Robot Wars is coming back
Discussion
I used to really like Robot Wars from the first series to the one prior to this. I found this one rather drawn out and dull.
The action replays every few seconds was irritating, show the fight and then do the slow-mo replays after! There was far too much talking and intros going on between fights.
Then there's the format - utterly dreadful. The whole league thing doesn't make much sense and then as with last night we end up with the same 2 robots fighting in the final as earlier in the group stages. The KO format of previous seasons is a lot more enjoyable and unpredictable.
I'll probably watch on iplayer and skip to the fights instead of sitting in front of a TV for an hour to watch about 10 mins of action.
The action replays every few seconds was irritating, show the fight and then do the slow-mo replays after! There was far too much talking and intros going on between fights.
Then there's the format - utterly dreadful. The whole league thing doesn't make much sense and then as with last night we end up with the same 2 robots fighting in the final as earlier in the group stages. The KO format of previous seasons is a lot more enjoyable and unpredictable.
I'll probably watch on iplayer and skip to the fights instead of sitting in front of a TV for an hour to watch about 10 mins of action.
ajprice said:
Thumbs up 
. The first rounds were a bit manic to keep track of, but once it was 1v1 I liked the league system of everybody fighting each other. Nuts was great fun, it reminded me of the Irish guys with Diotor the furry robot in old RW, there for the fun of it 
.
Should be a wee change of the points system imo. 3 for a ko vs 0 and 2 for a technical win with 1 for surviving to the decesion. . The first rounds were a bit manic to keep track of, but once it was 1v1 I liked the league system of everybody fighting each other. Nuts was great fun, it reminded me of the Irish guys with Diotor the furry robot in old RW, there for the fun of it . I reluctant to watch this incase it soured my memories of the original, especially after seeing news items showing a "gladiators" type audience. I did watch in the end and thought it was great. Audience not too obtrusive even. kept rooting for the Robots I knew though, will watch more for sure.
ajprice said:
Battlebots allows flying drones and flame weapons, I don't know if RW would allow drones, they didn't allow flame stuff in the old series. There's a bot in BB called Chomp, which has a camera and movement sensors to automatically trigger its axe, and the guy who built Mortis in early RW has a BB bot with arms controlled by RC metal sleeves, the robot copies his arm movement. They had more than 6 weeks notice to get theirs sorted.
I understand robotwars was late to the game, so hopefully it can get to the level of Battlebots, which now I've watched all of last years courtesy of youtube, and now up to date with the current american broadcast.The level of power and destruction is just at a new level with drones (which have yet to be seen to provide any real input, apart from annoyance) full body spinners, barrel spinners, flame etc - just brilliant !
Re: Carbide
I don't think it'll be solid mounted to the motor will it, so if there's a belt or whatever it'll slip if it hits something totally immovable. That's how we set up the flywheel on ours like 10 years ago. It would be fine I think?
Shame Razer went out, it looked like they could have absolutely destroyed some bots a couple of times but then bottled it.
I don't think it'll be solid mounted to the motor will it, so if there's a belt or whatever it'll slip if it hits something totally immovable. That's how we set up the flywheel on ours like 10 years ago. It would be fine I think?
Shame Razer went out, it looked like they could have absolutely destroyed some bots a couple of times but then bottled it.
AshBurrows said:
Re: Carbide
I don't think it'll be solid mounted to the motor will it, so if there's a belt or whatever it'll slip if it hits something totally immovable. That's how we set up the flywheel on ours like 10 years ago. It would be fine I think?
Shame Razer went out, it looked like they could have absolutely destroyed some bots a couple of times but then bottled it.
I think it was a slipper type clutch that had overheated and cooked the bearing in the end of the motor, rather than the motor itself burning out.I don't think it'll be solid mounted to the motor will it, so if there's a belt or whatever it'll slip if it hits something totally immovable. That's how we set up the flywheel on ours like 10 years ago. It would be fine I think?
Shame Razer went out, it looked like they could have absolutely destroyed some bots a couple of times but then bottled it.
Team Nuts on their time at RW. A long but good read . https://www.facebook.com/diegracefullyrobotics/pos...
Spoilered to save space because its a very long chunk of text.
. https://www.facebook.com/diegracefullyrobotics/pos...Spoilered to save space because its a very long chunk of text.
Team Nutz said:
Robot Wars and Team Nuts - Robot Wars
There is a time when filming Robot Wars that you have to stop feigning over famous fighters and pinching yourself very hard to check you're not having a wonderful, vivid hallucination, and actually get on with it. As we loaded Nuts onto the trolley and headed over to the arena for the first time, everything was very workmanlike and systematic. Some have described it as a similar feeling to when you're about to perform in a school play and Rory was certainly very nervous as the driver. For me though, I don't really get scared in those situations. It was just time to do the job - entertain the audience, drive the minibot and fight to the best of our ability. The reboot was relying on all the teams now and it was time to go to work!
