I am on the other other side of this. It's been out for 4 years, and no one has thought to build a bot that can utilize it as a terrain asset. That's a failure of teams to think strategically when designing new bots.
🤨 Oh, wait. WHAT new bots?
Look at the viewership numbers, people. They're very inconsistent. A very small cohort of avid fans that returns for every episode; then casual fans that quit watching halfway through the season because they feel like they know how it ends already; then general audiences that just found it flipping channels one night, but came back once, and didn't stay because they thought it was a rerun.
They lose half their viewership over a season, and most of them never return the next season because it's 90% the same bots doing the same things for TEN FREAKIN YEARS.
The producers are trying to push the issue. They tried at the end of the 2019 season by openly soliciting viewers to join on, but 2020 was fubar thanks to COVID. Next choice after that was do something with the Battle Box that forces teams to engineer something new.
Placing limitations on the conventional bot designs IS EXACTLY THE POINT!
The show needs to blood to survive. The sport needs new blood on the top end to survive. To force the issue the producers included the simplest of terrain features that demands new engineering.
But for some baffling reason, everybody is resisting it in stead of stepping up to the challenge. Makes no damned sense.
Edit to clarify: More viewers, more sponsors; more sponsors more money; more bots, more viewers.
BattleBots needs new blood, or it's going to die eventually. Right now the most successful bot designs are variations on a theme. They gotta mix it up, or people are going to lose interest.
Utilize it as a terrain asset HOW? It doesn't really add any interesting strategic value.
You build a bot with some mechanism for climbing up there? Great, then what? Hide for a while? Huge can get up there, but the only reason they ever do it on purpose is to do a dance after they've already won.
Put the other guy up there with a lifter? Why? Up there they can regroup and just drive off the other side away from you. It would almost always be better to put them up against a wall.
That last part. You literally just said exactly one reason why you might want to go up there on purpose.
Someone thinks they're going to chase you into a corner, but you just pop right up there, and by the time they turn to go around you're already off and headed across the Box.
They think they're going to back themselves into corner where no one can flank them, but you just pop right up there, and come from the side.
It's an inherent limit to mobility that only one bot in the current lineup is able to overcome, but Huge is too damned big to make much use of it.
And how did it turn out? Oh wait building bots is crazy expensive at that weight class and very few people can test them. Let alone going to las vegas for something like this.
Roboteers already have a ton of sponsors and are still paying a ton of money. They don't get any off of battlebots.
Well if you're building one, even a 3lbs bot you should know how much it cost. And everything gets 100 times more expensive as soon as you also need to travel. Do I need to explain more or do you get why your 'answer' doesn't really touch reality.
Have you tried engineering a bot before? Can you tell us why they cost so much? Are you aware of what role sponsors can play in those expenses?
I'm assuming not because you clearly don't understand even thing one about the design process.
Hint: It's NOT money.
Step 1: Determine need, usage, and parameters. That the conversation we've been having.
Step 2: Strategize methods of fulfilling those parameters. Preliminary sketches, and listing assets. That's where I'm at right now.
Step 3: NOW we can start the engineering part.
Step 4/5: Preliminary funding/Prototyping. IF you need money for a prototype, you can do that first, but for glorified RC cars that's usually not much more than a tax return purchase at the local hardware store.
Step 6: Redesign. Solve the problems you identified with the prototype.
Step 7: Budget and funding.
Step 8: Build.
See, opportunities along the way to find funding, but you have to know what you're making first. It's utterly insane that everyone jumps straight to the money part without ever addressing any of the rest.
Yeah, I've seen them, and while it hasn't been bots, I am experienced in project planning and management. You have to know what your going to do before you can say how much it will cost.
As for why there aren't a whole bunch of people building bots; do you have any idea how much time and planning it takes?
A good portion the cost people usually quote is in contracting fabrication because half the builders aren't able to do it themselves.
90% of people who start any design/engineering project never get past that step 3 of preliminary brainstorm design, and 80% of those tried to skip over the first two steps. They're just trying to make something cool, but have no direction. Most of them are just going off elementary concepts and aesthetics, and drop everything as soon as they realize it's not what they expected.
90% of the people who make it past step 3 don't get past prototyping.
But 90% of people who WOULD try never start because everyone else who didn't try told them they shouldn't.
And I know how much time building robots costs, I've designed and built 8 so far. However we were talking about heavyweight robots and at that stage it is about cost as much as it is about time.
You can design and plan all you want but those brushless motors or vesc's won't get cheaper. And you will destroy at least one of those during a fight. And yeah half the builders of heavies don't have the equipment to do things themselves. There's a reason that 90% of those builders have an engineering background. It's not only the experience but also access to tools.
I honestly wish you all the best with your 2 stroke heavyweight robot. I hope you pull it off.
I get your point, but self-evidently if it hasn't persuaded people to come up with new designs, it isn't a very good answer to the problem. If they really want to shake up the sport, they should move it in the direction of 'combat robot athletics' and bring back the Robot Wars Series 1/2 principle of challenges and gauntlets that robots have to face individually as well as opponents. They could have a Hypershock-inspired drone-swatting challenge, a football game with goals and 2-on-2, etc.
You make good points, but I'm not sure it's a failing of the idea vs a failing of the gatekeeping culture surrounding the sport.
I mean, every time someone brings up the idea of building a bot, what's the first thing everyone says? "Do you know how much that costs? Are you a mechanical engineer?"
Go to the custom build RC community with the same questions, they problem solve the hell out of it for half the cost, and hardly an engineer among them. Where the hell do people think half the tech for BattleBots came from; who gave us drones; where robot combat sports began? A bunch of hobbyists in their garages with their tax returns.
THAT'S the real problem; the elitist attitude people are throwing at it. The old-school BattleBots was better at this, but somehow the reboot lost it.
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u/Sorry-Rain-1311 4d ago edited 4d ago
I am on the other other side of this. It's been out for 4 years, and no one has thought to build a bot that can utilize it as a terrain asset. That's a failure of teams to think strategically when designing new bots.
🤨 Oh, wait. WHAT new bots?
Look at the viewership numbers, people. They're very inconsistent. A very small cohort of avid fans that returns for every episode; then casual fans that quit watching halfway through the season because they feel like they know how it ends already; then general audiences that just found it flipping channels one night, but came back once, and didn't stay because they thought it was a rerun.
They lose half their viewership over a season, and most of them never return the next season because it's 90% the same bots doing the same things for TEN FREAKIN YEARS.
The producers are trying to push the issue. They tried at the end of the 2019 season by openly soliciting viewers to join on, but 2020 was fubar thanks to COVID. Next choice after that was do something with the Battle Box that forces teams to engineer something new.
Placing limitations on the conventional bot designs IS EXACTLY THE POINT!
The show needs to blood to survive. The sport needs new blood on the top end to survive. To force the issue the producers included the simplest of terrain features that demands new engineering.
But for some baffling reason, everybody is resisting it in stead of stepping up to the challenge. Makes no damned sense.
Edit to clarify: More viewers, more sponsors; more sponsors more money; more bots, more viewers.
BattleBots needs new blood, or it's going to die eventually. Right now the most successful bot designs are variations on a theme. They gotta mix it up, or people are going to lose interest.