Morgrugyn Destruction (Non-AWS) - 30 May 2015 - Caerphilly

[ajw]

Thanks to Rhys for hosting another great event. Congratulations to Scott on another good win. There were some excellent fights with plenty of damage which I look forward to seeing in the video when it gets uploaded. The low walls were an interesting feature to the arena and certainly changed the dynamic of the fights, although as mentioned it did mean robots solely relying on pusher opponents had little chance of winning other than on judges decisions. However, I do believe this format encourages more innovation over the typical 50% drop off arena. Low walls that could drop completely, after say 1 minute into the fight,would be interesting option to give the best of both worlds.

I look forward to the next event.

[peterwaller]

Yes great event thanks to Rhys and thanks to Scott and Andy for the arena.
Quite a lot of damge to repair but a great day out and the Annihilator was even better on video than I remebered.
I think we were mostly agreed it wouldn't suit the AWS but I think for other events if the extra walls were a little lower it would be good to try again.

[EpicentrE]

Thanks to Rhys for hosting a great event, and to everyone else for coming.

As others have said, the arena in this configuration would not be suitable for an AWS, but it was great fun to have a change of pace. I think it really brought out the best in everyone's driving, and a lot of the fights which went to judges' decisions were really close calls. Whereas we thought this configuration would mostly favour spinners, in fact I think those that benefited most were machines that were capable of flipping or lifting opponents over the walls. What that's made me realise is that, while I still think some low walls are a good idea for future arena designs, in the absence of huge pits they give far too much advantage to machines with good flippers. Thus, when we look at making arenas with smaller pits, we should also ensure that only a small amount of the perimeter is made up of low walls.

I also think the 2 minute time limit was proven to be a great idea and something we should definitely look at changing in the rules in the future.

There were some other great ideas that came out of this event which aren't really related to the AWS, but worth mentioning. Dave Weston suggested randomising the tag teams, which I think is a great idea to add variety to the teams we normally see working together. However, the best idea bar none was Andy's suggestion to allow spinners to start spinning up at 3 on the countdown in the spinner annihilator .

Thanks again for a great event, and see you all at the AWS!

[peterwaller]

The one thing I can never quite understand about the annihilator is how grown men can put so much time, effort and money into designing and building a robot and still find it funny when they get smashed up but it was hilarious.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Coming up with a configuration for the AWS will be interesting. Suggestions welcome!

I'm glad both my points of low walls favouring flippers and the 2min fight limit have proved valid. It looked like smashing fun though.

Definitely up for less drop off for the AWS. Maybe something similar to yesterday but with higher walls and a gap in the centre of them for push outs? Or a staggered gap, one wall with a hole on the left and the other on the right?

Also, anyone got a close up picture of Vortex?

[Shakey]

The one thing I can never quite understand about the annihilator is how grown men can put so much time, effort and money into designing and building a robot and still find it funny when they get smashed up but it was hilarious.

I put none of those 3 things into Test Bot Please Ignore

Also the 2 minute fight limit is very god and I think should be introduced. On the arena for AWS competitions I feel that style with 2 small gaps in the walls on either side would be good. I wouldn't suggest higher walls as, as I pointed out at the event, we were basing the 'is it easy for flippers' off some of the most powerful ones in antweights (Void, Anticide, Vertigo, Militant etc.), more regular flippers would have quite a hard time with the 50mm wall, as did lifter grabbers. 35-40mm would probably be ideal from my point of view.

Thanks to Rhys for an excellent event, it was a ton of fun and the spinner combat was excellent!

The highlight was definitely the spinner annihilator, 7 spinners and a lot of broken robots after! I'm sifting through the footage to upload, it might take a little while (It took about an hour just to move it from camera -> PC!). If anyone has the antlog data/brackets that would be good.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

I once got an opponent over a 50mm wall with a pushbot...

[Rhys]

I'm not sure the low walls favoured flippers generally. It was just Void and Anticide mainly. Lots of the less powerful flippers really struggled to get anyone out of the arena. There were no gimmies, if you wanted someone out of that arena you had to work for it. I think 50mm walls were about right. But once the video is up you can all have a look and judge for yourselves if you think they should be higher.

As for the antlog, they're on my other computer, but I'll get them uploaded some time this evening, hopefully.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

It seems odd to me that people are favouring walls "that only advantage robots like Void and Anticide" over walls that don't advantage anyone!

[Max]

You can't have an arena that doesn't give anyone an advantage, no walls favours pushers, low walls favours flippers, battle box with full height walls favours spinners.