FRR: No Mercy - Pre-season Predictions

GF93 · Post by **GF93** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:45 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Feb 9 2014, 06:44 PM</dd></dl><div>I think Jackal will do the best out of your machines, but that's just me.

[/quote]That, I can probably agree with. People have said he's a good machine, and even better considering he's a Middleweight- I've not been much cop there as of late, but hopefully that should change once Jackal's in there.

succotash_54 · Post by **succotash_54** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:14 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Feb 9 2014, 06:05 PM</dd></dl><div>13. Yellow Cloud - Any decent 2WD or hinged wedge will rape it. Philip, where'd the plow skirts go?! D:
[/quote]The only bot of mine that had "plow-skirting" was Warper. Yellow Cloud at one point had a plow design, and at another had hinged skirts attached to the wedges. But never plow-skirting. Also, I thought we'd moved past the mythology that hinged trumps static wedge each and every time. Guess that was a joke. Btw, if you look closely, toward the lip of each wedge, I lowered the chassis one pixel more, so that it's flush with the wheel and thus ground. Won't be that easy to get under.

Post by **That Kode Guy** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:17 pm

Yes, but a 4WD+ static wedge is never going to be flush with the ground, as the robot won't rest on the wedge, only the wheels, so they're be clearance under it. 2WD static wedges are basically huge hinged wedges.

succotash_54 · Post by **succotash_54** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:27 pm

It doesn't need to rest on the ground in order to be flush with it. Besides which, I repeat, "I thought we'd moved past the mythology that hinged trumps static wedge each and every time." I know I didn't buy into that when I wrote results.

NFX · Post by **NFX** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:37 pm

A four-wheel drive, or even a three-wheel drive wedge will not be flush with the ground. There will need to be clearance underneath it, or the drive wheels will be lifted off the ground and fail to operate correctly.

The minimum number of points of contact an object needs to be stable is three. In a two-wheel drive machine, the third point is the wedge, so yes, it would be flush with the ground there. But if you add any more wheels, the wedge is no longer needed as a third point of contact, so is not flush with the ground, and making it a point of contact would render at least one of the wheels redundant.

Post by **That Kode Guy** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:41 pm

Philip, how is that even possible? A 2WD wedge rests on the wheels and wedge, because it can't rest on just the two wheels. Same with a hinged wedge, pretty much. However if you have 3 or more wheels on a bot with a static wedge, you're going to be able to balance on those wheels and not rest on a wedge. To get the most out of a wedge, you're going to have to lean on it and give it weight.

So yeah, a hinged wedge would definitely trump a static wedge every time. Provided the static wedge has 3 or more wheels.

GF93 · Post by **GF93** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:45 pm

How would skirts held down by for example, springs, air pressure or magnets or some other outside force work against a hinged or static wedge?

succotash_54 · Post by **succotash_54** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:53 pm

You can design a wedge so that it AND the wheels touch the ground. Perfectly flush with each other. The bot will still be able to move and the wedge maintains its lowness.

Also, a static wedge has the weight of the bot behind it, whereas a hinged does not. Besides which, I believe there have been real robotic matches where the static got under a hinged. It's not a hierarchy (loerarchy?). especially if it's STEEP wedge skirting.

Funny thing is, when YC DID have hinged wedges attached to the static ones, it got ridiculed for being needlessly redundant, and that a hinged wedge didn't add any extra lowness to the bot.

Post by **That Kode Guy** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 11:05 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>succotash_54</dt><dd>Feb 9 2014, 08:53 PM</dd></dl><div>Funny thing is, when YC DID have hinged wedges attached to the static ones, it got ridiculed for being needlessly redundant, and that a hinged wedge didn't add any extra lowness to the bot.[/quote]Are you talking about the Revolution YC? Well it certainly didn't deserve that ridicule, those hinged wedges would have helped a lot.

I still maintain that having 3 or more wheels on a robot is going to make a static wedge of little-to-worth. You might very, VERY lightly brush the ground but it won't have the same leverage against a 2WD static wedge.

Also, I'll correct myself a bit. Hinged wedging is a variable, depending on how it's done. I'll agree that if it's steep wedging, chances are it won't be effective. But in most cases they would be able to defeat a 3WD+ static wedge.

succotash_54 · Post by **succotash_54** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 12:44 am

I don't mind it as a generality. The thought and theory are lovely. But calling it hard and fast as sure as Jack beats 10 in War is neither right nor realistic. IIRC, Biohazard had to shave a little off the bottoms of his hinged skirts because they kept getting caught in grooves between tiles on the Battlebox. That's where my results had to be drawn from that context. Get the spherical chicken out of the vacuum. In real life combat, a hinged wedge won't always hold up. A solid wedge on a 4WD will get under a hinged or spring-loaded from time to time, and I wasn't afraid to reflect that reality in our competitions.