Not that we had much hope of making it beyond round 1. When you find out you're in with Razer and Terrorhurtz you flatten your ambitions somewhat and just decide to have a damn good rumble. There was brief team talk of trying to take out Kill-E-Crank-E so that we could at least "claim 3rd" but we also had a feeling that Razer and Terrorhurtz would team up. When we were lead into the control booth alongside Robin Herrick and the young lads with the Crank, our suspitions deepened and, sure enough, upon activate, we found ourselves in a rather personal battle with Terrorhurtz.. Everything was a blur - you don't have time to try and work tactics, you just have to go with it, and there is little point trying to dissect the fight from my point of view; you've all seen what happened better than I can remember thanks to the BBC! All I know is that there was a bang at one point and we looked up to see two robots had disappeared. After a wave of comprehension swept over us, we went a bit mental! Rory later asked me if I thought our celebrations would come across as a bit obnoxious on TV. I think all you have to do is ask "If you'd built a robot for Robot Wars, been drawn into a melee with such esteemed competition, and then suddenly found you were heading through to round 2, what would you do?" So that's what we did.
A little background here to address the elephant in the room. Do I think the Razer team did it on purpose? No, I don't. I talked to Simon and Ian a lot before our battle. They were absolutely exhausted having been up most nights trying to finish the new Warhead in time for Battlebots (which filmed just after we did). Simon came over to check Nuts out and bizarrely even seemed...not 'concerned', but he didn't write us off in the way I expected. He picked up one of the chains and then went over to get Ian and they started talking amongst themselves about the weight of them and how they didn't fancy Razer being hit by one. Was this delirium due to lack of sleep? Maybe. But if you ever enter your own robot into the show you'll find that a lot of the legendary roboteers won't scoff at your efforts - they know better than anyone that anything can happen in the arena.
Anyway, Ian told me they weren't intending to enter Razer at all. They said it was retired and they were too busy with Warhead and that they'd maybe consider building something else if the series took off again, but didn't think they'd apply this time out. But then the pull of Robot Wars took hold and they put in a late minute application with the intention of "giving Razer a final run out". So I don't think they were taking it very seriously. As they went to dump Kill-E-Crank-E into the pit, they misjudged and their foe definitely helped to take them in. They were very gracious about it.
Anyway, we were through! We had to come back tomorrow with a new wristband! We had to enter that arena at least 3 more times! We had to...go one on one with Carbide. Ah.
But first off, Behemoth, a team as nice as they come. Genuinely. We knew Nuts would be very little competition for them but they seemed keen on making a show of it rather than dumping us in the pit in 3 seconds and boy was this one fun. Yes, that was my minibot they launched through the air! It came up to eye-level with us in the booth, hit the floor and then, amazingly, drove off again! I could not believe it. Also, Nuts' run in with Matilda's flywheel may have only looked like a glancing blow on TV, but the damage done to the ring was super. 3 minutes later the battle was awarded to them, obviously, but we weren't really concerned with the results. It was great and we love them for it.
Carbide next. We would have to wait until the next day to take them on which lead to some slightly panicked suggestions over breakfast. Me and Rory talked about maybe trying to modify Nuts somehow to deflect the spinning blade of doom. Alex talked the most sense though. "We came here to fight, spinners and all! Lets just put it in and go for it!" So that's what we did. We knew Carbide had lost to Terrorhurtz the previous day and that their motor was in a bit of a bad way and we had caused one major upset already...maybe...?
We did make one modification to Nuts in the end. If you look closely at the start of the fight you can see we put some gloves on the front of the ring to give Carbide a good tickle! I only ever got one of them back - there was no trace of the other! Anyway, you all saw what happened. It's strangely satisfying watching a machine you know well disintergrate below you. The spectacle was astonishing. Dave Moulds later said he was surprised how good a job Carbide did on us. I don't think we were, he's just a very nice man. Anyway, we got a trollyfull of bits back and wheeled our new bag o' Nuts back to the bench.
Another note here - despite what you saw on TV with Dave Moulds offering to help fix Nuts so that we could take on Terrorhurtz, he never did. This is not a criticism of Dave, he had a lot of work to do himself on Carbide, but some have suggested he was the reason we got back into the arena. He wasn't. Our help came from Team Foxic on the next bench and Team Gabriel, who gave us a box of spare motor parts to help us nurse ours back into existence. Craig from Foxic helped us dismantle the motors and gearboxes and reassemble them. It was his efforts, and our efforts, that got Nuts going again. Alex even managed to get the red minibot working!
