Ant Freeze 8 - update 28/12/21

[MarkR]

Hypothetically, would a "active weapons" exception be made for a meltybrain spinner?

Mark

[LimaHotel]

And would a thwackbot count as an axe?

[limpet]

[/quote]

Hypothetically, would a "active weapons" exception be made for a meltybrain spinner?

The ones I`ve seen have teeth or blades making it a type of spinner, or a flail of some sort which would fit in the freestyle.
If it was just a smooth body then there wouldnt be much point so I doubt you`d want to enter that anyway.

And would a thwackbot count as an axe?

An axe should be an independantly controllable weapon so if you mean a thwackbot like Stinger from RW then it wouldn`t count as an axe.
I think it could fit into the freestyle ok though as long as it is designed to be weapon like rather than just part of the body or a wedge.

[Dazmund]

I might sign up for this event since it may happen on the first weekend of February in Hinckley and I'm likely to be in the West Midlands area that weekend, so two birds, one stone thing. I have two flippers, a lifter and a pusher so obviously the last one is not allowed for variety's sake.

[GeorgeR]

Disappointingly I'm probably going to give this a miss due to the format.

As it stands I could only enter a single robot (despite currently having 7 working antweights), so I feels harder to justify the travel.

[limpet]

The original idea for freestyle was to encourage originality and new ideas. I’m thinking maybe the freestyle group could allow any weapon type, so if someone had two spinners one could go in the spinner group and the other into freestyle, only one entry per person in each group though.

[LimaHotel]

That won't fix it. I love the "we allow one bit of each weapon type". That's amazing. It gives people a reason to build axes, spinners, flippers, AND something off the wall (like a grabber). I love it.

Then you just gotta go ruin the ride. By forcing these robot categories to only fight their own groups until a few finalists of each enter full combat? Lame.
I don't build a flipper hoping to fight flippers, or an axe hoping to fight axes. Yes I did build a grabber hoping to fight grabbers, but even then I don't want to fight exclusively the same weapon type! Keep the 1 bot per weapon type (cos I love it) but PLEASE Drop the split competition and have a standard mixed one and I'll go. As it stands I'm not gonna.

[peterwaller]

I disagree they are plenty of competitions where they are all mixed, this is a great idea to get more classes of robot involved. I have robots that just don't get to fight in the all up groups.

[TeamPanoramic]

Is this format still going ahead? I get what you are trying to do to encourage more weapon diversity and to allow the event to run smoothly but I feel that each category is going to cause some problems in terms of competing and spectating.

Flippers - The problem for me with this is that flipper v flippers fights Will keep going continuous and will feel very repetitive for those competing and those spectating. As this tournament goes on further, I feel the more boring it will be for those watching it. We’ve already had the UK heavyweight non-spinner live scene for that.

Spinners - Assuming that the double elimination format is in place, this could potentially cause robots to pull out of the tournament early. There is the potential case where we will see constant fights between the most hard hitting spinners, which could cause damage that could either see huge repair time or several robots destroyed beyond repair.

Axes - This type of weapon isn’t a popular choice as it hasn’t proven to be highly effective or damaging in this weight class, so this could be quite a short tournament.

Freestyle - At the last AWS last month, I didn’t keep track of how many unique & innovative weapons (or something that wasn’t a flipper, spinner, wedge or brick) that were in the main event. So I’m not sure how many you’d get for this one.


I get that you want to encourage weapon building, diversity and help run the event smoother, but I don’t feel this is the way to do it in terms to the constant flipper v flipper and spinner v spinner fights. Perhaps a regular tournament with an active weapon rule would work better? Just a suggestion.


I’ll still happily come along to event to film and give it coverage and maybe do whiteboards, but I’ll probably competing a miss with this format in place.

[limpet]

Yes the format remains unchanged. Its not an AWS but its slowly turning into a clone of one which it was never intended to be.

I`ve always thought that there would be lower numbers in some of the groups (ie axes) but the plan is to take the final 8 from each group into the mixed finals, if theres only 8 to begin with its an easy path for some.
The tournaments will be running simultaneously as far as is possible so you’d get a flipper fight followed by a spinner fight etc. I don’t think it would get boring especially as all robots would be weaponised.
Onto the mixed final, 32 (could be more depending on the starting numbers) at double knock out will still take some time to get through.
We had close on to a hundred robots last time, going flat out we only just fitted them in. The year before we ran out of time although we had a late start due to the weather.


However I am wondering what restrictions might be in place in the new year regarding large gatherings, I`ll be contacting the venue this week and if they are available to host events then I`ll be calling the insurance. I`ve been holding off making any firm decisions that it will go ahead because no one can say for certain. If it doesnt then expect a summertime event, possibly outdoors in place of it.
With that in mind all I can say is that if you intend to come then don`t put off your building, I don`t post builds but I currently have a new flipper, two spinners and an axe bot about 90% ready and theres more planned.