BattleBots

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1

http://battlebots.com

Episodes here

I’m kind of surprised no one made a thread about this, but then again i didn’t know they started this up until two days ago.

It’s almost exactly the same show as the old one from Comedy Central in 2000. It’s now running on ABC Sundays at 9pm EST.

What i really like is that, unlike most such remakes, they didn’t screw with the formula. It’s not a bunch of flash or crap. It’s some brief biographical info about the builders, and then robot fights. And that’s it. The arena is basically the same as the old one, with blades and spikes and hammers and stuff.

Even after the old show ended in 2002, apparently the competitions continued around the world, so some of the teams from the original show are still around and competing. Some are younger teams, including some guy who was inspired by the original show as a kid and went off and started his own successful robotics company, which is cool.

It’s funny, albeit not unexpected, that similar designs are still dominant. Bronco is a powerful pneumatic flipper design, which almost chucked his opponent out of the arena. Tombstone completed last night and has a huge horizontal spinning blade that basically ripped his opponent in half, cutting through its armor like paper.

There have been some minor rules changes compared to the original, and now a team can actually run a main bot with 2 auxiliary mini bot assistants. One thing that is annoying is that the specific rules don’t seem to be available, so I’m not sure what the rules are beyond a limit of no heavier that 250lbs. I suspect that the mini bots weight contributes to the overall weight limit, otherwise i can’t see why everyone wouldn’t have them.

The first two episodes are available online now. They comprise the qualifying round, which selected the 16 competitors from 32 teams, plus 4 wildcards from the losers.

Looks like the whole season is only 6 episodes, so four more in addition to the ones already done.

I’d recommend folks check it out of they liked the original.

2

Oh snap! BattleBots!

Thanks for the heads-up! I didn’t even know they were doing another version.

3

How cool! Thanks for the heads up, Timex.

4

Heh, when i wrote this, I was absolutely certain that another thread already existed and i was just somehow missing it… Because BattleBots seems like a totally QT3 crowd type show.

The second episode has two especially awesome fights.

5

I caught the 1st episode it was a lot of fun. That’s way to much work for me, plus I suck at building things, but man that would be fun hobby.

6

The fire is an interesting addition. Seems this is a mixed weight competition - medium and heavy together. While its still the same basic types of bots (flippers, vertical/horizontal saws, piercer’s, etc) the state of the art has definitely advanced. Some fantastic matches on episode 2. I’ve missed BB over the past 15 years, and the web only productions have never really matched what BB on CC could achieve.

Was inspired to go back and watch some BB Season 5 (episode 2 - featuring many of the same teams as this episode 2). I feel like Dwyer and Green have a bit more energy to them - particularly when a match is exciting, but the current team is more “professional” - they know how to fill dead seconds (and minutes) with analysis/commentary, while Green & Dwyer struggle to come up with anything to say when it gets boring. I feel like just throwing into the match rather than building it up is also a better decision - more match, less talk about the match - please!

7

Found these old rules. The new tournament definitely revised them, but this probably at least gives some idea of what they are.
http://members.toast.net/joerger/rules/bb_season2_rules.html

8

watching the second episode and I’m confused why the match even goes to the judges, seems if your bot is unable to move/right itself at the buzzer, you should lose. Very odd

9

Which match?

10

It has to be out of action for so many seconds to be a knockout - there is a count (at least there were in its first go-round 15 years ago). Theoretically if given more time it could have righted itself, as the count is cutoff by the buzzer.

11

A buddy found a video of a prior match where tombstone actually gets housed pretty bad by a robot called super megabyte.

I believe super megabyte was the evolution of megabyte.

Edit:
Actually, looks like megabyte is actually the robot in that video, which was an evolution of a prior robot called Rambite.

12

I was disappointed that Complete Control wasn’t a wild card. They did pretty good even with the mobility problems, and their trick was pretty amusing.

13

I would really like to find a bracket for the tournament to start a betting pool, but can’t find any mention of the actual seeding.

14

Yeah, their site is severely lacking any useful information about the tournament.

15

I saw a commercial for this a few weeks ago in a bar, but I completely forgot about it. This is awesome! It’s as fun (in a completely different way) as the return of Whose Line.

16

Hey, this was a lot of fun! I can’t stand a lot of the network TV filler between the fights – all that forced sportsbanter and B-roll footage! – but what a delight seeing the engineering ingenuity and the actual battles. I missed out when the original series aired.

