Robot Wars 2016 Discussion Thread

[kill343gs]

Yeah guys stop

[Badger]

I read none of that but I'm gonna assume it was all bollocks. Anyway, at least there's only 1 aidsbots in the wildcard and it's got 0 chance of winning it.

user was warned for this post

[Joelu Of Eagleland]

I read none of that but I'm gonna assume it was all bollocks. Anyway, at least there's only 1 aidsbots in the wildcard and it's got 0 chance of winning it.

Speaking of which, who do we all think will get the wildcard? Imma say Thor (or Tor, because Dara's irish is amazing) because of it's higher amount of points scored in the head to heads (only 1 bot has gotten higher than 8 and that's in the final already)

[Probably Rob]

I'm hoping Behemoth because Behemoth, but yeah, I won't mind Thor

[Badger]

Behemoth, except probably not cause apparently its held together with chewing gum and the will of allah with how unreliable it is

[botomatic1000]

Behemoth, except probably not cause apparently its held together with chewing gum and the will of allah with how unreliable it is

#2edgy5me bro

[cephalopod]

Not getting involved but I'd like to mention a few things that impress me about Gabriel.
-Around 2/3 the power of Beta in the swing
-Torque limiters so it can swing without moving across the floor
-Unbelievably hard to control
But this last one is more telling than any other
-It's the only robot my girlfriend has ever liked and rooted for. She actually got invested in this episode because of how entertaining Gabriel is.

[jackster96]

Gabriel is awesome it was great to watch at the live event in Manchester and is the only robot i've seen to effectively fall out of the arena, I just find Gabriel great and entertaining to watch and I normally don't like robots designed like that (i.e stinger i always hated that robot when it was on tv just something about it i think). As for the wildcard id think that Thor will get it as its the only robot to win all the fights besides the final one, id like storm 2 to get it but i cant see that happening.

[Thyrus]

To go with the flow of how veterans perfomed the wildcard has to go to gabriel so we don't have any old bots on the final.
I was happy when the final went in favor of Pulsar.

[Conraaa]

Now i've slept on it, I've written up my thoughts in a bit more detail. This is what I wrote in reply to a comment on /r/Battlebots

The old series went 7 main series and 2 series of Extreme perfectly fine without a single segment on technology to be seen. I would argue that those segments are not what anyone came to watch and break the flow of the episode.

Robot Wars is a show on technology in the same way WWE is a show on fitness. We know that everyone in WWE is athletically fit, but they don't spend any amount of time talking about the latest advances in rowing machines or weight lifting.

My problem came with Beast vs Gabriel and Ironside vs Pulsar. To me, it was clear Beast was immobile and the Gabriel team thought the same thing as they said as much. In my eyes this was not a close match "Ooh it could go either way", this was see a robot not moving and count to ten. Beast was unable to show controlled movement throughout most of the match and that is something that did not need a review of the footage to see.

Ironside vs Pulsar had similar problems. Once again, there are criteria regarding being counted as immobile, if Ironside met these during the fight, why weren't they counted out? Are there not referees backstage who can count a robot out? Also Ironside pushed Pulsar in to the pit, they did not end up in the pit "at the same time", not sure what Dara was talking about there.

tl;dr Some dismal refereeing muddied the waters and marred what would have been an otherwise great episode.

[wakkydude]

Gabriel is awesome it was great to watch at the live event in Manchester and is the only robot i've seen to effectively fall out of the arena, I just find Gabriel great and entertaining to watch and I normally don't like robots designed like that (i.e stinger i always hated that robot when it was on tv just something about it i think). As for the wildcard id think that Thor will get it as its the only robot to win all the fights besides the final one, id like storm 2 to get it but i cant see that happening.

Gabriel vs Eric was sad. Very sad. I'd like to play that awful flute titanic theme over it, it truly was the death of a not-really-legend.

That said, I don't know what the owner was expecting. Probably not much, he has a lot of fun with Eric without ever taking it seriously.

[Thyrus]

I also disliked the cutting in this episode. Robots teleporting through the arena sucks when you notice it

[Jonzu95]

I also disliked the cutting in this episode. Robots teleporting through the arena sucks when you notice it

I second this.

[R01]

That episode was much more confusing than it needed to be. I spent too much of that one screaming at my television.

Chompalot dying and Pulsar being drafted in was the only thing they did right. I have no idea why matches were allowed to go to completion when robots involved were clearly immobilised and had to retroactively be fixed. Apparently the judges were so busy talking about prosthetic limbs they weren't looking at those matches and forgot to call them. Those confusing messes marred what was a very good heat final, made better by the fact we hadn't already seen it.

Dare I say it, we need Refbot back.

Also legend has it the Jewish holiday Hanukkah is actually based on the 8 days Chompalot burned for.

