Arenas

[american roboteer]

getting pushed is not usually the problem most robots are pitted by bad driving (or of course if you robot stops working in the middle of a fight)

[BeligerAnt]

With ants there is usually a lot of pushing off the edge!
Some ants are designed purely as pushers and can be extremely effective, especially if they are fast and well-driven.
Most anyweight "crushers" are actually only "holders" which prevent their opponent running away whilst they are being pushed towards the edge!
Similarly flippers and lifters often gain the advantage by turning their opponent onto their side or upside down, then pushing them off the edge whilst they don't have any traction.

Bad driving can be a contributory factor, and then of course there's always the "run away" tactic when faced with a really nasty spinner!

However, even with a 30" long open side, it can still be remarkably difficult to push your opponent off. There have been plenty of nail-biting fights that have taken place almost entirely along one edge of the arena.

IMO an arena with only a 5" square pit and no side drop-offs would result in many fights going to the 3 minute limit with no clear winner, but a pit would result in more cases of losing due to driver error as the pit tends to get in the way. An ant-sized pit in an ant-sized arena is proportionally much bigger than the pit in the RW heavyweight arena. All of this is not to say we shouldn't try it some time...

[american roboteer]

" no side drop-offs would result in many fights going to the 3 minute limit with no clear winner"

no doubt because its not uncommon in the RW to go to a judges vote after the time runs out and their is no clear winner

[american roboteer]

Does anyone have a pic of the old RW extreme antweight arena i cant find any on the web.

I am thinking of building a replica for fun and show you know that kinda thing. Maybe not figured i'd ask anyway.

[Marco Roberts]

an issue that u guys need to remember is this
Spinners in our weight class are very very effective. Much more effective than the heavy weight class (for there size)
Look at preveous winners.
13 pushers (or likewise) have won an aws
6 spinners have won an aws (an only 1 of these wasn't pete waller btw lol)

Now if we enclose the arena spinners would prity much dominate. Most decent spinners can 1 hit kill. The only thing they would have to worry about is other spinners.

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

I think if we had a fully enclosed arena but with walls as tall as the ones in Olivers, that even a pusher can lift another bot over, then we'd have some pretty interesting combat. Just thinking out loud here...

[Simon Windisch]

Yes, we agreed some time back that 5cm was a good wall height, and that, by the way, is the height of the speedway wall.

Simon

[Rhys]

Now if we enclose the arena spinners would prity much dominate. Most decent spinners can 1 hit kill. The only thing they would have to worry about is other spinners.

Tell that to Anticipation or Void Both of which have easily put my ants out of the arena. I think fully enclosed would be wrong, but a 5cm wall around the outside would be good, even just for a test battle.

[josh]

but then wat about low robots there gunna have to have a flipper to get ppl over the walls

[BeligerAnt]

...that even a pusher can lift another bot over...

By definition a pusher has nothing to lift with! I think it would be impossible for any pusher to get another robot over even a 5cm wall. In fact I think a 1cm wall would be too much for most pushers.
The only thing a pusher could hope for would be to topple their opponent onto the wall so that it gets stuck by its flipper arm/blade/whatever. This also sounds exremely unlikely.
Drop-offs are not "anti-spinners" or "pro-pushers", they are there for everyone to avoid!