Arena Discussions

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

I hope he reads this and also answers his PMs.

[Rapidrory]

Yeah, I'd be happy to have low walls on two of the pits; I'm running 3 spinners, anything to help stop them throwing themselves out the arena is a plus

[peterwaller]

I have done a couple more mods which involved making the two batton the bear the weight of the earena cove full width instead just the width of the trolly.
This supports the heavy lid better and enabled me to fit 4 hinges that help stop distortion when lifting the lid.
Secondly I have replaced the aluminium angle edging that runs along the bottom edges of the two curved 2mm sheets with steel U channel as the others bowed too much.
Luckly I decided to check I could still load it ok as I soon realised that the two longer batterns were the ones I used in sliding the arena into the car.
I found that a ladder works well in there place but when checking that the cases fitted into the rear footwell I noticed a nice big shiney screw in my rear tyre.
I was already concerned that if I get a puncture I will have to get the arena out at the side of the road to access the spare wheel so it is just as well I found it and have had it repaired.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

We appreciate all your efforts, Peter!

[Hogi]

yeah, really well done Peter. i must say i aprove of the 25mm walls. tall enough to prevent straight pushout but short enough to be able to force opponents over without a great deal of difficulty.

[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.

[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.
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.

Any further comments and suggestions are always welcome.

[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.

[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.

[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.