This, it was odd to see them have no

replacement bots, and I think they also found Pulsar more interesting because of the "unique" weapon and Thermidor 2 being a flipper, but think that's ok, since Thermidor did go out early.
Bots suddenly starting again was a mess, wouldn't want to call Ironside vs Pulsar, because they did have a srimech but just got bothered by all kinds of other stuff, so it was hard to tell if it worked, Killalot then lifted them up and it was total chaos after that...

Yeah, I wasn't particularly happy with how Ironside was revived by Sir K, and were seemingly allowed to continue right through when Pulsar started having problems, up until the double pit incident.. good it was made right, though. Would have saved me the frustration if they called it early, though.

Pearce still clueless as to what's actually happening in the arena, though. Didn't spot Gabriel's pickaxe getting stuck in the fire pit or Beast losing mobility half the time

Not as spectacular as episode 4, but it did the job.

Can agree to it as well, especially the JP part.

I still don't get the countout system. That 10 second timer, is that a robot immobile countdown, or the end of the match? Because it's frustrating not knowing. On a few matches, robots have had their wheel stuck, spinning on one side, essentially making it look like they're "time wasting" when they're not, they're just stuck... SO COUNT THEM OUT, just in case they ARE time wasting, which they aren't. Hate this countout thing... if there IS one

End of the match, but it's a total chaos. I think this was the first episode where it was noticeable that the fights are definitely not 3 minutes(apparently they'll make a DVD with extra rumbles and full fights later on?). Because they can't manage stuff(and have one person like the judge in battlebots who tells you that your bot is getting counted out) we will need Refbot again...

I seriously wish that they would just drop this whole "drama show" aspect and return to the earlier series of Robot Wars, competitors weren't that great back then but the show was(while in the later, it was the competitors that were great but the show started being more and more garbage, nothing can top series 7 however), in the reboot, the competitors are what makes the show, while the show itself is only ok with annoyances that think they need to do the storm2 drama yet again. Getting the names pronounced right outside of JP would also be nice.

As for the wildcard, I can only see Thor and don't expect

Pulsar to go far, they're a nice team but their robot is unreliable.

Behemoth sadly didn't do much.
Thor had a rather well run but got unlucky
DTK, Storm2 and Gabriel all had trouble with some fights.

The bots I really like most likley won't win because of reliability issues, giving Carbide as well as TR2(didn't they win like the heavyweight title recently? Yet the show talks about them as if they're just a first time built bot)

I'm fine with Gabriel as long as we don't see the same design for thwackbots spammed like in Series 3. Lol@Badger's post, would like to see you drive that thing. And now we need visual damage in order for a show to be entertaining and a weapon effective?

I wouldn't exactly say that all of the early series were "who can destroy the other bot first", maybe 5 and 6, but definitely not the very early ones.

Also, thanks @wakkydude for uploading those. I watch them live and later download the episode but this is great.

[botomatic1000]

Gabriel was great fun you really have to see it in person to get the grand scale of it. Nice to see Infernal Contraption back even if it done bugger all. It's a shame about Crazy Coupe 88 we didn't get to see much of it but it didn't look too powerful. Never really liked Pulsar or Ironside for some reason. Beast was disappointing and unlucky but they where beaten by the better bots. What happened to Chompie was sad but that's what happens sometimes they put up a brave fight in the first round.

[Scorpio]

Gabriel did impress me a bit, but it just looks... weird. Like, it literally looks like something that was originally designed in RA2. It is probs the most minmax-ed robot I've seen, ever.

[Badger]

Gabriel did impress me a bit, but it just looks... weird. Like, it literally looks like something that was originally designed in RA2. It is probs the most minmax-ed robot I've seen, ever.

min fun max aids :D


I think it's designed so that the only place that really gets hits are the wheels, and they're very hard to damage really

[JoeBlo]

Wow this is not a good year for the vet's

Im glad pulsar got a free kick rather than trying to force chompalot to front up to the remaining fights broken, it was also disadvantaged in point tally too so nobody could cry foul, good work by management to run that.

Gabriel is a lot of fun but always a risky design when you cant KO easily

I think they do need a ref or countout in some form so competitors can easily know if they need to persist with the attack or not but thats something that can easily be built on next year.

[Probably Rob]

I think they do need a ref or countout in some form so competitors can easily know if they need to persist with the attack or not but thats something that can easily be built on next year.

This is the BBC, the company that had previously already had a ref and countout system with Robot Wars, how the **** did they not with this. I guess kids were more important to count, I suppose

[Shinkioh]

Anyone else think Storm 2 seemed really slow in this one?

Someone posted that before and Craaig got the answer to it, check his post a few pages back

Apparently now they're using Magmotors which are much slower than LEM's.

So apparently the Robot Wars wiki shed light on why they did that.