 4
RACOON Version of DSL2.2 (called DSL2.25e1 currently)
RACOON Ruleset

So I thought I might as well make a separate thread about this.

You guys asked for videos, and you get them (sort of). Unfortunately despite me living outside of the GFW, my internet is just too slow for big uploads. Luckily 张, the man behind those splashes stepped up and uploaded some videos to a Chinese weeb site called Bilibili.

Tips: click the video to play, click the nuclear icon on the bottom right corner of the video to go fullscreen, and use the list on the right to choose which fight to watch.

The time was Sep 2018. This is where it all started (sort of). The Chinese community had existed for quite some time at this point but there was never a tournament. Robot development was slow and member count was also not that great. I joined around this time mainly to find a driving simulator before the Robowars Australia event at the end of September. Some community members one day had an idea of hosting an AI tournament, and we had the first RACOON tournament.


First tournament: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av52951834
https://challonge.com/RACCON2018NDOrgnl
Replica division: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av52955208
https://challonge.com/RACCON2018NDRplc

The name RACOON was a cheesy forced acronym stands for Robot Arena 2 Combat Competition Of Original Non-cheatbot2. Before the first tournament most of the robots never saw any other player robots and were only required to win against stock AI with the only exceptions being Hyperforce, 4X4flipper, and K2. The first tournament also had an IRL-ish replica tournament, but it was cancelled due to technical issues. Robot development basically exploded after this with the release of the AI bots from the first tournament.



Second tournament exhibition matches: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av52957127
Second tournament group stage (1): https://www.bilibili.com/video/av52966203
https://challonge.com/RACCONNYE18
Second Tournament group stage (2) & elimination stage: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av52967320
https://challonge.com/RACCON201819NEFinal

The pre-season exhibition matches were held right before the second tournament. You can already sort of see what was to come in terms of vertical spinners in the form of NKVD (built by Xseal), the prototype of many large diameter vertical spinners that would come later. The second tournament was also when swiss army bots really took off, and I got a taste of it in RePretender (my bot, a clone of Hyperforce, which is a replica of Bite Force) vs ein fleischwolf. I was lead to believe that I was fighting a vertical spinner, while my opponent actually had an overhead SOW-style bar and I got my face ripped off. Modular bots added a lot of unpredictability to the tournament in that you never know what you are fighting next (even more fun when you have a modular bot of your own). This later lead to some modular robots having modules that are general purpose to counter an unknown threat. The second tournament was also the only tournament to see the use of multibots. They were then banned in later tournaments due to the fact that the preferred arena would spawn the two multibots on opposite sides of the arena, which is unrealistic and unfair to the single bot. In terms of ground clearance, a lot of new robots saw the success of Hyperforce and jumped onto the hinged wedgelets train (similar to the 2019 season of Battlebots, funny eh?), but very few have come close to contending with Hyperforce2 in terms of ground clearance. Speaking of HF2, it was actually voted into the eliminator stage as a wild card after losing its group stage (god I wish I hadn't voted for it).





Third Tournament Heavyweight Division Group Stage: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av53288682
Third Tournament Heavyweight Elimination (Final) Stage, and Exhibition Matches: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av53289312
Third Tournament Sportsman Division: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av53291914

The third event was the first time sportsman robot saw action. You guys have been asking what the sportsman division is all about and the best way to figure out would be to watch actual builds battle each other. Ruleset is still in the works but is mostly in line with real life regulations (mainly wedges and spinners). Due to the limited time, each builder only had access to three slots. Each slot can be a new machine or a module/alternative form of an existing machine. This slot rule was in place for the 2nd tournament as well but three slots presented builders with a much greater challenge to balance the number of machines and the amount of module each individual machine could have. Some builders opted to enter three different machines, some only one. I personally entered two machines into the heavyweight division, with one of them being an experimental general-purpose non-modular vertical spinner (MainBattleVerticalDisc) and the other being a more traditional vertical spinner with two modules optimized to fight vertical and horizontal spinners respectively.

The tournament format was a two-stage round robin with five groups of five robots. Winners of each group advanced to the winner's round robin.

After the advent of large diameter vertical spinners in the second season, we saw a great number of similar robots being introduced for the third event. Despite the short preparation time between the two events many different variants of the large verticals were made. Nuke3 had wedgelets for ground clearance while having a large vertical spinner. There are also a series of large verticals that focused on having the largest footprint possible (with large chassis and long extender bits sticking out) to compensate for the massive amount of gyroscopic effect. Horizontal spinners also received some love in the form of hinged spinners. Previously on AK12 and AN94 we saw chunks of chassis connected to the center module by hinges for some shock mounting effect. This new generation of hinged spinners took it to the next level be isolating the spinner motor and spinner from the rest of the robot.


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Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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.

11
Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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?

12
Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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.

13
Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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.

14
Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« on: May 17, 2019, 03:48:29 AM »
Just FYI Xseal3 is the host of the Chinese events.

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Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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.

16
Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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". 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" 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.

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Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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.

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Discussion / Re: Non GTM RA2 Thread
« 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.

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