re: Battle Bots championship tonight

We are down to 4 so I will quit posting and go watch and drink my last beer dont want to spoil any of the dvr crowd sure is a good tournament though

I want one of these guys to make their robot out of carbon fiber and see how it does.

Yeah that’s good to know. Had a hard time finding out last year what the future was looking like.

Tombstone is a really cleverly designed robot and the team that built it are obviously very smart people, but the main dude is such a high brow douche. Can’t stand listening to him being interviewed.

That blade snapped and it went into a death wobble

For all that Ray Billings was proclaimed the master of kinetic energy, he just met the uber-master of kinetic energy.

The energy transfer needed to break a rapidly spinning block of metal has to have been huge, even though BiteForce's vertical spinner was much smaller than, say, Minotaur's so Biteforce transferred more energy with a hit.. (am I on the right path here?)

The other thing re Ray Billings. He boasted that he had no defense, nor did he need one. He was total offense.

This season, exposed wheels were such easy to destroy targets.

And then there was the need to be continually re-evaluating your bot. The old timers who have only changed their bots slightly in the many years we've been watching them....some are good drivers, but they need to speed up much faster. Some need a better feel for upgrades during the competition.

And then there is the lesson to be learned from Hydro, the first Hydraulic powered weapon. Fast response driving with a fast weapon.

And a quibble: need a bit more uniformity in when the count for a knock out begins as well as what stops it. Crabbing on two wheels ?

Damn I'm going to miss these bots.

man Im not very smart when it comes to this stuff. accountant not an engineer I really want to know what makes Bite force so much better. anyone?

Silly answer: the main man has a great name Paul Ventimilia (however it's spelled). That name could win at anything nerdy.

Longer answer: PM takes this very seriously and has said, repeatedly, that he can see where he did something wrong, or Bite Force didn't do what he expected it to in a match and he makes adjustments after every match. He wins one match at a time

He looks at the potential opponents and engineers / tweaks Bite Force to fight each one.

Bite Force's superstructure, the white skeleton wasn't damaged (IIRC) by anybody this year. It protects the wheels pretty much perfectly. It's low And it's so low that a lot of vertical spinners happen above it.

Then look at his vertical spinner. It's protected on both sides and it's small but vicious.

A number of matches towards the end of this season had the winner saying in advance, the lowest bot will win. Bite Force is low by construction, and the ramps at the front have a large number of options, all designed for it to be the lower of the two bots out there.

He spins up fast, he moves fast and he has so much practice as an excellent driver. And he protects his bot: it's innards, its wheels, and its weapon.

Maybe if Tombstone had used a different horizontal spinner, but Bite Force went low and (snap of fingers) it was over for Tombstone.