However, I’m really disappointed they didn’t give the guys from San Francisco the win for their net trick with the gift box affixed to the front of Complete Control. If the rules about entanglement weren’t in the rules, the judges can’t just say, “oh, well, uh, it was supposed to be in the rules because that’s how we’ve always done it.” Rules are rules, and if you screw them up, that’s on the ones writing the rules, not the ones reading them. This ain’t Nam, Smokey.

BTW, the annoying reporter chick I booted off my ship in Mass Effect is one of the judges. Go figure.

-Tom

17

I was also pretty disappointed with that. I thought CC won the rematch anyway

18

at this point, I’m extremely skeptical that any of the robots in the competition are going to be able to beat tombstone.

The Team Warrior group may be able to pull it off… Their robot is potentially pretty low profile. It’ll all depend on whether they are able to survive initial contact with the blade. They used to run a bot called Son of Whyachi who dominated battlebots for a few seasons, a fairly heavy spinner design. Their little mini annoyance bots may have a decent chance to screw up tombstone. They messed up nightmare pretty bad by being able to just get under him and offset his balance. If they can pull this off with Tombstone, they could do something.

Plan X may have some kind of modular weapon to deal with tombstone at range too. In the past, Son of Whyachi’s spinner design was countered pretty well by a bot that actually made a custom frame thing attached to it just for that battle, which basically just kept the spinner at range so it couldn’t get close enough to use it. But Tombstone’s is so powerful that I’m not certain it will be able to block it with a frame like that.

With Plan X though, I have a feeling that as soon as it goes up against any spinner it’s gonna get obliterated. It’s frame seems really weak from a structural perspective.

There was a bot called Bull Dog in the competition, which was actually a backup bot from past seasons, from a team that ran two bots called “Bigger Brother” and “Little Sister”. Dog was basically a middleweight flipper design. But it was also covered with fur, which means that against bots with flamethrowers, it catches fire. Generally this doesn’t hurt the bot, and is kind of intentional, since it looks awesome. There was another bot, which was a huge fan favorite, which always ended up catching fire like this, but I forget the name (it was something weird).

bulldog_team-1140x760.jpg1140×760

They didn’t show the Bull Dog battle in the qualifiers though. I’m guessing he lost? But the site doesn’t list him as having either a win OR a loss, so I don’t know what’s up.

19

Ditto. I think there might have been some backlash for violating an “unwritten rule”, as I thought they were pretty even in the rematch. It’s not like it had the trick and nothing else.

20

OK, this is on tomorrow, folks. Apparently, this is the lineup for tomorrow’s fights… No idea how reliable this info is.

Stinger vs. Warhead
Bronco vs. Plan X
Warrior Clan vs. Ghost Raptor
Icewave vs. Chomp

If so, I would pick…
Stinger - warhead is a garbage bot. He got in via wildcard, perky because he’s got cool articulation and looks neat. But most of his design is fluff rather than function. Now, they didn’t even show stingers fight in the qualifiers, so it’s totally possible he is also a garbage bot. But the pics suggest he’s a decently standard flipper model with a kind of dump truck design. Possible warhead’s spinner head might actually be useful against this design. Not really impressed with either bot. If stinger has decent torque he can probably push warhead around.

Bronco - plan x seems extremely fragile. Now, it’s kind of bulky, so may be hard to flip, but bronco has a really strong pnumatic flipper, and once it flips, i don’t think plan x is going to be getting back up. Might depend on what weapon plan x fits, as it supposedly has a modular weapon system. But bronco seems solid, and plan x seems weak.

Warrior clan - ghost raptor is a garbage bot. They are the guy who lost to the box full o net… Then, in the rematch, basically crippled their own bot simply by landing a hit with their main weapon, because apparently they have a spinner arm that isn’t solid through the axle. Then they won on basically a technicality, despite getting smacked around by total control, who had immediately crippled one of its own treads upon start on the match. I see nothing good about ghost raptor. Meanwhile, warrior clan is the team that fielded Son of Whyachi. They are better pilots i think, and suspect that their bot will wreck ghost raptor. Their mini bots will basically be invulnerable to its main weapon, i think.

Icewave - A very solid spinner design, with a gas powered engine. It may depend on how thick comps armor is, but i suspect icewave will cut through him pretty good.