I also thought that at some point in the future, we should try a tourney with an added "Sux2BU" feature, where each week, one robot is selected at random to just malfunction, because that happens in real fights. Something just didn't go like it should have (SoW is off-balance, they forgot to put fresh batteries in Tazbot, Wacky Compass can't get his weapons working, etc.), and fights are sometimes decided that way. So I thought we should do that... with the understanding that once a team loses a fight because they drew the Sux2BU short straw, they can't draw it for the rest of the season. That would be a killer thing to have, and really make the final weeks of regular competition even more harrowing.

NWOWWE · Post by **NWOWWE** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 8:57 am

I don't think anyone said it was 100% that a static wedge would always lose to a hinged wedge, so I'm not sure where you keep getting that from. Though obviously you still have some belief in the wedge hierarchy yourself since you have magnets on Babaganoush even though I thought we banned magnets a long time ago specifically after bots like Drive and Falling Down And you were around for those so you can't plead ignorance from time away), but whatever.

Let's be realistic though. You're basically entering an 8+ year old design and it's arguably been de-evolved from previous versions of it you've entered. I say arguably because the last two versions of Yellow Cloud really weren't all that great. The plow version could have been pretty decent, but you gave it ridiculous drive set-up that didn't work. The hinged wedge version had a decent theory behind it, but you also had nothing to hold the bots on the hinged wedge and it was basically flat at ground level so it was really like an open dustpan that bots could easily drive off of.

Getting back to Yellow Cloud as entered, take a look at his wedge and take a look at all the other wedges entered in SHW. You're going to have to be busting your ass to get the advantage on most of them, because in an "all things equal" showdown I seriously don't see Yellow Cloud coming out on top on a regular/consistent basis. It's not impossible and come to think of it the Wedge stat may have actually been able to help you here if it was still around. Oh well.

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Quote:</dt><dd> </dd></dl><div>I also thought that at some point in the future, we should try a tourney with an added "Sux2BU" feature, where each week, one robot is selected at random to just malfunction, because that happens in real fights. Something just didn't go like it should have (SoW is off-balance, they forgot to put fresh batteries in Tazbot, Wacky Compass can't get his weapons working, etc.), and fights are sometimes decided that way. So I thought we should do that... with the understanding that once a team loses a fight because they drew the Sux2BU short straw, they can't draw it for the rest of the season. That would be a killer thing to have, and really make the final weeks of regular competition even more harrowing.[/quote]I hated this suggestion back when you first proposed it and I don't like any more now. It's not really in keeping with the spirit of how CFL works.

1. I've always maintained that as writers we've made matches a lot more competent than they would be in real life. Real life fights can have a lot more "dead air" time when basically nothing is really happening than we ever would have happen in a CFL result. Unless your RP was complete garbage people generally don't run into walls/hazards or completely whiff on targeting their opponent.

2. Mathematically it completely fails. If we were to implement this in No Mercy for example, then having one bot at random selected each week and then having that team removed from the pool you're left with two very shitty possibilities. Either someone actually runs the risk of this happening to them DURING THE PLAYOFFS (God forbid even during the FINALS and please let this happen to someone like either you or GF who are on record for having the worst reactions to losing in the playoffs), or you have a few teams actually escape having it happen to them during the season at all (and please let someone like me NOT get the free pass and Kody does so I have even more reason to set him adrift :D )! Simply put there aren't enough weeks in the regular season to accommodate this rotating schedule. And I'm not much for stacking multiple "lol Sucks to be you" fights in one week because dealing with the one person who got shit on that week is likely bad enough, as a Staff member I'm sure not keen to deal with multiple such people in one week.

3. Unlike you I don't particular like crapping on people's hard effort in RP's. If you wanted to do something like this against someone who turned in godawful last minute or even a joke RP, then by all means do so cause they're kind of asking for it anyway. And wait for the shitstorm that could happen if someone with a good RP drew the bad straw against an opponent that turn in a crappy RP. You can't even artificially block this from happening because it completely defeats the "random" nature of the whole idea.

playzooki · Post by **playzooki** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 10:30 am

Maybe an idea would be a reliability stat?

Post by **That Kode Guy** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 10:35 am

Why should we have to worry about reliability? This isn't real life and no robot in this competition is going to break down retardedly in the middle of a fight.

GF93 · Post by **GF93** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 11:02 am

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Feb 10 2014, 10:35 AM</dd></dl><div>Why should we have to worry about reliability? This isn't real life and no robot in this competition is going to break down retardedly in the middle of a fight.

[/quote]Aye. If reliability were such a big factor, odds are we would end up having matches like this...

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Quote:</dt><dd> </dd></dl><div>
Big-ass Rammer VS Spinner from the West

And they're off! The Big-ass Rammer jets out of his corner, and immediately delivers a huge slam that flips the helpless Spinner from the West over...but what's this? The POWER SOURCE is DISABLED on the Big-ass Rammer, and he's stopped moving! As Spinner from the West is technically still scuttling about on its side and not plagued by a shitty reliability stat, he's still in there.

Spinner from the West wins by Technical Melting at 0:03
[/quote]

playzooki · Post by **playzooki** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 11:49 am

that was a good fight. i really wanna see that in animated form

but yeah it was just a suggestion, fair enough if you dont want it. i think there may have been a thing like that once on fra that had a reliability stat. idk though.