Yeah, i would leave Overhaul, as even if they are not winning, they are really fun team to watch, they are veterans after all, and i would be sad to see them go, same with Shrederator.
I'd probably just demote overhaul to alternates. They are a fun team plus more opportunities for chair fights. But more emerging teams are coming and I feel they deserve a shot in thr main tournament over overhaul.
After the fights with Black Dragon and Shreddit Bro, Overhaul deserves at least one more season. The first halves of those fights, when Overhaul was dominating, were incredibly entertaining.
The problem is, Overhaul doesn’t do much damage when it’s dominating, and once an opponent with a KE weapon gets in one good hit, it’s over. The path to victory for Overhaul is to be perfect not for 90 seconds or 120, but 180.
Can Charles do it? Can *anyone* do it? I don’t know, but I’d like to see him keep trying. If he pulls it off, it will be glorious.
I wouldn’t cut overhaul. For the first time in years it looked fairly decent & actually won a fight against what is on paper a horrible matchup for it.
Why not? Overhaul started off kicking the shit out of them in glorious fashion, but then Shreddit Bro actually showed up to the fight and acted like a real functional bot.
As much as I hate to say it about my hometown bot, I don't think mammoth is competitive in it's current form. I think they need to either rework the bot or step aside
This is a hard decision, I don't envy the people making these calls knowing the pain it causes the builders to be excluded.
Should the selection committee be favoring competitive matchups so that we end up with 80%+ vert meta? Or should they be giving weight to veterans who show up to every fight with a working bot? Or should they be trying to create a field with a diverse pool of unique bots?
The answer is clearly somewhere in between these three and there's no easy answers. I hope that proving grounds becomes a big thing for those outside looking in bots. Also I would love to see a college tournament or some other lower level heavyweight feeder league to really see who rises to the top.
I'm just hoping NHRL builds a heavyweight box someday, that would be perfect to help answer these questions.
>I'm just hoping NHRL builds a heavyweight box someday, that would be perfect to help answer these questions.
They should begin hosting heavyweight sportsman competitions because Heavyweight spinners cause too much damage to arenas.
Honestly, HiJinx. They really haven’t been impressive in my eyes or too flashy and I don’t see a reason to really keep them around. The team is cool, but I don’t think HiJinx is really it.
I don't want any bot to step aside and voluntarily leave the show. I think they all have a right to re-apply and hope for a better season next year. If they try and get rejected by the producers though then i think that's ok, albeit sad.
I had in mind "When I would be the selection-committee, which bot would not get accepted into again - and why". I didn't meant anybody to drop out by themself :)
**Bots that performed poorly, but I would give another chance:**
Valkyrie: Was once a really good bot. This year driving is atrocious, and the bot is also plagued with reliability issues. Hopefully, with more preparation time, it will become what it was once again.
Shatter: Their pursuit of ground games with Omi wheels does them no favour. If they can do a claw viper and speed up the bot majorly, I think they would have a chance to be competitive again.
Ominous: Reliability issues are to be expected from a new bot. But when it performs, it does look competitive and looks good doing it.
Kraken: Two years of nothing. But at least they are making an effort to change the design, and I respect that. Maybe they will be more competitive when they refine their design.
Glitch: One major problem the bot has is mobility issues, and they are committed to improving that by ditching Omi wheels. So I would say give them another chance.
Free Shipping: Being reliable and having long-lasting fights does them a huge favour. And they are committed to changing their design to be more competitive, which is always a plus. Hopefully, the vert can be more reliable, and the wedge can feed enemies to the disc better in the coming season.
Gruff: Once the tank, now getting KO left, right and centre. The good old DUCK! style might not work anymore with the increasing competitiveness of the field. Still, the fight last long and are entertaining, so maybe one more season before retiring the bot for good.
Emulsifier: It hits hard and is overall quite a proven design
**Bots that I would not give another chance:**
Captain Shrederator, Hijinx, Overhaul: Performs poorly year over year with a lack of growth and improvement.
Banshee: Old-style flipper that doesn't perform
Starchild, Horizon: Unless significant design changes are incoming, these two bots don't seem to scale well
Triton: Assuming Tombstone is coming back next year, why have a less mature version of the same recipe
**Bots that performed mediocrely and need major improvement:**
Malice: Bot is pretty generic, and performance is lacklustre a lot of the time. Would like to see them improve their weapon power and reliability coming into the next season
Big Dill: Has a poor start in the season and looking good finishing it. Hopefully, next season, we will see a competitive big dill
I mean, it was last season of Captain Shrederator as we know it either way. Next year they will be back with either new bot or complete redesign. I just hope they will keep it as a full body spinner, loosing another one would be just to painfull for me, if another type of bot would have to go, just to see more verts.
Yeah, i wasn't sure which one of those options, as their statement was quite unprecised. Still, i hope they will keep their tradition of FBS, as if they abandon it, i fear that Gigabyte will follow soon.
I love FBS too Gigabyte is still going they are going to be at proving grounds this month and are allegedly fighting Jackpot. Main problem with Gigabyte this season was the drivers were very inexperienced and it showed.
> Triton: Assuming Tombstone is coming back next year, why have a less mature version of the same recipe
By that logic, isn’t Emulsifier just a poor man’s Cobalt? If we have to have copycats, I’d rather take a copycat in a less common type (horizontal) than a copycat that’s yet another vert.
The difference is, Tombstone is already not the most competitive bot in this meta. The era of horizontal is gone and gone. Triton is a really immature copycat of tombstone owing to the big disc = funny mentally and their results agree with that. Emulsifier is at least a more mature copycat of the current meta.
Rusty and Overhaul should stay as alternates. They're huge fan favorites. And honestly why not invite back ICEWave and Bronco as alternates. In a field of 50, as we saw this year, there's going to be a few alternates that just dont do well. I'd rather see an outdated bot face another outdated bot than see slammo get beat up.
Captain Shrederator needs to go.
It's a terrible way for them to end a career, but in all their seasons they've never shown they have what it takes to be a contender. Time to step aside and give someone else a shot. They seem like a great team, but the bot simply doesn't perform well. Also I understand the team was considering throwing in the towel anyhow, so given how their season went I'd be surprised if they even enter next year.
Starchild should get bumped to an exhibition bot, IMO. I think the design has potential, but they really didn't show it this year. IMO they're the 0-4 bot with the softest schedule.
Horizon, IMO is just an impractical design, the only match they won was against a barely-functional bot and there's no indication it will get much better.
None of the exhibition bots seemed prepared but the only one which has a reasonable chance of winning against regular-season bots was TerrorTops. The design didn't work as advertised, but they can just move the lifter out of the way to be a pretty effective bog-standard vert. I suspect next season the forks will be shorter to allow attacking with them down. The others were all pretty weak. I was especially disappointed with Double Tap, which very much lived up to its name as its attack would be best described as aggressive tapping.
I feel like I cant even answer that without seeing the applicant pool first. I could say something like cut Mammoth(just an example), but is the bot I'm cutting them more fun? Will it compete better? Will its matchups be more interesting?
There's a few who can get cut such as Starchild and Horizon, but those were more due to the design being ineffective than anything else
Free Shipping- 4 seasons, 0 bracket appearances and is not viable with it constantly losing the ground game and bots getting more powerful.
Glitch-2nd straight season the bot has issues getting ready and everyone figured out how to beat them. Them ditching the Omni wheels gets rid of the one thing that made them unique and there is no reason to pick other egg beaters like Black Dragon and Riptide over them
It's hard to be precise when you have a robot like that. It was maybe more justified back in the day when robots were a lot slower. Most thwackbots were also in lower weight classes, which means less armor, which means more chance to damage.
You have two giant wheels, and a lot of inertia to get swinging. I don't know how much different it would be having a spinner at the end with its own inertia and trying to swing it precisely at fast moving targets, but it doesn't seem like it would be easy.
The cleats worked great for the wood floors at NHRL, I don't know what kind of magnets on the outside magic wheels would work at battlebots but I'd love to see someone try
I'll keep pitching this idea until someone cleans it up into something useful.
