Weapons

[Thunderbot]

How important are weapons? I mean if a Robot has good engines and the ability to shove how important actually are weapons?

In a related Question, would a drill be an adequate weapon?


I'm new to robots and I need know for my antweight...

[joey_picus]

Hiya, and welcome to the sport

Weapons...it does depend on who you ask really as each person has their own approach to the fundamental issue of robots beating other robots in combat. Personally I think pushing power is certainly a viable tactic but most of my robots do have active weapons - in my opinion a good weapon is at least as good, if not better, than a robot reliant purely on power - flippers and clamping devices allow you to impair and totally control your opponent if driven well and I think I need say little about the destructive power of spinners.

Drills aren't effective weapons sadly, they're designed to bore holes under hand pressure into a stationary object, and (normally!) your opponents in an antweight match will be moving, some of them rather fast.

[peterwaller]

Welcome to the Forum.
As Joey has said there is no particular weapon that can be said to be better than any other. Certainly Anticide has been the most successful recently with a pnuematic flipper but that is not for a beginner. Push bots or servo flippers are probably the best place to start. One of of the main things it to ensure your front scoop can get under the opposition. Spinners are my favorite but they do need a bit of experience so again not really for a beginner and it has been at least 3 years since one won an AWS.

[Thunderbot]

Thanks for the answers.

So basically, A weapon is not that important, but help and a drill is bad.

Okay... I'm going to have rethink my design...


A spinner does sound tempting though, maybe fan blades, to add up-thrust to attacks and hopefully flip enemies....

Or not...

[joey_picus]

Really with spinners you're looking at something properly designed to inflict damage to have as the spinning mass, rather than fan blades - saw blades have been used but they have too many teeth to engage opponents properly, the vast majority of people use custom made titanium or steel blades directly attached to 'brushless' aircraft motors, usually with just one or two teeth as the aim is to build up a store of energy in the weapon (by spinning it) and then transferring that energy into the opponent through one hit for what I believe is referred to in internet circles as 'massive damage'

As Peter says a spinner is not a recommended design for a beginner though, unless you know what you're doing, as there exists a genuine possibility of losing one or more minor appendages should it go wrong. I'd agree that a pusher or a servo flipper is probably the best design for a starting antweight - the last AWS proved that a simple first-time built pushing wedge can go very far with some good driving (TransparANT) and of course two copies of the same servo flipper robot contested the final!

[Thunderbot]

Thanks a lot for the input!

While on holiday, I came up with an idea!

A claw! Mixed with pure engine power, to move the other bots out the way!

[razerdave]

Sounds like a plan Mantis and Terrordactyl have used that strategy to their advantage many a time (Mainly Mantis).

[Thunderbot]

The only trouble I'm having is working out a way to pull the mechanism to close the jaws...

[Thunderbot]

I double posted by accident...

Oops...

[joey_picus]

On my ant Arcus I have a pair of front claws, the idea I have to work them is a push rod linkage from a servo to one of the claws, and the claws are connected at their pivots by gears (actually the output gears from metal geared servos!) so that both claws move together without needing to use a second servo.