Arena Discussions

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peterwaller
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by peterwaller »

Because I can't find a local venue and I don't really want to organise a competition anyway I feel I should at least contribute to antweights in some other form hence the new arena.
Plus I like the challange of trying to make an adaptable arena that we can use to try different configurations to see which is most suitable.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by peterwaller »

Now it has had its first outing it is time for an a look at how it performed.
To do an indepth assessment we will need to see the video but in general I thought the configuration as it was worked well.
The small stopps at the end of each drop off suggested by Scott amoungt others I thought worked well.
The low walls on two of the pits (not sure whos idea) I think stopped a lot of the accidental drive outs and favoured the flippers slightly over the pushers but I seem to remember pushers getting people over them.
The 2mm thick wall all around stopped any damge to the large more expensive polycarb panels in fact the ony contact with them that I noticed was Anticide who was a bit prone to hitting the roof when self righting. :roll:
The main problem as far as I and others were concerned was the lid.
Although it gave good over all visibilty and protection it was heavy to lift especially high enough to access the pits at the hinge end.
Turning the tables round helped a bit but fully opening the lid ment the handle went out of reach from the opening end so people were having to move around the sides.
Various suggestions were made from gas struts to opening hatches but I think the best one and I can't remember who suggeted it was a an angled frame on the next table to support the lid in the up position.
I have done a quick test and I think an angled frame can be made that will allow the lid to be opened far enough to allow good access to all pits to a point where it is past the balance point and so stay unheld and the handle will still be reachable from the end for those of reasonable height and reach.
Here is a mock up showing the angle, the frame will have to be sepperate to fit in the car but could just hook over the trolly axel.
Image
Any further comments and suggestions are always welcome.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by Remote-Controlled Dave »

Well I thought the arena was fantastic. It gave a great fight surface without being so big that the fights went on too long, it had just enough drop off but minimised the accidental ejections...yes, I would say it was thoroughly successful, fun and interesting and I cant wait to use it again, even with the lid.
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EpicentrE
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by EpicentrE »

Thanks again for bringing the arena Pete. It was a big step forwards from what we had used in the past and I think the design overall worked very well.

However, I think the biggest issue with this kind of pit design is the angles from which the pit is accessible. While the pits were in general much smaller, because they are in corners, fights are naturally funnelled towards them, and so even though there was less available drop-off perimeter, in my opinion it didn't really feel any different to the configuration of mine and Andy's arena with the central wall and small side walls on the pits, other than increasing the advantage of spinners and decreasing the advantage of flippers by having less areas where a robot could fly out of the arena.

I think Andy and I are going to look at modifying our arena to an "american style" design, where we wall off what are currently the pits up to the ceiling and just leave a small gap in the centre, or something similar, to see how that works out.

Once again I'm not attempting to disregard your efforts Peter, I'm incredibly grateful and thankful to you for putting this together for us and bringing it to events. My main concern remains that the vast majority of fights are still won by a robot putting the opponent in the pit, and I would like to encourage other methods of winning to be more viable than they currently are.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by peterwaller »

I am glad you liked it Dave and Scott the reason for trying to make it reconfigurable was so we could try and adapt as the general con-censors was fed back so please don't apologise for giving your views they are always welcome and I am not offended.
The main reason for using corner pits was to allow the largest area of arena floor 1.3 x .98 m and still fit in the car.
As you say the battles do tend to migrate towards the pits but I thought the combination of your little stops idea and the two low walls helped to alleviate this somewhat.
I thought I would try and analyse the working by a detailed examination of the video when its available.
As an aside I thought Dans larger Nano arena worked much better and that in combination with the 4 way fights made it much more watchable.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by EpicentrE »

To throw more ideas into the melting pot of configurations, how about having two of the pits in their square configuration, but have a wall along one of the sides to reduce the angles at which you can approach it?

Also, what did people think of the height of the walls? They're a good deal lower than the ones Andy and I run in our arena (1 inch compared to 2), and because of this I noticed people getting themselves stuck up on them and their weapons stuck on them far more often, as well as it being easier to get people over them, even with a pusher.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by peterwaller »

I have just run through the video of the 96 Antweight fights at AWS47 and had a go at trying to classify how each was won or lost in an attempt to evaluate the arenas performance. Where there were multiple bots I tried to decide which was the main reason for the decision so there could be some disagreements on some of those. When it came to judges dicisions I didn't include those where it was just a question of counting botlets but tried to concentrate on how the main botlet won or lost.
Here are my findings.
Pushed out no wall......................29...*
Flipped out no wall......................13...*
Drove out no wall........................11...*
Spinner Damage.........................11
Flipped unable to self right.............8
Spinner flew out no wall................7...*
Flipped out over wall.....................6
Flipped on side unable to self right..3
Thrown out by spinner no wall........2...*
Carried out no wall........................2...*
Damaged by non spinner................1
Spinner flew out over wall...............1
Pushed onto wall............................1
Judges decision..............................1
All results with an * were where the loser ended up in an unwalled pit so it appears that despite reducing the unwalled pits to 16% of the edge 66% of battles ended in them anyway and only 6% went into the low walled pit.
The number of times a robot was saved by either the pillars at the end of the walls or the two low walls seemed quite high but I didn't think to count them.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by Remote-Controlled Dave »

Interesting.
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by Roboteernat »

Not that i have used any,. but could the pit base be removable? so you could remove bots by just releasing the floor of the pit?
Anything needing to be retrieved from the arena, could then be accessed by the lid?

It would seem to me the by hinging the lid and having the weigh sit on one edge could stress and snap the plastic?
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Re: Arena Discussions

Post by peterwaller »

I suppose it would be possible to have removable floors in the pits but remember the table top sits about 4 cms below them so access would be somewhat limited and remeber there ar 4 pits. The floors would have to be able to withstand a spinner at full tilt dropping in. The weight of the lid is evenly distributed along both 6mm polycarb end plates so I don't think there is much danger stress or snapping.
Anyway the lid wasn't that hard to lift it was more the fact that the handle went out of reach from the end so the need for a better way to park it in the up position should make life a lot easier.
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