<div class='spoiler_toggle'>this post is kinda big, my apologies if the size annoys you. may also contain minor spoilers for gears awaken. you have been warned</div><div class="spoiler" style="display:none;"> I watched the Battlebots Gears Awaken thing earlier today and a weapon used by Black Ice caught my attention. Black Ice had a magnetic bar it could drop on the floor to block off driving paths, take hits from weapons, and such. It kinda failed at that, but I liked the concept enough to try and design a bot for ARC around it.
Keep in mind that literally everything here is subject to change, including the name and the color scheme. Current working title is Drop Zone.
So at first glance, we see a pretty typical rammer-type thing with a hinged wedge and those bendy plastic wheelguards. The back looks a bit strange, though. That's the thing that gets dropped. Big ol' brick of metal, large magnetized surfaces on the top and bottom, painted green for convenience. Let's get a better angle on that.
It's being held in place by those arms, which drop the bar by rotating into those slots and going inside the bot. They're shaped and positioned specifically to fully fit inside without hitting any internal parts while also being able to hold the bar well enough to drive around without dropping it accidentally. They also are not magnetic, so we don't have any weird accidents.
Here we can properly see the size of the bar in proportion to the rest of the bot, with the holding arms retracted. It's pretty big, as it must be in order to stop charging opponents.
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So here's my train of though as I was designing this, in a sort of problem/solution format:
Problem: The bar used by Black Ice was clearly ineffective. My guess is that the magnets weren't powerful enough, the bar itself was too light to work on heavyweights, or otherwise there simply wasn't enough force holding the bar on the floor.
Solution: Make the bar the main weapon and design the bot as a lightweight. Black Ice had three active weapons, each taking up weight. Naturally, the bar could only be so heavy. The magnets helped make up for that, but there's only so much a magnet can do. Making the bar the only weapon allows me to actually make it big enough to be effective. Furthermore, higher weight classes tend to have bots with more powerful drive motors, but for the most part, a magnet is just a magnet, more or less unaffected by weight class. I believe that as you go up the weight classes, these bars become less and less effective as a result. A lightweight may be able to make good use of it, as its opponents won't be able to push it around very well. Ideally I'd make a featherweight out of this but there's a bit of a long wait for the next Bot-O-Rama so it's a lightweight for now.
Problem: Carrying something on the rear of the bot heavy enough to stop a lightweight with help from magnets might make the bot back-heavy and susceptible to pulling wheelies, which would cause the bar to slide off and detach accidentally.
Solution: The rear wheels are slightly larger than the front wheels.
This angles the entire chassis forward, forcing the bar to rest against the inner part of the holding area, instead of solely on the bottom arm. This guarantees that the weight is shifted forward slightly, keeping the center of mass near the center of geometry to minimize the risk of wheely-ing.
Problem: The bar is a large proportion of the bot, so wheel placement becomes tricky. Exposed wheels are the obvious solution, but then spinners are suddenly that much more of a problem.
Solution: Light wheel protection, using the plastic material like Vorpal Bunny has protecting its wheels. I don't think they'll stand up to lightweight spinners all that well, but if they can save the wheels from a direct shot once then they're worth having.
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The weapon stat would probably control the holding arms, and the bar's armor I guess would be the base armor for the bot, so stats might look something like this:
-Speed: 8
-Traction: 7
-Torque: 3
-Weapon: 1
-Armor: 11
So basically, about the same as a brick with a flamethrower or a powered wedge.</div>