I'm finally building my arena which had to be delayed year after year then I posted this and covid hit....Ant Ipodean wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2020 12:03 pm Re Antweight arena design ..
I designed and built the Ant arena that we use here.
It has a fighting floor area of 1100mm x 1400mm with pits at each end.
Originally there were low pit walls, with 250mm wide openings/drop offs, but later 150mm high pit walls and sliding pit "gates" were added.
The floor is 0.5mm thick galvanised sheet steel laminated onto MDF. It has held up really well, with no maintenance required.
The battle box is "frameless" 3mm polycarbonate, hinged on one side for access. It provides really good optics. (Credit this concept to Peter Waller)
Easily detached legs mean it is not reliant on available tables.
When I built it in 2017 there was no scene here, so I was guessing how things might pan out.
I tried to incorporate the best aspects of what I saw in the UK arenas.
If I was to design it again, knowing what I know now, I would consider ..
- Making the floor area a bit smaller (My original thoughts anticipated the possibility that 1 lbers may have been a thing here)
- Make the floor from 0.5mm austenitic stainless steel, as magnets have become fairly dominant here and are a bit contentious.
- Make the battle box collapsible for transport, as the bulky nature of the present one limits the transport options.
You can see several shots of the arena in action in the videos here .. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1ZSy ... VYA/videos
Mike.
I'm doing one like Peter's to start then one like Chris Malton's and I'll use the smaller one as a test box and backup arena). I was thinking of going with the floor of metal for the reasons you described (low to zero maintenance) AND so one strategy COULD be the use of magnets to get better ground hugging. BUT you seem to indicate that it's a serious issue. Is it that the only way to win is to use magnetic down force? If so maybe I should try stainless steel as you suggest. What is the contentiousness that you describe like?
In the last episode of witch doctor battlebots after show with hypershock (not sure how much you guys watch that) the owner/creator of battlebots was interviewed and he said that now that they have the floor worked out and smooth it seemed like it was a battle of wedgelets. He said they would have to adapt and here is the kicker for me he said
"Marco [Captain of Riobotz and Minotaur] told me that I needed to watch out for wedgelets because they were ruining the scene in Brazil. The competitions come down to who has the best wedgelets and that's what determines the winner."
To me it seems this might be a similar issue as the magnets in your scene/arena. I love the AWS Events because there is no one single design that wins, which not only allows for, but encourages tremendous creativity. I mean I just loved when robox first was in a match, it was so unusual it was amazing. That's why I love the UK antweights, I think that the price to build and the weight (which limits armor and weapons) are optimized for developing new bots. However If an event becomes dominanted by only one strategy then it gets pretty boring for me. UK antweights haven't ever become boring for me since I first saw them in 2014 and that's ages for me who usually gets bored quickly.
Anyway, just wanted to check to see if my concerns what you were experiencing and if it became solved other than stainless steel or particle board.
Having said all that, I would love to see a stand alone event where ants had to fight on ice one time. Like a mini hockey arena for the floor. Maybe the pits a little bit protected by a 5mm lip so that you don't just slide into them because of slipping. Maybe an air hockey table type floor could come close to duplicating that.
Hope everyone is doing well.