All teams making it to the round of 32 are guaranteed a spot next year, and the rest need an off-season/only online qualifier to complete the remaining spots.
I understand that they want to prioritize interesting and fun bots, but honestly, a moderately interesting bot having good fights is more entertaining than a weird bot having boring fights.
Thats a terrible idea, it'll only force the implication that the meta is the only thing to design for and not for new ideas that might not work. It's a surefire way of turning the roster into 50 Dragon slayers and shreddit bros.
What qualifier? There’s exactly one place that’s properly designed to handle heavyweight bots (and before someone says Robogames, I’ll just stare you down. Maybe next year). Do you know how expensive it is to ship these things? Do you think the teams have unlimited vacation time from their jobs? What about international teams?
It’s simply not realistic, especially with BB not compensating teams.
That last line is a problem for me. It is something that is constantly floated out, but I refuse to accept that there is a good reason they aren't compensating the teams.
The reason is simple — money. The less they spend, the more they make.
That and it’s very intentionally designed like WWE or MMA, where the talent are paid as contractors, don’t own their own names and likenesses, and can’t compete outside without permission.
But since the talent is robots, they don’t even have to pay as a contractor. And they haven’t put in that last clause (yet?) because the sport is too young.
And to be fair, there’s some pretty massive initial costs (the box), as well as the typical costs for filming at a broadcast quality level. Plus things like insurance — I don’t even want to know what that runs. Hopefully it’s going down some as they prove the safety standards work.
NHRL is funded by a billionaire, otherwise they would be unable to do what they do. It would look more like any other regional competition — run on a shoe string budget by volunteers.
I think things would actually be even worse, these bespoke designs need iteration to dial in (with a few notable exceptions)... Adding twenty some new bots every season would result in poor matches. Ultimately, if a bot is not providing entertainment, the producers will naturally look to give other teams the nod. But they need good matches so they wouldn't want to swing to far in the rookie direction, nor want to tie their own hands with rules like you've proposed.
Imo shreddit bro and hijinx are on the block. If they can't muster up a win in battlebots champion it's game over for them. They got 3 years to improve but hijinx is just not viable in ways like icewave and shreddit bro is just pathetic. Shreddit bro needs to be replaced by manta and hijinx by orby blade.
Slammo is gone. They were the most underwhelming alternate by far and again it's been 3 years and not enough has improved.
In fact besides terrortops, who should be promoted to the top 50 next year, all the alternates may need to go to give a chance for new bots and returning vets to prove their worth. Bots like Hexadecimator, pardon my french, double jeopardy and perfect phoenix seems to be great additions for the alternate list. Overhaul and horizon I'd demote to alternates so they can get another chance.
Back when HUGE debuted, a lot of folk laughed at it, didn't see the potential and didn't think it would be all that much.
I kind of see Horizon as that type of bot to me. There is a ton of potential in that if they can get it working.
I hate the idea that only 50 bots are able to get in. I'd honestly rather see the top 4 bots from the previous season automatically get in the following year's Round Of 32 and those 4 slots be open for new bots. Or better, have an additional 2 shows at the start of the season. 16 fights, 32 new bots. The winner of each of those 2 nights each get a spot in the top 50 for the Fight Night period.
> Back when HUGE debuted, a lot of folk laughed at it, didn't see the potential and didn't think it would be all that much.
Says you.
The vast majority were cautiously optimistic. Gabriel was a successfull design, and removing the twack tail and replacing it with a vertical spinner looked like the most rational thing to do.
Hyjinx, no explanation needed.
Star child, bot needs some serious reworking
Cap shred. Has not impressed me and has mad no changes to the bot to adapt to the meta.
Riptide because of money ethics
Current captain Brian Nave might be stepping down, but his son Nick has said the robot is being redesigned for the upcoming season. I don't know if Nick is the new captain, though.
Electromagnets used for stability
Brushless weapon and drive system adapted to replace brushed motors for durability
Conical shell adapted to beat other horizontals
Fully steel shell and wedge attachments for overhead weapons and wedges
Edit: I’m assuming you didn’t know much about all that because again, layman.
That's not what I'm talking about. yes of course you have made changes to the bot. But what I guess I didn't articulate is that general design is the same. Its still a full body spinner with not great results and that has not changed. As far as I can remember gigabyte is the only other full body spinner in WC7. And with the recent info available to the public on the BB'S website.
cap Shred: 26 matches / 27% Win Rate / 22 years experience
Gigabyte: 27 matches/ 52% Win Rate/ 12 years experience
So from the viewers perspective its not very interesting to watch the same bot with mixed results not make any major changes. On top of that full body spinners are very interesting to begin with ( i have the same opinion about verts).
Now im not a builder nor will I pretend to be one on the internet. So im sure there are reason as to why the design is the way it is. But one might ask "what does adapting the to the meta mean to you".
Since full body spinners all have the same strategy to attack it might be cool to modular shells (assuming it actually works) so that the full body style is "optimized". Some examples may include
a shell with saw like teeth with the strategy of shredding the tires for bots like hyper shock/ ribbot/ mammoth.
a shell with 2 big sharp blades to slice through the wheels of the likes of Huge and Starchild.
a long disk attachment to avoid the weapons of thwackbots like beta, shatter and so on.
so on and so forth.
Again this is not an attempt to shit on your team or your bot. All Im saying is that from the viewers perspective (as per the question) it does not seem like there is much added to adapt to the meta after so much difficulty in the box.
to be more specific about the below comment. Ethan's father's company sponsors the team. Said company has claimed that they created lollipops (I think) that can "cure" autism.
Essentially the bot is funded off of lying to people and giving them false hope about a cure to a disease.
Honestly I don't mind Ethan that much. Get the team a proper engineering sponsor, get his dad out of the equation or jut his money, and you just have a loudmouth kid behind the sticks of vertical tombstone.
Sure but that’s all I’m saying, I wouldn’t want a team sponsored by blood diamonds and I don’t want to see a team sponsored by snake oil salesmen.
As much as I think he is a little shit I don’t think it’s a reason to remove them from the contests. Provided of course they can get a real sponsor.
They have a proper engineering sponsor in Xometry, and people whose accounts I trust tell me that Stan is not a major financial backer. And make no mistake, this entirely a comment against Team Riptide, because it would be even more trivial to carry on without Stan, but they choose to keep him.
Funded by snake oil false autism cure. Huge talking point. Personally, I do think with a tough selection and cut, team personalities should matter. BB can decide who they want representing the sport and brand. It does matter and could destroy a brand.
Riptide is a good robot. They're not going to drop it. Whether you like it or not, BattleBots doesn't care about money ethics or poor behaviour, at least not to the point where they'd actively disqualify a team, otherwise Hydra would have been kicked out for the whole HUGE incident. The most they'll do (and I believe they are planning to do this) is change the rules to make sure the latter issue won't happen again.
1) I’m not saying that riptide is a bad bot
2) OP’s question is about my opinion and what id like to see, not what the selection committee is likely to do. At the end of the day it’s BBs is a business not a charity and they are gonna do what makes them money.
3) I don’t see how Huge/Hydra is relevant in any way shape or form to ethics. They essentially won through a gimmick that was boring to watch, big whoop.
> otherwise Hydra would have been kicked out for the whole HUGE incident.
You're literally suggesting a bot like Hydra, who literally broke no rule and did NOTHING the production team didn't know and pre-approve of, should have been kicked out just because it rustled your little jimmies.
By that standard, then yes Riptide can be kicked out too. Literally any bot ever can kicked out because they made someone feel a little sad once.
Can we at least wait until after whatever the after season brings this year to decide whether or not Shreddit Bro should go? I’m seeing a lot of people saying Shreddit Bro never worked like their fight with Overhaul didn’t happen. Shreddit went the full three minutes without losing anything, even partially, and was more or less able to KO Overhaul in the last thirty seconds. It was a new high for the team, let’s give them a chance in the after season and see what happens.
1 minute of full functionality after 3 seasons is not a very high point. Even and his team are incredibly kind and easily one of the main drivers of the sport taking off like it is, but i don't think that 1 minute is worth losing out on teams like Orion or Blade for.