Another shout out here for Gillian from Team Razer. The minute we wheeled what was left of Nuts out of the arena she was over offering to go make us tea, get us food, offering hugs and support. She's amazing! We owe those people a lot.
The moment Nuts spluttered back into life on that pit bench, Rory beamed. We were tired, hot and dirty but it was euphoric. We later heard reports that the warm-up guy had announced to the audience that Nuts was alive again and the whole place errupted into applause. We felt as warm and fuzzy as our wasitcoats, but we really did think that one smack from Terrorhurtz would finish us off for good. But at least we could show up! After our exhibition of fun with the Behemoth boys the day before we decided that we should try our best to take Terrorhurtz to a judges' decision, knowing this would grant Behemoth a place in the heat final and knock Terrorhurtz out. We didn't have anything against John Reid's beautiful machine, and indeed thought we'd be doomed on the first blow anyway, but it was the only reason we could find to put up a fight.
As activate was called on our final match, I asked Rory how it was driving. "Lumpy," he said, "Verrrrrrrry luuummmmpy." My favourite quote from our time there. We have no idea how we survived that final battle but we did. In fact, we liked Terrorhurtz so much, that we put a ring on it! ;-)
So that was our time at Robot Wars over with. We had rumbled with legends like Razer, Behemoth and Terrorhurtz, and "done a Robogeddon" against Carbide, only to rise again for a final moment of glorious silliness. I don't take to praise very well, but even I couldn't deny the amount of people who were saying we'd done good. Cast, crew and audience alike were patting us on the back, and since it has gone out on TV, the love for Nuts has increased tenfold. It's mindblowing to think that we originally thought our robot was just too amateur to even get a place on the series looking back on it now. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, we are all rather stunned by what our daft little machine has done, but I think it proves that there is a space on this wonderful TV show for ANYONE who can get a robot together. If you don't have the knowledge, talent or resources to build the next Razer or Carbide, then think outside the box. Build something designed not to compete, but to simply be different. Really go for it with the theatrics. Remeber it is a TV show. And don't ever back down from a battle, whoever it may be against. Shed builders of the UK, get to it! It is looking fairly likely that we will get another series and you have as much hope of making an impact on it as the engineering superstars do. Get creative, have fun and come and play. It really is the greatest pleasure in the world.
Dave.
There is a time when filming Robot Wars that you have to stop feigning over famous fighters and pinching yourself very hard to check you're not having a wonderful, vivid hallucination, and actually get on with it. As we loaded Nuts onto the trolley and headed over to the arena for the first time, everything was very workmanlike and systematic. Some have described it as a similar feeling to when you're about to perform in a school play and Rory was certainly very nervous as the driver. For me though, I don't really get scared in those situations. It was just time to do the job - entertain the audience, drive the minibot and fight to the best of our ability. The reboot was relying on all the teams now and it was time to go to work!
Not that we had much hope of making it beyond round 1. When you find out you're in with Razer and Terrorhurtz you flatten your ambitions somewhat and just decide to have a damn good rumble. There was brief team talk of trying to take out Kill-E-Crank-E so that we could at least "claim 3rd" but we also had a feeling that Razer and Terrorhurtz would team up. When we were lead into the control booth alongside Robin Herrick and the young lads with the Crank, our suspitions deepened and, sure enough, upon activate, we found ourselves in a rather personal battle with Terrorhurtz.. Everything was a blur - you don't have time to try and work tactics, you just have to go with it, and there is little point trying to dissect the fight from my point of view; you've all seen what happened better than I can remember thanks to the BBC! All I know is that there was a bang at one point and we looked up to see two robots had disappeared. After a wave of comprehension swept over us, we went a bit mental! Rory later asked me if I thought our celebrations would come across as a bit obnoxious on TV. I think all you have to do is ask "If you'd built a robot for Robot Wars, been drawn into a melee with such esteemed competition, and then suddenly found you were heading through to round 2, what would you do?" So that's what we did.
A little background here to address the elephant in the room. Do I think the Razer team did it on purpose? No, I don't. I talked to Simon and Ian a lot before our battle. They were absolutely exhausted having been up most nights trying to finish the new Warhead in time for Battlebots (which filmed just after we did). Simon came over to check Nuts out and bizarrely even seemed...not 'concerned', but he didn't write us off in the way I expected. He picked up one of the chains and then went over to get Ian and they started talking amongst themselves about the weight of them and how they didn't fancy Razer being hit by one. Was this delirium due to lack of sleep? Maybe. But if you ever enter your own robot into the show you'll find that a lot of the legendary roboteers won't scoff at your efforts - they know better than anyone that anything can happen in the arena.
