Post AWS report! Much more post event analysis than after Ant freeze as I got into more matches this time.
I'll start with the bad - Manticore is a sucky robot. I always knew the hammer was more for fun than competition haha but nevertheless I am disappointed in his matches. Two clear losses where I drove badly, had almost zero head to head pushing power, and yeah. I just don't like driving the 2wd set up. Upside I guess is he came out without any damage.
I am unsure yet whether he gets another chance. He is in full working order so maybe he'll get to another event. Or maybe I recycle ESC and motors from him into something else. We shall see.
On to the good though - Third Law had a much better time. His first match was vs Hestaephus in a driving/pushing match and he came out on top. So much easier to drive this guy compared to Manticore. A good start!
Second match was against one of my favourite teams and George's scary overhead bar spinner Vampire. I was curious and a little nervous to test against a spinner and here was a very fierce one. This match was my personal highlight for the day. I've watched enough antweight fights now to know I had to take the beating and hopefully the horizontal spinner would eventually find itself bouncing out the arena. Which was basically what happened. Not before he got some really good hits on me though, including one that hit that got above/around my wedge and which was half a centimetre from ruining one of my wheels. Luck might have been on my side a little here but I'll take it haha.
Then it was back in the draw and here things went a bit south for dear Third Law as next he drew another scary horizontal spinner in Nom Nom Nom by Andy who prior to this I just knew as the Formula/Rapid dude. Ok, I thought, freshly full of vigour at having beaten one spinner, same tactics again, right? May be a third win here and a bit of an upset?
Nope.
![😂](//twemoji.maxcdn.com/2/svg/1f602.svg)
turns out back to back sessions of getting punched in the face was a bit too much. It started out to plan. First couple of hits went ok. The wedge on my bot worked pretty much great against the spinners. However the rest of the bot was NOT up to the beating and after a few hits from Nom Nom Nom one of the pins holding the lid in place came out. Another hit and guts are out, namely the eviscerated Lipo hanging where it shouldn't be
![🙈](//twemoji.maxcdn.com/2/svg/1f648.svg)
yet another hit and I have lost some drive ability and the exposed battery also took a nick so it was time to tap out.
The battery was very quickly ejected from the building and closer inspection revealed he had hit me hard enough to unsolder a drive motor. Ouch.
Then I got my first proper experience of some panicked repairs before my next fight. (yay for hot glue) It was briefly a bit nerve wracking but I got him ready to fight Die Gracefully Dave's Insject in what I thought might be a good match up for me but he's a damn good driver and maybe I was feeling the stress of repairs more than I realised and either way he had me out the arena pretty quick and with that I was out the main competition.
Wasn't quite the end for Third Law though as he got to play in both the annihilator rumbles at the end when folks in the final couple of rounds were making repairs. I did quite well in these, managed to push a few out and in the second rumble I was the final bot to be eliminated (Well done, Slipper on taking the win!)
And then that was that.
Unlike Manticore, Third Law is definitely continuing forward. I plan on another rebuild to improve him. The wedge worked really well and I think overall he is a competitive robot. But i need to make another body that is a tiny bit lighter so I can focus on securing internals better. Obviously next time I would rather my bot's insides spent the whole event inside the bot and not flopping around like some Game of Thrones extra that got stabbed up. I'm thinking maybe a foam insert or something that means I can still easily get the battery out for charging but will reduce the chance of what happened vs Nom Nom Nom from happening again.
All in all a really fun day. Thanks to everyone involved in running it and many kudos to all the roboteers. Especially Shakey on his tournament win.
Good times!