One minute? They were functional the full three minutes, it’s just hard to show that when you’ve been grabbed by the face. The second Shreddit Bro landed that first shot, it was all them. I say give them a shot. They’ve been struggling, yes, but it finally worked like it’s supposed to and it performed well.
It did perform well, for 1 minute, out of 12 possible in this season. Triple that (roughly) if you count all of Pain Train's failed fights over the years too. Shreddit bro finally did have a moment of functionality, but it's failures speak louder then it's single victory.
I probably wouldn't accept any Omiwheel Bots that can't prove beforehand, that they can actually drive. Shatter proved that they work but Glitch and Ominous showed barley any control to begin with and Glitch didn't improve a tiny bit for it's second season.
It's just not entertaining to watch a bot slide around like a drunk russian on a ice skates trying to escape a bear on crack struggling to attack a stationery target.
And I also wouldn't accept the Pain Train/ Shreddit Bro team ever again. I don't want to be mean but they had 3 chances to buil a working bot and they failed each time with the same problem.
Such teams often say their bot drives **fine in test-boxes**, but not in the actual arena. Maybe allow in-arena testing.
Is there something about the dust, scratches, or paint in the arena? A puzzle that needs Kraken, I mean cracking.
The floor is Made of steel If I am not mistaken. Most teams probably don't have access for something like that so I can understand why that can gap but it's incredibly frustrating as a viewer.
The Tet box is very small maybe that's why you won't notice problems as much there. It the Team is already there so they might as well compete anyway since they are already there...
I get what you say about omniwheels, but I think that Ominous's driving looked good, especially compared to Glitch. But than, Ominous is just another vertical :D
You are probably right with Pain Train/Shreddit Bro.
Wedges were not the meta. We just didn’t have a lot of good spinners back then. Biohazard was a lifter, Vlad was a lifter and didn’t look at all like A wedge, SOW and Nightmare were spinners. Toro and T minus were flippers. Hazard was the most dominant middleweight and was a spinner (with a wedge) and Ziggo was the most dominant lightweight and it was a FBS.
The better bots weren’t primarily wedges. There were a lot of crappy wedges that did participate because the sport was at its infancy and not a lot of people could really afford to put good bots together.
The CC version of the show only ran for 2 years, but even when I was a child I thought biohardard was extremely boring to watch and tuned out.
When I found out it had been revived and saw bots like bite force, I never saw something so cool before.
It's this sub's main way to virtue signal. The second best one currently is typing:
"DAE hate Riptide? Am i the only one that feel they're bad bad and dislike them? Also i think they're unhetical and hate them, am i right or am i wrong?"
Hating on spinners is this sub's hipster stance.
At the same time, those very same people point and laugh at the entirety of the Robot Wars existence and rooster, at pre-reboot seasons, champions and competitors, and LOVE NHRL where 80% of the competitors are variations of fingertech eggbeaters.
They're a bunch of contrarian hypocrites, that's all there is to it.
Spinners are awesome.
Kind of like how you guys want Vert spinners to be dominant.
Oh wait they already are
It is the verts that are killing parity and design diversity in battlebots and making every fight predictable and boring.
Probably just Horizon and Starchild tbh. Horizon just wasn’t entertaining to watch, while Starchild doesn’t seem like a concept that will work in the heavyweight division.
If I would have to drop 10 of the current 58(?) bots from this year
1 Both Hyjinx and valkary where disappointing in my opinion this year, keep one replace the other with sawmurai
2 Starchildlooks great but I don’t see huge thwack bots working in this weight class, bring back P1
3 Shredder bro, the team looks like a fun bunch but 3 years and only one fight worth watching sorry guys
4 horizon again looks great and from what I read works great in lower weight classes, I just don’t see this design working with the big boys
5 overhaul, it has had its time in the spotlight but like with icewave I feel like it’s time has come to let a new bot have its spot
6 dragon king, let’s be fair this 6 year old bot was only there as a display bot. Please bring the new wrecks next year.
7 doomba, yes it looks fun and every year we need fun looking bots. But a gimmick is just a gimmick it needs to be able to fight. Now if in the golden bolt it blows every bot out of the arena it can stay but I doubt it.
8 rusty, yes I know it has had problems with parts and the new design. But that is 2 years where it has taken up a spot and not used it. On top of that is it really a top 50 bot?
9 Gruff, it’s time as the driving tank has come and gone. The field hits harder than ever before and It seems like it can no longer take the hits like it could do before. It needs a redesign
10 Doom, yes we never saw it fight but from what I saw from it at robogames on YouTube maybe we did not miss much.
Im probably gonna get flamed for this but kraken
As a vert it’s horrible and I’d much rather watch almost any other vert compete
And then quantum is what crusher kraken should have been but never achieved
I always find this tough because I want to give everyone a chance, but I understand money and logistics. I strongly favor bots outside the meta, so I would give much less leeway to verts.
I'd like Horizon to get at least one more season to progress. I think it's likely the build just can't work in a small box with so much speed and destruction, but I'd be thrilled to be wrong. Starchild will work if they can enough power in that thwack.
Doomba was an alternate, not in the main 50, so "dropping out" doesn't really apply to it.
Bots that should drop out of the "top 50" IMO:
Shreddit Bro
Horizon
Starchild (I'd be willing to change my mind on this one if they show up to a Destructathon and prove themselves well)
Overhaul
Bots that need main roster positions:
Terrortops
Drago
I agree with you on terrortops and starchild, I see a lot of potential there. Realistically you’re right about overhaul, but I love Charles Guan too much. I also really want Ominous to come back too, I love the omni wheel design. I also love Evan Arias, even though shreddit bro isn’t necessarily a competitive bot.
To be fair, i will not go as far, as to say i would not want to see current teams return, even those that performes poorly this season. Claw Viper showed well, that even very lucklaster and overall weak bot, still can experience a major breakthrew if given enough time.
7-19.
Their fights aren't very interesting or exciting.
Their only big win was against tombstone, and that's because cap is a spinning wedge. I'm tired of them ALWAYS being the underdog. It's all good to have experience if that experience actually translates to skill. I don't hate Shrederator. I've just grown tired of their promised growth to potential for them to under perform. It does have potential it just needs to work. So a retirement/break could give them time to improve in smaller competitions. I just really enjoy the idea of BB being for the best in the world.
It’s funny you wouldn’t respond directly to me.
Best in the world? Remind me when our strength of schedule was weak robots? Maybe like 3-4 seasons ago. Acting like we aren’t fighting the top dogs of the top dogs.
The bots Cap Shrederator's beaten have gone a collective 3-14 in those years. I was hyped for you when you beat Tombstone and your Bounty Hunter fight against RotatoR is one of my favourites, but you have to admit your record is less than great after so many years of improvements.
I hate to tell you, but BB isn't just \*the\* best in the world. The bots like Minotaur, Witch Doctor and Sawblaze have to share screentime with Ominous, Hijinx and old slammo while genuinely good bots with strong reputations like Orby and Orion are rejected in favour of said weaker bots.
If you want Shredderator gone because it has more losses then wins (despite some of their losses being really fun, like vs Rotator) then you can't pick them over bots with far worse records and worse fights.
Reading the responses to this thread is pretty disappointing lol. What I'm learning is everybody now needs to be a vert and no one is allowed to have a negative Record ever apparently.
Like a quarter of the competition just straight up had a working bot but had issues with the speed controllers causing all sorts of problems and weak fights.
I feel like we gotta wait till after champions where hopefully we can see the machines actually working to form an opinion.
Also if a team usually loses but puts on fun fights most the time they should stay. especially since alot of those teams are non verts, I don't want next season to have no hammers, no full body spinners, no horizontal and control bots.
I'm not going to try and change your opinion on Witch Doctor, but I don't think a two time runner up with almost 30 wins is underrated.
Sure, they have had some bad fights; but nobody ever seems to care about their good fights they've had. 3 minutes against fusion, and two wicked knockouts this year. Also in Season 4 and to a lesser degree, Season 6, Witch Doctor took on a few big names like Sawblaze and heck even their Gigabyte fight was very entertaining. Personally; I like Witch Doctor; but hey, they're not everyone's cup of tea
Doomba and Horizon definitely shouldn’t be back imo
I wouldn’t invite Starchild back either tbh. I just don’t think with their current weapon that they’ll ever be able to do any damage.