Anyway, Ian told me they weren't intending to enter Razer at all. They said it was retired and they were too busy with Warhead and that they'd maybe consider building something else if the series took off again, but didn't think they'd apply this time out. But then the pull of Robot Wars took hold and they put in a late minute application with the intention of "giving Razer a final run out". So I don't think they were taking it very seriously. As they went to dump Kill-E-Crank-E into the pit, they misjudged and their foe definitely helped to take them in. They were very gracious about it.
Anyway, we were through! We had to come back tomorrow with a new wristband! We had to enter that arena at least 3 more times! We had to...go one on one with Carbide. Ah.
But first off, Behemoth, a team as nice as they come. Genuinely. We knew Nuts would be very little competition for them but they seemed keen on making a show of it rather than dumping us in the pit in 3 seconds and boy was this one fun. Yes, that was my minibot they launched through the air! It came up to eye-level with us in the booth, hit the floor and then, amazingly, drove off again! I could not believe it. Also, Nuts' run in with Matilda's flywheel may have only looked like a glancing blow on TV, but the damage done to the ring was super. 3 minutes later the battle was awarded to them, obviously, but we weren't really concerned with the results. It was great and we love them for it.
Carbide next. We would have to wait until the next day to take them on which lead to some slightly panicked suggestions over breakfast. Me and Rory talked about maybe trying to modify Nuts somehow to deflect the spinning blade of doom. Alex talked the most sense though. "We came here to fight, spinners and all! Lets just put it in and go for it!" So that's what we did. We knew Carbide had lost to Terrorhurtz the previous day and that their motor was in a bit of a bad way and we had caused one major upset already...maybe...?
We did make one modification to Nuts in the end. If you look closely at the start of the fight you can see we put some gloves on the front of the ring to give Carbide a good tickle! I only ever got one of them back - there was no trace of the other! Anyway, you all saw what happened. It's strangely satisfying watching a machine you know well disintergrate below you. The spectacle was astonishing. Dave Moulds later said he was surprised how good a job Carbide did on us. I don't think we were, he's just a very nice man. Anyway, we got a trollyfull of bits back and wheeled our new bag o' Nuts back to the bench.
Another note here - despite what you saw on TV with Dave Moulds offering to help fix Nuts so that we could take on Terrorhurtz, he never did. This is not a criticism of Dave, he had a lot of work to do himself on Carbide, but some have suggested he was the reason we got back into the arena. He wasn't. Our help came from Team Foxic on the next bench and Team Gabriel, who gave us a box of spare motor parts to help us nurse ours back into existence. Craig from Foxic helped us dismantle the motors and gearboxes and reassemble them. It was his efforts, and our efforts, that got Nuts going again. Alex even managed to get the red minibot working!
Another shout out here for Gillian from Team Razer. The minute we wheeled what was left of Nuts out of the arena she was over offering to go make us tea, get us food, offering hugs and support. She's amazing! We owe those people a lot.
The moment Nuts spluttered back into life on that pit bench, Rory beamed. We were tired, hot and dirty but it was euphoric. We later heard reports that the warm-up guy had announced to the audience that Nuts was alive again and the whole place errupted into applause. We felt as warm and fuzzy as our wasitcoats, but we really did think that one smack from Terrorhurtz would finish us off for good. But at least we could show up! After our exhibition of fun with the Behemoth boys the day before we decided that we should try our best to take Terrorhurtz to a judges' decision, knowing this would grant Behemoth a place in the heat final and knock Terrorhurtz out. We didn't have anything against John Reid's beautiful machine, and indeed thought we'd be doomed on the first blow anyway, but it was the only reason we could find to put up a fight.
As activate was called on our final match, I asked Rory how it was driving. "Lumpy," he said, "Verrrrrrrry luuummmmpy." My favourite quote from our time there. We have no idea how we survived that final battle but we did. In fact, we liked Terrorhurtz so much, that we put a ring on it! ;-)
So that was our time at Robot Wars over with. We had rumbled with legends like Razer, Behemoth and Terrorhurtz, and "done a Robogeddon" against Carbide, only to rise again for a final moment of glorious silliness. I don't take to praise very well, but even I couldn't deny the amount of people who were saying we'd done good. Cast, crew and audience alike were patting us on the back, and since it has gone out on TV, the love for Nuts has increased tenfold. It's mindblowing to think that we originally thought our robot was just too amateur to even get a place on the series looking back on it now. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, we are all rather stunned by what our daft little machine has done, but I think it proves that there is a space on this wonderful TV show for ANYONE who can get a robot together. If you don't have the knowledge, talent or resources to build the next Razer or Carbide, then think outside the box. Build something designed not to compete, but to simply be different. Really go for it with the theatrics. Remeber it is a TV show. And don't ever back down from a battle, whoever it may be against. Shed builders of the UK, get to it! It is looking fairly likely that we will get another series and you have as much hope of making an impact on it as the engineering superstars do. Get creative, have fun and come and play. It really is the greatest pleasure in the world.
