AWS 40

[joey_picus]

Just finished watching the live video link - massive, massive congratulations to everyone involved in putting on a great show, and to everyone taking part - I don't think anyone did truly badly, there were some very good performances from the amazing spinner-killing Titanic, Ant Clank, I'm Jim Morrison..., Omlette du Fromage, Deflea, Alsoran, Taste The Bitter Prank Of Zondor, Napalm Death, and the absolutely excellent Ripto for getting all the way to the final, to name but a few. The top congratulations though go to Rhys and Cyklos for the fleas and Andy Hibberd and Anticide for the ants - again!

The quality of ants was really good, I'm going to have to do really well when I get back...

The stream was very, very good, a few technical hitches and some on-the-fly camera adjustment notwithstanding - Will, Dave and Finn made excellent commentators, especially Will, and the presentation and overall feel were in my opinion better than a lot of recent heavyweight events. It made me really miss fighting at events and I really, really wish I could have been there with you all ^^;;

One important comment though - I think we really need to start looking into either getting the use of buildings for longer - at least until 7 or 8 P.M. - or a two-day World Series format, if this number of robots keep entering on a regular basis - towards the end it was all a bit rushed and there was talk of a 'no repairs' rule which I don't think is really right. (The only other complaints I have are about the stream, I know a few people gave up due to the pausing - while this couldn't be predicted, hopefully it'll be fixed next time)

Well done to everyone again, and thanks for making it worth the lack of sleep to see!

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

The two-room format slowed a lot of it up I think. There were many things that could've been done to speed it all up.

Apart from that, I had a rocking time, as did Gemma. All of my ants now are well and truly battered and I will be starting from scratch for the next one. Thoroughly enjoyed it all and well done to the winners and the ones who did well who don't always, particularly Death Adder and Ant Clank.

See you all at the next one hopefully!

[haz]

Enjoyed today massively. Didn't quite like the 2 rooms thing but it was a kinda cool idea

Big well done to Will and all the various techy people who got the livestream going. And of cource to Andy for his victory.

[teamocean]

Just got home and waiting for pizza to be delivered so I thought I'd come and say thanks to everyone for coming today and making it such a fun event!

Well done to Rhys for winning the fleas and to Andy for yet another win with anticide.

We had a few issues which we are looking to fix- we will make the pits closer to the arena next time and will make sure the draw is all running smoothly to iron out the bugs. Thanks to everyone for bearing with us while we fixed them.

Now there are plenty of people to thank for making the event happen today.

Firstly to Ian from the School of Systems engineering! Without him the event today would not have been possible, he managed to get the costs for the venue covered and the support of the uni which allowed us to go ahead. He was also on our judging panel for the day and did a great job.

To Fin for helping with the commentary.

To Mark and Kat for running the draw and judging throughout the day.

To Max, Matt and Joe for their great job running the video and audio equipment as well as the stream online- fantastic job guys!

Sorry if I've forgotten anyone- it's been a long day!

The uni are keen to run the event again next year so hopefully we'll be back again with a tweaked format to make everything run that little bit smoother.

Videos will be uploaded soon and if anyone has any pics please let me know.

Thanks again to everyone involved!!

[ajrobotics]

I have to agree with everything that Joey has said. It took me a while to get the stream working (due to problems at my end), but I'm really glad that I did because it was a brilliant event. Congratulations to Andy and Rhys for their wins, and well done to everyone involved with hosting and producing a really well run AWS. It is a shame that things had to be rushed towards the end, and I agree that with the amount of antweights competing at the moment it might be sensible to start thinking about having a two-day event.

The live stream was very good – the sound and the picture were clear, I liked the multiple camera angles and the commentary was professional and informative. There were always 35-45 people watching and the interaction between the social stream and those at the event was great. I think if one AWS per year could be hosted across two days and had a stream featuring things like the "damage cam", interviews and interaction with the online audience between battles it would be great to watch and might encourage more people to get involved.

Thanks for putting on a great show, and I hope everyone gets back safely in this weather.

[Andrew_Hibberd]

Got home after dropping Scott off. I really enjoyed todays competition. A huge thanks to Will and Reading University for the organisation.

There was some really good close fights as well as some impressive damage. Kwijebo breaking the 4mm polycarb wall must be a record. Other than kwijebo taking a bit of damage during that hit my robots are all in one piece. I am very impressed with Ickle it turned out to be much more effective than I had hoped. Ickle and Cylos did very well as a cluster, although Ickle could do with being a little faster. Congrats to Rhys for winning the FWS.

The arena was a good size, although the corners did slow up some fights. Having the dual rooms was good for space but having 3 spinners and pneumatics had me running between rooms quite often and did seem to slow it down.

Hope to see even more robots at the next one.

[shakesc]

Sorry I could not of been there but the live link was great
Hope to see everyone soon

[BeligerAnt]

Enjoyed my first event as a fully-fledged competitor - but now you all know why James & Bethany don't usually let me drive!

However, I managed to win at least one fight with each robot and Make-A-Bot performed well despite being a simple robot built as a demonstrator for the Maker Faire. RONNY survived an encounter with Combat Cluster and even won in the end, only to lose to Titanic in the next round!

Thanks to Will & friends and all at Reading Uni for making it possible. The separation of the pits was a bit of a problem and contributed to some of the delays. Organisation was a little haphazard at the start, I know some people missed out on signing up for the non-spinner comp, but the main comp ran very well.

I can't see a 2-day event working very well, the extra time and cost of accomodation would put it out of reach of many people. However, we do need to do something about the time it's taking to complete the event.

[joey_picus]

The obvious thing to do would be to split the FWS from the main event, however that then runs the risk of leaving the fleas without an event unless that could be reworked so the FWS happened at other events (RFRC, SAC, et cetera) or even became its own event?

[BeligerAnt]

That's one possibility Joey, although I didn't want to be the one to suggest it!
With an increasing number of fleas, and running FWS as double-elimination, it does take a significant amount of time. The FWS took a lot longer than the (single elimination) non-spinner comp.

But do fleas have the "critical mass" required for their own event?