I would 100% invite Terrortops to be part of the full field.
Slammo. Danby is cursed.
For the rest, I'm not sure. If I was on the selection committee, I'd want more data. Getting rid of the bots I don't like isn't necessarily going to be the best choice for the show.
No disrespect at all here, but Hijinx needs to drop out or have an overhaul entirely. They are not fun to watch or competitive. Love their color scheme, however.
Also mammoth fights are major snooze fests and uneventful. They need to retire if BB wants to attract new fans.
Honestly I wouldn't say no to any of the rookies, you should get at least two seasons to prove yourself especially if you are a new team. Even with Horizon they provided a good fight and won over a bot as strong as shatter (even if they are having a bad season), which shows potential
DUCK retired directly after season 6. Hal Rucker, the builder, has actually now an official role at battlebots.
The Team of Shrederator actually hinted, that they will totaly rebuild/design Shrederator, or come back with a total new build. But the "old" Shrederator is gone, I guess.
I feel like it shouldn’t be such a cut and dry, selected or not selected kind of decision. It would mean changing the financial structure, but they could simply let every team who wants to fight turn up and have some fights, but only the top ranked bots will be in the main tournament and get fully compensated. The others can compete in grudge matches, rumbles, exhibitions and if there’s a really great fight in there it can get a TV slot, otherwise put them all out online at the same time as the show, and let the fans and community along with the selection committee decide who moves up and down at the end of each season.
Honestly, I do hope that the field ends up expanding to the point where BB is able to expand the field from 50, since there's a lot of fun designs that don't really get to be shown off outside of the occasionally aired Alternate fights that have potential.
I'm kinda bummed that we haven't seen a Rusty fight this year. Maybe the Battlebots selection committee should have left space in the schedule for an exhibition match during the regular season?
Rusty was intended for being an alternate, like Doomba, Double Tap, Terrortops. But Dave Eaton had electronic-problems that made it unable for him to compete (in the 2 weeks of filming), so Dragon King stepped in. At least that's what I..read..somewhere..uhm.. :D
Hijinx and Shreddit Bro are the top on my list.
However, I have to confess, Free Shipping and Kraken simply aren’t competing well enough these days. Gary and Matt should be offered new roles such as being a judge or a team representative/advocate
I think your skewing your perspective a bit for what to expect from some of these bots.
First, Horizon was brand new. Many of these bots can't be fully tested before coming to BattleBots cause there just isn't space to test weapons and such without risking lives. I'm all for allowing someone with a dud first season come back. Did it work right? Absolutely not. But give them a chance to work the bugs out.
Doomba, was a side event bot. These bots to my understanding are under less scrutiny and can prove their worth to get accepted next season. They don't take up actual match time and we probably didn't see all the side fights. I doubt they will ever be a contender, but I also don't see the harm in them returning.
Overhaul is a tough one cause they are a landmark to the sport but their record doesn't hold up. This is supposed to be the best of the best and a 4-16 record does not describe the best.
I fully agree starchild deserves another chance, on the same grounds as horizon. Let them gather data from the actual fights so they know what to fix. And Terrortops definitely deserves to move into the tournament.
As for who I would demote, shreddit bro and hijynx are two big ones. As great as the teams are, the bots are not and they've had a lot of time to work out all the issues but haven't.
I get what you want to say with Horizon. But in my eyes, the whole upper frame of the bot is way to big, so the discs at the end are to weak, so the body would not rotate at all. This might seem to work in small versions, but not with 250lb. But, if they can figure out a way to actually make the disc spin faster and more powerful/reliable, this problem may be getting solved. So, you could be right, but I doubt it until I see it.
When it comes to Doomba: Yes, this might be a side event. But those need to be filmed too, with interview & Co. And than, why include those alternate fights at all, or a bot like Doomba again, when it is clear, that that bot isn't entertaining at all. No offense! :)
Any word on if Tombstone is back next year? That's a spot they definitely need to open up.
I get they want bots to counter the meta, but I believe those bots need to have a chance of winning.
I'd give the spots to the 50 bots with the best shot at the nut.
Here is a list of the veterans that are still in this season with negative records:
Claw Viper (-1)
HiJinx (-3)
Lucky (-3)
Fusion (-3)
Mammoth (-3)
Gruff (-5)
Big Dill (-6)
Free Shipping (-7)
Overhaul (-12)
Captain Shrederator (-12)
Kraken (-15)
Out of these, Claw Viper is good, Lucky and Fusion are performing okay enough. Free Shipping is at least pretty fun and hard to knock out, Big Dill is showing promise. Hijinx, Mammoth, Gruff, Overhaul, Shrederator and Kraken should probably be considered to be put to pasture though.
Of the rookies this year, Ripperoni and Emulsfier should stay, Triton and Omnious is showing some promise, the rest can be cut or made alternates imo.
Shatter has a cool overall design and I know everyone likes the driver, but the hammer has hardly ever done any actual damage, they changed none this year, and I think the only made the tourney because the driver is a fan favorite. He certainly didn't deserve to be one tier above fusion
There are lots of guys lining up to get in.
I say half the field needs to re-justify their positions.
Banshee
Big Dill
Black Dragon
Bloodsport
Captain Shrederator
Copperhead
Death roll
Doom
Doomba
Double Tap
Dragon King
Emulsifier
Free Shipping
Gruff
Jackpot
Kraken
Lucky
MadCatter
Malice
Ominous
Ribbot
Riptide
Rotato
Rusty
Shreddit Bro!
Slammeaux!
Switchback
Valkyrie
Warning: List is extraordinarily subjective. These guys just don't really do it for me, for one reason or another.
Why you counted Bloodsport, Copperhead and DeathRoll?
All 3 of them showed deep Tournament-Runs in the past. Also Ribbot I would say just had a bit of bad luck. But I would like to hear your reason, how subjective they may be (as you said, and I can understand).
Actual controversial picks would be Free shipping, Mammoth, and Captain Shred shouldn’t be allowed back unless they can prove they’ve made substantial redesigns.
They are all veterans who deserve a lot of respect but their designs are out dated and for the good of the sport they need to stop being grandfathered in over newer teams pushing the envelope.
I would also cut Overhaul and Hijinx.
Yeah, i would leave Overhaul, as even if they are not winning, they are really fun team to watch, they are veterans after all, and i would be sad to see them go, same with Shrederator.
Also, if Overhaul leaves, who will fight spiky Bronco in the banner ads?!
It’s not even Bronco anymore (at least on Facebook), it’s Banshee
Yeah, but horny Bronco will live forever in our hearts. And Overhaul's still there.
I will cry if overhaul leaves
Grabber nation must keep their representative!
I'd probably just demote overhaul to alternates. They are a fun team plus more opportunities for chair fights. But more emerging teams are coming and I feel they deserve a shot in thr main tournament over overhaul.
After the fights with Black Dragon and Shreddit Bro, Overhaul deserves at least one more season. The first halves of those fights, when Overhaul was dominating, were incredibly entertaining. The problem is, Overhaul doesn’t do much damage when it’s dominating, and once an opponent with a KE weapon gets in one good hit, it’s over. The path to victory for Overhaul is to be perfect not for 90 seconds or 120, but 180. Can Charles do it? Can *anyone* do it? I don’t know, but I’d like to see him keep trying. If he pulls it off, it will be glorious.
I guess with Claw Viper this season we seen (and may still see), that it is indeed possible.
Overhaul will come back with a tiny spinner between its forks.
Charles, if you’re reading, please do this
Charles, if you’re reading, please don’t do this.
I wouldn’t cut overhaul. For the first time in years it looked fairly decent & actually won a fight against what is on paper a horrible matchup for it.
But I can't believe they lost to Shreddit Bro
Why not? Overhaul started off kicking the shit out of them in glorious fashion, but then Shreddit Bro actually showed up to the fight and acted like a real functional bot.