Dave.
ajprice said:
ash73 said:
leglessAlex said:
Out of interest, what would you consider to be 'moving with the times'?
AI programming, sensor detection of enemy robots, voice control, VR headsets, live onboard telemetry, electronic warfare and hacking, walking robots with handheld weapons, power upgrades in the arena, drone airstrikes...?
They had about 6 weeks from the show announcement to filming. In that timeframe, you're not going to build anything with AI, VR, sensors etc.
Option 1, dust off and tweak the original series robot people know (Razer, Terrahurtz etc).
Option 2, enter something from the live competitions (probably most of them).
Option 3, build something not serious and have some fun (Nuts).
Depending on the RW rules, there could be more interesting stuff in the next series. Battlebots allows flying drones and flame weapons, I don't know if RW would allow drones, they didn't allow flame stuff in the old series. There's a bot in BB called Chomp, which has a camera and movement sensors to automatically trigger its axe, and the guy who built Mortis in early RW has a BB bot with arms controlled by RC metal sleeves, the robot copies his arm movement. They had more than 6 weeks notice to get theirs sorted.
peterperkins said:
Too much dross and drivel in between the battles. i don't want to look round the pits or ponder on why x or u lost. Just get on with it!!!
Don't watch a full showing of battle bots then. Christ they've got some over the top milking going on there. Just starting the fight seems to take them about 10 minutes of announcements, flashing lights and pushing "ready" buttons. RW actually felt rather brisk and very much getting on with it!Otispunkmeyer said:
peterperkins said:
Too much dross and drivel in between the battles. i don't want to look round the pits or ponder on why x or u lost. Just get on with it!!!
Don't watch a full showing of battle bots then. Christ they've got some over the top milking going on there. Just starting the fight seems to take them about 10 minutes of announcements, flashing lights and pushing "ready" buttons. RW actually felt rather brisk and very much getting on with it!
This. But BB goes for the full on show as if it was boxing or WWE. Some of the announcers intros are good though... "NASA might be going to Mars, but this robots headed for…Uranus!" Last week's BB, with the first part of the last 32 robots, was 4 fights in 45 minutes (an hour with the TV ads), how many fights were in RW on Sunday?
g4ry13 said:
FourWheelDrift said:
I think they dropped them about series 4 time, dont recall them in 5 6 or 7 on recent Sky 2 and Challenge repeats.
It stopped after series 2. http://robotwars.wikia.com/wiki/Robot_Wars:_The_Fo...
I enjoyed it. Agree with a few of the comments about a bit too much time messing about in the pits but hopefully they'll cut back on that now that they've introduced or re-familiarized viewers with the setup etc.
There didn't seem to be major changes to the returning robots like Terrorhurtz or Behemoth. Although they were a lot faster so I'm guessing that with changes in batteries etc. they are a lot more powerful now than they were back in 2004. Carbide looks to be devastating, an instant favourite.
There didn't seem to be major changes to the returning robots like Terrorhurtz or Behemoth. Although they were a lot faster so I'm guessing that with changes in batteries etc. they are a lot more powerful now than they were back in 2004. Carbide looks to be devastating, an instant favourite.
Having A Barth said:
There didn't seem to be major changes to the returning robots like Terrorhurtz or Behemoth. Although they were a lot faster so I'm guessing that with changes in batteries etc. they are a lot more powerful now than they were back in 2004.
Yes. There have been massive improvements in battery technology in the past 12 years, with powerful Li-ion and LiPo batteries. Some of the bots were running lead acid batteries from mobility scooters, as I recall, back in the day. ClockworkCupcake said:
Having A Barth said:
There didn't seem to be major changes to the returning robots like Terrorhurtz or Behemoth. Although they were a lot faster so I'm guessing that with changes in batteries etc. they are a lot more powerful now than they were back in 2004.
Yes. There have been massive improvements in battery technology in the past 12 years, with powerful Li-ion and LiPo batteries. Some of the bots were running lead acid batteries from mobility scooters, as I recall, back in the day. Gassing Station | TV, Film, Video Streaming & Radio | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff