There were two main problems with this project. One was that a different amount of people entered competitions (for example, Ruination and CBBR both had just 9 people entering, while Armageddon had 20 people!). This meant that I couldn't use a hard count of how many designs were entered into a competition, since a tournament like Armageddon, that had 80 designs, would obviously have more bricks than Ruination. Instead I took the design count as a ratio of the total population, to show what percentage of designs in that competition were a horizontal spinner, or a lifter, and then compared those percentages across all tournaments.
The second problem was defining the designs. I tried to keep a limited amount of design types (Striker, for example, did not get its own Treads category, but instead was lumped in with the bricks, while the new Klarinette got lumped in with the Crusher/Clamper). Here's how I classified everything:
Flipper
Anything that uses a jerking motion to lift a robot
Lifter
Anything that uses a smooth motion to lift a robot
Brick
Un-armed robots, or robots who's primary method of competing was its drivetrain.
Horizontal Spinner
Cage, bar, disc spinners.
Vertical Spinner
Anything thin enough to not be labled as a drum.
Drum
Egg-beaters, vertical 'racks', and drums.
Ring/FBS
Ring spinners and shell spinners.
Axe/Hammer
Axes and hammers.
Punchbot
Both Probot-styled Punchbots, and pneumatic spikes.
Thwack
Melty-brained and Sit and Spinner thwacks. Translational spinners included.
Overhead Thwack
All Overkill style thwacks.
Multibot
All multibots, regardless of weapon.
Crusher/Clamper
Razer crushers, Complete Control clampers, and robots that had a combination of ax/hammer and a lifter that could conceivably be used to control the opponent.
And then I simply went through the signups and tallied who I felt belonged where. I don't think my allocation of certain robots would be too far off from what everyone else would declare, but people are welcome to take their own tallies and compare them to mine if you want to see the raw stats
Anyway here are the results:
(All of the stats together)
(Individual stats)