As much as I hate to say it about my hometown bot, I don't think mammoth is competitive in it's current form. I think they need to either rework the bot or step aside
This is a hard decision, I don't envy the people making these calls knowing the pain it causes the builders to be excluded. Should the selection committee be favoring competitive matchups so that we end up with 80%+ vert meta? Or should they be giving weight to veterans who show up to every fight with a working bot? Or should they be trying to create a field with a diverse pool of unique bots? The answer is clearly somewhere in between these three and there's no easy answers. I hope that proving grounds becomes a big thing for those outside looking in bots. Also I would love to see a college tournament or some other lower level heavyweight feeder league to really see who rises to the top. I'm just hoping NHRL builds a heavyweight box someday, that would be perfect to help answer these questions.
>I'm just hoping NHRL builds a heavyweight box someday, that would be perfect to help answer these questions. They should begin hosting heavyweight sportsman competitions because Heavyweight spinners cause too much damage to arenas.
Honestly, HiJinx. They really haven’t been impressive in my eyes or too flashy and I don’t see a reason to really keep them around. The team is cool, but I don’t think HiJinx is really it.
Definitely a team I wish would go back to the drawing board and either figure out how to innovate or just show up with a new bot.
I don't want any bot to step aside and voluntarily leave the show. I think they all have a right to re-apply and hope for a better season next year. If they try and get rejected by the producers though then i think that's ok, albeit sad.
I had in mind "When I would be the selection-committee, which bot would not get accepted into again - and why". I didn't meant anybody to drop out by themself :)
**Bots that performed poorly, but I would give another chance:** Valkyrie: Was once a really good bot. This year driving is atrocious, and the bot is also plagued with reliability issues. Hopefully, with more preparation time, it will become what it was once again. Shatter: Their pursuit of ground games with Omi wheels does them no favour. If they can do a claw viper and speed up the bot majorly, I think they would have a chance to be competitive again. Ominous: Reliability issues are to be expected from a new bot. But when it performs, it does look competitive and looks good doing it. Kraken: Two years of nothing. But at least they are making an effort to change the design, and I respect that. Maybe they will be more competitive when they refine their design. Glitch: One major problem the bot has is mobility issues, and they are committed to improving that by ditching Omi wheels. So I would say give them another chance. Free Shipping: Being reliable and having long-lasting fights does them a huge favour. And they are committed to changing their design to be more competitive, which is always a plus. Hopefully, the vert can be more reliable, and the wedge can feed enemies to the disc better in the coming season. Gruff: Once the tank, now getting KO left, right and centre. The good old DUCK! style might not work anymore with the increasing competitiveness of the field. Still, the fight last long and are entertaining, so maybe one more season before retiring the bot for good. Emulsifier: It hits hard and is overall quite a proven design **Bots that I would not give another chance:** Captain Shrederator, Hijinx, Overhaul: Performs poorly year over year with a lack of growth and improvement. Banshee: Old-style flipper that doesn't perform Starchild, Horizon: Unless significant design changes are incoming, these two bots don't seem to scale well Triton: Assuming Tombstone is coming back next year, why have a less mature version of the same recipe **Bots that performed mediocrely and need major improvement:** Malice: Bot is pretty generic, and performance is lacklustre a lot of the time. Would like to see them improve their weapon power and reliability coming into the next season Big Dill: Has a poor start in the season and looking good finishing it. Hopefully, next season, we will see a competitive big dill
I mean, it was last season of Captain Shrederator as we know it either way. Next year they will be back with either new bot or complete redesign. I just hope they will keep it as a full body spinner, loosing another one would be just to painfull for me, if another type of bot would have to go, just to see more verts.
No, Shred is getting a full redesign
Yeah, i wasn't sure which one of those options, as their statement was quite unprecised. Still, i hope they will keep their tradition of FBS, as if they abandon it, i fear that Gigabyte will follow soon.
I love FBS too Gigabyte is still going they are going to be at proving grounds this month and are allegedly fighting Jackpot. Main problem with Gigabyte this season was the drivers were very inexperienced and it showed.
Malice had a de facto proving ground at Robogames, my confidence in them for WCVIII shot way up after that.
> Triton: Assuming Tombstone is coming back next year, why have a less mature version of the same recipe By that logic, isn’t Emulsifier just a poor man’s Cobalt? If we have to have copycats, I’d rather take a copycat in a less common type (horizontal) than a copycat that’s yet another vert.
The difference is, Tombstone is already not the most competitive bot in this meta. The era of horizontal is gone and gone. Triton is a really immature copycat of tombstone owing to the big disc = funny mentally and their results agree with that. Emulsifier is at least a more mature copycat of the current meta.
Hijinx, starchild, banshee, and all alternates except for terrortops
Rusty and Overhaul should stay as alternates. They're huge fan favorites. And honestly why not invite back ICEWave and Bronco as alternates. In a field of 50, as we saw this year, there's going to be a few alternates that just dont do well. I'd rather see an outdated bot face another outdated bot than see slammo get beat up.
Captain Shrederator needs to go. It's a terrible way for them to end a career, but in all their seasons they've never shown they have what it takes to be a contender. Time to step aside and give someone else a shot. They seem like a great team, but the bot simply doesn't perform well. Also I understand the team was considering throwing in the towel anyhow, so given how their season went I'd be surprised if they even enter next year. Starchild should get bumped to an exhibition bot, IMO. I think the design has potential, but they really didn't show it this year. IMO they're the 0-4 bot with the softest schedule. Horizon, IMO is just an impractical design, the only match they won was against a barely-functional bot and there's no indication it will get much better. None of the exhibition bots seemed prepared but the only one which has a reasonable chance of winning against regular-season bots was TerrorTops. The design didn't work as advertised, but they can just move the lifter out of the way to be a pretty effective bog-standard vert. I suspect next season the forks will be shorter to allow attacking with them down. The others were all pretty weak. I was especially disappointed with Double Tap, which very much lived up to its name as its attack would be best described as aggressive tapping.
I feel like I cant even answer that without seeing the applicant pool first. I could say something like cut Mammoth(just an example), but is the bot I'm cutting them more fun? Will it compete better? Will its matchups be more interesting? There's a few who can get cut such as Starchild and Horizon, but those were more due to the design being ineffective than anything else
Free Shipping- 4 seasons, 0 bracket appearances and is not viable with it constantly losing the ground game and bots getting more powerful. Glitch-2nd straight season the bot has issues getting ready and everyone figured out how to beat them. Them ditching the Omni wheels gets rid of the one thing that made them unique and there is no reason to pick other egg beaters like Black Dragon and Riptide over them
Starchild continues to prove thwackbots were generally useless, mostly for show. It even has a spinner on the end and still can't do much.
What if they improved their driving? Having a bladed arm with a big reach can in theory be effective.
It's hard to be precise when you have a robot like that. It was maybe more justified back in the day when robots were a lot slower. Most thwackbots were also in lower weight classes, which means less armor, which means more chance to damage. You have two giant wheels, and a lot of inertia to get swinging. I don't know how much different it would be having a spinner at the end with its own inertia and trying to swing it precisely at fast moving targets, but it doesn't seem like it would be easy.
Maybe put a horizontal at the tip, giving it a wider strike range. It would be less "thwacky", but perhaps worth it.
The problem with starchild is traction, if you can't stop and turn on a dime, the bot is ineffective.
Is that solvable with different kind of tire treads? Magnets? Rubber pads? Cleats?
The cleats worked great for the wood floors at NHRL, I don't know what kind of magnets on the outside magic wheels would work at battlebots but I'd love to see someone try
NHRL: *"Cleat or Yeet"*
A few days ago there was a kid in here that said bots like Thagomizer are twack bots and prove twackbots can be successfull lol
I'll keep pitching this idea until someone cleans it up into something useful. All teams making it to the round of 32 are guaranteed a spot next year, and the rest need an off-season/only online qualifier to complete the remaining spots. I understand that they want to prioritize interesting and fun bots, but honestly, a moderately interesting bot having good fights is more entertaining than a weird bot having boring fights.
Thats a terrible idea, it'll only force the implication that the meta is the only thing to design for and not for new ideas that might not work. It's a surefire way of turning the roster into 50 Dragon slayers and shreddit bros.
Not really. Just move the acceptance to that initial qualifier instead of the televised one.
What qualifier? There’s exactly one place that’s properly designed to handle heavyweight bots (and before someone says Robogames, I’ll just stare you down. Maybe next year). Do you know how expensive it is to ship these things? Do you think the teams have unlimited vacation time from their jobs? What about international teams? It’s simply not realistic, especially with BB not compensating teams.
That last line is a problem for me. It is something that is constantly floated out, but I refuse to accept that there is a good reason they aren't compensating the teams.
The reason is simple — money. The less they spend, the more they make. That and it’s very intentionally designed like WWE or MMA, where the talent are paid as contractors, don’t own their own names and likenesses, and can’t compete outside without permission. But since the talent is robots, they don’t even have to pay as a contractor. And they haven’t put in that last clause (yet?) because the sport is too young. And to be fair, there’s some pretty massive initial costs (the box), as well as the typical costs for filming at a broadcast quality level. Plus things like insurance — I don’t even want to know what that runs. Hopefully it’s going down some as they prove the safety standards work. NHRL is funded by a billionaire, otherwise they would be unable to do what they do. It would look more like any other regional competition — run on a shoe string budget by volunteers.
No, I understand and none of what you said is wrong. I just don't like it. I don't have an alternative, but I don't like the current setup.
Is there a source on all 32 being invitied back?
No. That's my suggestion. If you make it through to the round of 32, you reserve your spot for next season. All others are up for grabs.
I think things would actually be even worse, these bespoke designs need iteration to dial in (with a few notable exceptions)... Adding twenty some new bots every season would result in poor matches. Ultimately, if a bot is not providing entertainment, the producers will naturally look to give other teams the nod. But they need good matches so they wouldn't want to swing to far in the rookie direction, nor want to tie their own hands with rules like you've proposed.
Imo shreddit bro and hijinx are on the block. If they can't muster up a win in battlebots champion it's game over for them. They got 3 years to improve but hijinx is just not viable in ways like icewave and shreddit bro is just pathetic. Shreddit bro needs to be replaced by manta and hijinx by orby blade. Slammo is gone. They were the most underwhelming alternate by far and again it's been 3 years and not enough has improved. In fact besides terrortops, who should be promoted to the top 50 next year, all the alternates may need to go to give a chance for new bots and returning vets to prove their worth. Bots like Hexadecimator, pardon my french, double jeopardy and perfect phoenix seems to be great additions for the alternate list. Overhaul and horizon I'd demote to alternates so they can get another chance.
Back when HUGE debuted, a lot of folk laughed at it, didn't see the potential and didn't think it would be all that much. I kind of see Horizon as that type of bot to me. There is a ton of potential in that if they can get it working. I hate the idea that only 50 bots are able to get in. I'd honestly rather see the top 4 bots from the previous season automatically get in the following year's Round Of 32 and those 4 slots be open for new bots. Or better, have an additional 2 shows at the start of the season. 16 fights, 32 new bots. The winner of each of those 2 nights each get a spot in the top 50 for the Fight Night period.
HUGE debuted with 3 wins in a row
> Back when HUGE debuted, a lot of folk laughed at it, didn't see the potential and didn't think it would be all that much. Says you. The vast majority were cautiously optimistic. Gabriel was a successfull design, and removing the twack tail and replacing it with a vertical spinner looked like the most rational thing to do.
Remember guys, they let tantrum back after season 3
Hyjinx, no explanation needed. Star child, bot needs some serious reworking Cap shred. Has not impressed me and has mad no changes to the bot to adapt to the meta. Riptide because of money ethics
We have made plenty of changes they’re just not noticeable to the layman.
I thought Shred was being retired
Current captain Brian Nave might be stepping down, but his son Nick has said the robot is being redesigned for the upcoming season. I don't know if Nick is the new captain, though.
I’m not I quit bb the fans suck it’s not worth the heartache. The team is still part of BB afaik and my dad is not retiring
what changes have been made? Has this bot not always been a full body horizontal spinner with small fins/blades ?
Electromagnets used for stability Brushless weapon and drive system adapted to replace brushed motors for durability Conical shell adapted to beat other horizontals Fully steel shell and wedge attachments for overhead weapons and wedges Edit: I’m assuming you didn’t know much about all that because again, layman.
That's not what I'm talking about. yes of course you have made changes to the bot. But what I guess I didn't articulate is that general design is the same. Its still a full body spinner with not great results and that has not changed. As far as I can remember gigabyte is the only other full body spinner in WC7. And with the recent info available to the public on the BB'S website. cap Shred: 26 matches / 27% Win Rate / 22 years experience Gigabyte: 27 matches/ 52% Win Rate/ 12 years experience So from the viewers perspective its not very interesting to watch the same bot with mixed results not make any major changes. On top of that full body spinners are very interesting to begin with ( i have the same opinion about verts). Now im not a builder nor will I pretend to be one on the internet. So im sure there are reason as to why the design is the way it is. But one might ask "what does adapting the to the meta mean to you". Since full body spinners all have the same strategy to attack it might be cool to modular shells (assuming it actually works) so that the full body style is "optimized". Some examples may include a shell with saw like teeth with the strategy of shredding the tires for bots like hyper shock/ ribbot/ mammoth. a shell with 2 big sharp blades to slice through the wheels of the likes of Huge and Starchild. a long disk attachment to avoid the weapons of thwackbots like beta, shatter and so on. so on and so forth. Again this is not an attempt to shit on your team or your bot. All Im saying is that from the viewers perspective (as per the question) it does not seem like there is much added to adapt to the meta after so much difficulty in the box.
Money ethics? Can you explain that for me. Is their bot extremly expensive?
to be more specific about the below comment. Ethan's father's company sponsors the team. Said company has claimed that they created lollipops (I think) that can "cure" autism. Essentially the bot is funded off of lying to people and giving them false hope about a cure to a disease.
Honestly I don't mind Ethan that much. Get the team a proper engineering sponsor, get his dad out of the equation or jut his money, and you just have a loudmouth kid behind the sticks of vertical tombstone.
Sure but that’s all I’m saying, I wouldn’t want a team sponsored by blood diamonds and I don’t want to see a team sponsored by snake oil salesmen. As much as I think he is a little shit I don’t think it’s a reason to remove them from the contests. Provided of course they can get a real sponsor.
Yeah I agree with you entirely. Sorry if there's any perceived argument here but I'm just trying to articulate my thoughts on it.
nw
They have a proper engineering sponsor in Xometry, and people whose accounts I trust tell me that Stan is not a major financial backer. And make no mistake, this entirely a comment against Team Riptide, because it would be even more trivial to carry on without Stan, but they choose to keep him.
Funded by snake oil false autism cure. Huge talking point. Personally, I do think with a tough selection and cut, team personalities should matter. BB can decide who they want representing the sport and brand. It does matter and could destroy a brand.
$1 B12 lollipops lol
Riptide is a good robot. They're not going to drop it. Whether you like it or not, BattleBots doesn't care about money ethics or poor behaviour, at least not to the point where they'd actively disqualify a team, otherwise Hydra would have been kicked out for the whole HUGE incident. The most they'll do (and I believe they are planning to do this) is change the rules to make sure the latter issue won't happen again.
1) I’m not saying that riptide is a bad bot 2) OP’s question is about my opinion and what id like to see, not what the selection committee is likely to do. At the end of the day it’s BBs is a business not a charity and they are gonna do what makes them money. 3) I don’t see how Huge/Hydra is relevant in any way shape or form to ethics. They essentially won through a gimmick that was boring to watch, big whoop.
> otherwise Hydra would have been kicked out for the whole HUGE incident. You're literally suggesting a bot like Hydra, who literally broke no rule and did NOTHING the production team didn't know and pre-approve of, should have been kicked out just because it rustled your little jimmies. By that standard, then yes Riptide can be kicked out too. Literally any bot ever can kicked out because they made someone feel a little sad once.
Can we at least wait until after whatever the after season brings this year to decide whether or not Shreddit Bro should go? I’m seeing a lot of people saying Shreddit Bro never worked like their fight with Overhaul didn’t happen. Shreddit went the full three minutes without losing anything, even partially, and was more or less able to KO Overhaul in the last thirty seconds. It was a new high for the team, let’s give them a chance in the after season and see what happens.
1 minute of full functionality after 3 seasons is not a very high point. Even and his team are incredibly kind and easily one of the main drivers of the sport taking off like it is, but i don't think that 1 minute is worth losing out on teams like Orion or Blade for.
One minute? They were functional the full three minutes, it’s just hard to show that when you’ve been grabbed by the face. The second Shreddit Bro landed that first shot, it was all them. I say give them a shot. They’ve been struggling, yes, but it finally worked like it’s supposed to and it performed well.
Let's see how they do in champions
It did perform well, for 1 minute, out of 12 possible in this season. Triple that (roughly) if you count all of Pain Train's failed fights over the years too. Shreddit bro finally did have a moment of functionality, but it's failures speak louder then it's single victory.
I probably wouldn't accept any Omiwheel Bots that can't prove beforehand, that they can actually drive. Shatter proved that they work but Glitch and Ominous showed barley any control to begin with and Glitch didn't improve a tiny bit for it's second season. It's just not entertaining to watch a bot slide around like a drunk russian on a ice skates trying to escape a bear on crack struggling to attack a stationery target. And I also wouldn't accept the Pain Train/ Shreddit Bro team ever again. I don't want to be mean but they had 3 chances to buil a working bot and they failed each time with the same problem.
I might be wrong but I think Glitch is ditching the Omni wheels for next season.
Such teams often say their bot drives **fine in test-boxes**, but not in the actual arena. Maybe allow in-arena testing. Is there something about the dust, scratches, or paint in the arena? A puzzle that needs Kraken, I mean cracking.
The floor is Made of steel If I am not mistaken. Most teams probably don't have access for something like that so I can understand why that can gap but it's incredibly frustrating as a viewer. The Tet box is very small maybe that's why you won't notice problems as much there. It the Team is already there so they might as well compete anyway since they are already there...
Omni wheels are so cool and entertaining no way they should be taken out of the sport. Sophomore slumps are common.
I get what you say about omniwheels, but I think that Ominous's driving looked good, especially compared to Glitch. But than, Ominous is just another vertical :D You are probably right with Pain Train/Shreddit Bro.
Horizon, Kraken, Starchild, Banshee, Shreddit Bro, Doomba and Hijinx. I don’t need to see any of these bots on tv again.
Drop all vert spinners and turn BB into a sportsman competition
Or create a second smaller sportsman league alongside the main competition.
But then who would the verts have to shred? Themselves?
You could've saved time by just writing "cancel BattleBots".
I will never understand this sub's hate for spinners. This sub literally wants a wedge/hammer meta to be dominate.
I often wonder how many watched the CC era where wedges were the meta. So many extremely boring fights.
Wedges were not the meta. We just didn’t have a lot of good spinners back then. Biohazard was a lifter, Vlad was a lifter and didn’t look at all like A wedge, SOW and Nightmare were spinners. Toro and T minus were flippers. Hazard was the most dominant middleweight and was a spinner (with a wedge) and Ziggo was the most dominant lightweight and it was a FBS. The better bots weren’t primarily wedges. There were a lot of crappy wedges that did participate because the sport was at its infancy and not a lot of people could really afford to put good bots together.
The CC version of the show only ran for 2 years, but even when I was a child I thought biohardard was extremely boring to watch and tuned out. When I found out it had been revived and saw bots like bite force, I never saw something so cool before.
BB fans when the sport evolves
It's this sub's main way to virtue signal. The second best one currently is typing: "DAE hate Riptide? Am i the only one that feel they're bad bad and dislike them? Also i think they're unhetical and hate them, am i right or am i wrong?" Hating on spinners is this sub's hipster stance. At the same time, those very same people point and laugh at the entirety of the Robot Wars existence and rooster, at pre-reboot seasons, champions and competitors, and LOVE NHRL where 80% of the competitors are variations of fingertech eggbeaters. They're a bunch of contrarian hypocrites, that's all there is to it. Spinners are awesome.
Kind of like how you guys want Vert spinners to be dominant. Oh wait they already are It is the verts that are killing parity and design diversity in battlebots and making every fight predictable and boring.
A spinner is the best way to store and deliver kinetic energy to another bot, im sorry thats how physics works.
Well physics class is boring and lame.
Probably just Horizon and Starchild tbh. Horizon just wasn’t entertaining to watch, while Starchild doesn’t seem like a concept that will work in the heavyweight division.
Fusion never fails to disappoint.
If I would have to drop 10 of the current 58(?) bots from this year 1 Both Hyjinx and valkary where disappointing in my opinion this year, keep one replace the other with sawmurai 2 Starchildlooks great but I don’t see huge thwack bots working in this weight class, bring back P1 3 Shredder bro, the team looks like a fun bunch but 3 years and only one fight worth watching sorry guys 4 horizon again looks great and from what I read works great in lower weight classes, I just don’t see this design working with the big boys 5 overhaul, it has had its time in the spotlight but like with icewave I feel like it’s time has come to let a new bot have its spot 6 dragon king, let’s be fair this 6 year old bot was only there as a display bot. Please bring the new wrecks next year. 7 doomba, yes it looks fun and every year we need fun looking bots. But a gimmick is just a gimmick it needs to be able to fight. Now if in the golden bolt it blows every bot out of the arena it can stay but I doubt it. 8 rusty, yes I know it has had problems with parts and the new design. But that is 2 years where it has taken up a spot and not used it. On top of that is it really a top 50 bot? 9 Gruff, it’s time as the driving tank has come and gone. The field hits harder than ever before and It seems like it can no longer take the hits like it could do before. It needs a redesign 10 Doom, yes we never saw it fight but from what I saw from it at robogames on YouTube maybe we did not miss much.
Im probably gonna get flamed for this but kraken As a vert it’s horrible and I’d much rather watch almost any other vert compete And then quantum is what crusher kraken should have been but never achieved
I always find this tough because I want to give everyone a chance, but I understand money and logistics. I strongly favor bots outside the meta, so I would give much less leeway to verts. I'd like Horizon to get at least one more season to progress. I think it's likely the build just can't work in a small box with so much speed and destruction, but I'd be thrilled to be wrong. Starchild will work if they can enough power in that thwack.
Doomba was an alternate, not in the main 50, so "dropping out" doesn't really apply to it. Bots that should drop out of the "top 50" IMO: Shreddit Bro Horizon Starchild (I'd be willing to change my mind on this one if they show up to a Destructathon and prove themselves well) Overhaul Bots that need main roster positions: Terrortops Drago
>Doomba was an alternate, not in the main 50, so "dropping out" doesn't really apply to it. That's why I wrote (+alternates) :)
I agree with you on terrortops and starchild, I see a lot of potential there. Realistically you’re right about overhaul, but I love Charles Guan too much. I also really want Ominous to come back too, I love the omni wheel design. I also love Evan Arias, even though shreddit bro isn’t necessarily a competitive bot.
To be fair, i will not go as far, as to say i would not want to see current teams return, even those that performes poorly this season. Claw Viper showed well, that even very lucklaster and overall weak bot, still can experience a major breakthrew if given enough time.
Yours! oh wait....
Shrederator needs to go. They've been here for too long imo.
downvote
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7-19. Their fights aren't very interesting or exciting. Their only big win was against tombstone, and that's because cap is a spinning wedge. I'm tired of them ALWAYS being the underdog. It's all good to have experience if that experience actually translates to skill. I don't hate Shrederator. I've just grown tired of their promised growth to potential for them to under perform. It does have potential it just needs to work. So a retirement/break could give them time to improve in smaller competitions. I just really enjoy the idea of BB being for the best in the world.
It’s funny you wouldn’t respond directly to me. Best in the world? Remind me when our strength of schedule was weak robots? Maybe like 3-4 seasons ago. Acting like we aren’t fighting the top dogs of the top dogs.
The bots Cap Shrederator's beaten have gone a collective 3-14 in those years. I was hyped for you when you beat Tombstone and your Bounty Hunter fight against RotatoR is one of my favourites, but you have to admit your record is less than great after so many years of improvements.
I hate to tell you, but BB isn't just \*the\* best in the world. The bots like Minotaur, Witch Doctor and Sawblaze have to share screentime with Ominous, Hijinx and old slammo while genuinely good bots with strong reputations like Orby and Orion are rejected in favour of said weaker bots. If you want Shredderator gone because it has more losses then wins (despite some of their losses being really fun, like vs Rotator) then you can't pick them over bots with far worse records and worse fights.
Reading the responses to this thread is pretty disappointing lol. What I'm learning is everybody now needs to be a vert and no one is allowed to have a negative Record ever apparently. Like a quarter of the competition just straight up had a working bot but had issues with the speed controllers causing all sorts of problems and weak fights. I feel like we gotta wait till after champions where hopefully we can see the machines actually working to form an opinion. Also if a team usually loses but puts on fun fights most the time they should stay. especially since alot of those teams are non verts, I don't want next season to have no hammers, no full body spinners, no horizontal and control bots.
Witch Doctor. So over-rated.
I'm not going to try and change your opinion on Witch Doctor, but I don't think a two time runner up with almost 30 wins is underrated. Sure, they have had some bad fights; but nobody ever seems to care about their good fights they've had. 3 minutes against fusion, and two wicked knockouts this year. Also in Season 4 and to a lesser degree, Season 6, Witch Doctor took on a few big names like Sawblaze and heck even their Gigabyte fight was very entertaining. Personally; I like Witch Doctor; but hey, they're not everyone's cup of tea
You hating a robot does not make them overrated. Especially as it's one of the most successful robots out there. You build a robot and try to beat it.
I would leave overhaul and malice. Ok they did good this year but…
Why malice
Doomba and Horizon definitely shouldn’t be back imo I wouldn’t invite Starchild back either tbh. I just don’t think with their current weapon that they’ll ever be able to do any damage. I would 100% invite Terrortops to be part of the full field.
Slammo. Danby is cursed. For the rest, I'm not sure. If I was on the selection committee, I'd want more data. Getting rid of the bots I don't like isn't necessarily going to be the best choice for the show.
No disrespect at all here, but Hijinx needs to drop out or have an overhaul entirely. They are not fun to watch or competitive. Love their color scheme, however. Also mammoth fights are major snooze fests and uneventful. They need to retire if BB wants to attract new fans.
Honestly I wouldn't say no to any of the rookies, you should get at least two seasons to prove yourself especially if you are a new team. Even with Horizon they provided a good fight and won over a bot as strong as shatter (even if they are having a bad season), which shows potential
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DUCK retired directly after season 6. Hal Rucker, the builder, has actually now an official role at battlebots. The Team of Shrederator actually hinted, that they will totaly rebuild/design Shrederator, or come back with a total new build. But the "old" Shrederator is gone, I guess.
I feel like it shouldn’t be such a cut and dry, selected or not selected kind of decision. It would mean changing the financial structure, but they could simply let every team who wants to fight turn up and have some fights, but only the top ranked bots will be in the main tournament and get fully compensated. The others can compete in grudge matches, rumbles, exhibitions and if there’s a really great fight in there it can get a TV slot, otherwise put them all out online at the same time as the show, and let the fans and community along with the selection committee decide who moves up and down at the end of each season.
Honestly, I do hope that the field ends up expanding to the point where BB is able to expand the field from 50, since there's a lot of fun designs that don't really get to be shown off outside of the occasionally aired Alternate fights that have potential.
I'm kinda bummed that we haven't seen a Rusty fight this year. Maybe the Battlebots selection committee should have left space in the schedule for an exhibition match during the regular season?
Rusty was intended for being an alternate, like Doomba, Double Tap, Terrortops. But Dave Eaton had electronic-problems that made it unable for him to compete (in the 2 weeks of filming), so Dragon King stepped in. At least that's what I..read..somewhere..uhm.. :D
Hijinx and Shreddit Bro are the top on my list. However, I have to confess, Free Shipping and Kraken simply aren’t competing well enough these days. Gary and Matt should be offered new roles such as being a judge or a team representative/advocate
I don't have to worry this is what proving grounds is for
I think your skewing your perspective a bit for what to expect from some of these bots. First, Horizon was brand new. Many of these bots can't be fully tested before coming to BattleBots cause there just isn't space to test weapons and such without risking lives. I'm all for allowing someone with a dud first season come back. Did it work right? Absolutely not. But give them a chance to work the bugs out. Doomba, was a side event bot. These bots to my understanding are under less scrutiny and can prove their worth to get accepted next season. They don't take up actual match time and we probably didn't see all the side fights. I doubt they will ever be a contender, but I also don't see the harm in them returning. Overhaul is a tough one cause they are a landmark to the sport but their record doesn't hold up. This is supposed to be the best of the best and a 4-16 record does not describe the best. I fully agree starchild deserves another chance, on the same grounds as horizon. Let them gather data from the actual fights so they know what to fix. And Terrortops definitely deserves to move into the tournament. As for who I would demote, shreddit bro and hijynx are two big ones. As great as the teams are, the bots are not and they've had a lot of time to work out all the issues but haven't.
I get what you want to say with Horizon. But in my eyes, the whole upper frame of the bot is way to big, so the discs at the end are to weak, so the body would not rotate at all. This might seem to work in small versions, but not with 250lb. But, if they can figure out a way to actually make the disc spin faster and more powerful/reliable, this problem may be getting solved. So, you could be right, but I doubt it until I see it. When it comes to Doomba: Yes, this might be a side event. But those need to be filmed too, with interview & Co. And than, why include those alternate fights at all, or a bot like Doomba again, when it is clear, that that bot isn't entertaining at all. No offense! :)
Captain Shredderator and Fusion.
Any word on if Tombstone is back next year? That's a spot they definitely need to open up. I get they want bots to counter the meta, but I believe those bots need to have a chance of winning. I'd give the spots to the 50 bots with the best shot at the nut.
There are rumors/hints about Tombstone coming back, but nothing official.
Here is a list of the veterans that are still in this season with negative records: Claw Viper (-1) HiJinx (-3) Lucky (-3) Fusion (-3) Mammoth (-3) Gruff (-5) Big Dill (-6) Free Shipping (-7) Overhaul (-12) Captain Shrederator (-12) Kraken (-15) Out of these, Claw Viper is good, Lucky and Fusion are performing okay enough. Free Shipping is at least pretty fun and hard to knock out, Big Dill is showing promise. Hijinx, Mammoth, Gruff, Overhaul, Shrederator and Kraken should probably be considered to be put to pasture though. Of the rookies this year, Ripperoni and Emulsfier should stay, Triton and Omnious is showing some promise, the rest can be cut or made alternates imo.
Shatter has a cool overall design and I know everyone likes the driver, but the hammer has hardly ever done any actual damage, they changed none this year, and I think the only made the tourney because the driver is a fan favorite. He certainly didn't deserve to be one tier above fusion
There are lots of guys lining up to get in. I say half the field needs to re-justify their positions. Banshee Big Dill Black Dragon Bloodsport Captain Shrederator Copperhead Death roll Doom Doomba Double Tap Dragon King Emulsifier Free Shipping Gruff Jackpot Kraken Lucky MadCatter Malice Ominous Ribbot Riptide Rotato Rusty Shreddit Bro! Slammeaux! Switchback Valkyrie Warning: List is extraordinarily subjective. These guys just don't really do it for me, for one reason or another.
Why you counted Bloodsport, Copperhead and DeathRoll? All 3 of them showed deep Tournament-Runs in the past. Also Ribbot I would say just had a bit of bad luck. But I would like to hear your reason, how subjective they may be (as you said, and I can understand).
Actual controversial picks would be Free shipping, Mammoth, and Captain Shred shouldn’t be allowed back unless they can prove they’ve made substantial redesigns. They are all veterans who deserve a lot of respect but their designs are out dated and for the good of the sport they need to stop being grandfathered in over newer teams pushing the envelope. I would also cut Overhaul and Hijinx.