How the BattleBots rules have changed over time

rules they are there to preserve order in society some say rules are made to be broken others follow them right to the last letter in battlebots it's no different every season a new battlebots rule set gets released to the fans and builders explaining everything from what you can put in your robot to what happens if you start a rebellion in the pits but how did we end up with the guidelines that battlebots released for 2021 what events and dramas have happened in the past that have caused some of these rules to be put in place well that's what we'll be discussing today in order to make my job slightly easier most of this video focuses on the modern era of the show but first we're going to take a look at this document i found from 1999 as you can see it outlines the definition and weight bonus that walker bots received in this time period pretty generous bonuses right especially if you were a shuffler but like son of wayachi nowadays we define shuffler bots as robots with legs that move continuously on a system of cams and linkages like this but back then there was no distinction between a true walker bot like mechadon and anything else that just didn't use wheels that was until some of why archie came along it was illegible for the weight bonus because it didn't have wheels but it wasn't using that extra weight for locomotion so now why archie's notorious cage spinner took it all the way to the season 3.0 finals where i beat favorites biohazard and became the heavyweight champion however the rules were promptly changed and shufflebots no longer received the weight bonus of true walkers with independent legs all of a sudden some of wayachi had to fight robots that were no longer half its weight and it could never really replicate its 2001 success but that's not where the walkerbot story ends if we fast forward to 2016 the second reboot season we can see that there is no mention of any weight bonuses in this rule set legs or otherwise and if there are then they're obviously not made very clear that's probably the reason why the only walker from that year is rex who didn't even need a bonus because it's a gyro walker that uses the forces from its weapon to move then in the last couple of years or so battlebots have quite radically changed their policy on walkers ali's three walker bots including trump and this huge thing known as gloomweaver were accepted into the 2020 season of course we only got to see trump this influx of walker bots was caused by an exciting addition to the rules that allows true walkers to be 500 pounds that's more than twice the weight of your typical wheeled robot but they didn't stop there robots that don't use wheels or legs such as shufflers may be eligible for a custom weight bonus if battlebots decide that it's justified and it's not just an exploitation of the rules they've hit the nail on the head with this one in my opinion because there will never be one blanket rule that fits all these different types of robots it allows for variativity and creativity but also includes the judgment of those most knowledgeable about the show so we probably won't be ending up with another son of wyatchi situation anytime soon but we do still end up with some remarkable works of engineering we now return on our journey through the rule book to the qualifying round of 2015 where a ghost raptor was about to face complete control and i'm sure you guys already know how the story goes at almost every single battlebots tournament after 1999 nets and any kind of entanglement weapons were completely forbidden it's just how it is the reason isn't because they nullify spinners as much but rather because of how frustrating they are to watch and fight all they do is cause a hindrance in the arena with very little skill involved 2015 being the first reboot season had a lightened up rule set according to eric young builder of complete control the only entanglement devices disallowed were ball bearings and fishing lines nets were so disallowed for such a long period of time the battlebots forgot to add them to the list anyway complete control entered the arena with a net concealed in the gift box ghost raptor was immediately entangled after the first hit much the annoyance of his team but the match was stopped then that removed after a lot of booing and restarted despite derek young and the team's excellent spot ghost raptor went on to win the fight with a broken spinner this fight very much highlights the kind of unofficial rules held amongst the builders nets weren't mentioned in the rules directly but most people would expect you not to use them in such a way it's just good sportsmanship however after this the embargo nets officially resumed within the rule set from here we travel to 2016 the exciting second reboot season of battlebots for many casual fans this was the introduction to robot combat as a sport and many fan favorites such as yeti minotaur bombshell and cobalt made their debut here some of the most unforgettable moments of the modern era happened that year but as iconic as this season was it was plagued by questionable judges decisions trump vs disco inferno brutus versus lockjaw my personal favorite soulblaze versus razorback my swordplay spends three minutes speeding around the arena ramming razorback into the walls and manages to lose the fight for not using its primary weapon it gets even more bizarre when you read the 2016 tournament rules aggression is judged by the frequency severity boldness and effectiveness of attacks deliberately initiated by robot against his opponent using his powered weapons okay fair enough attacking with a wedge or other passive armor is considered to be a defensive action and does not count towards aggression continuous attacks without using a powered weapon can reduce a robot's aggression score you what saw blaze must have been in minus numbers by the end of that match i can understand since the show was trying to gain the intention of you know casual viewers we don't care that much for pushing matches that there was a lot of emphasis on you know big dangerous primary weapons in the first reboot seasons but our passive armor rule is just nonsense you'd think after the response from the community this might have been changed for 2018 but no it's still there but this time it's in red and uses the word comparative it appears to have been addressed by the time 2020 judging guide was released since rhyming opponents into the walls somewhat counts towards aggression now and currently it's a good balance the rules still put emphasis on weaponry which discourages robots from just trying to push their opponents around but it also stops decisions from going the entirely wrong way as well several fights in 2020 would have been affected if this chain wasn't implemented i'm sure you will remember beta versus rotator beta chose not to use its hammer for the entire fight because rotator spinner was facing upwards leaving it as a wedge that repeatedly threw a rotator into the walls beta's hammer did end up being cut off by rotator but it picked up the victory sparking criticism from some of the builders especially those with spinners for years people have been saying that battlebots rules favor spinners but changes such as this can give control bots a fighting chance once again so overall a good change but long overdue while this was going on there was another box called helicopter preparing to fight helicopter was a massive bot with extendable cable hammers that spawned like 200 miles per hour madly powerful and the story of helicopter is quite fascinating since everyone seemed to have a different idea about what happened to it some say it caught fire some say it was too unsafe and was banned that was until one of the team members told us the full story on reddit i'll leave the link in the description if you want to read all of it it's quite long but here's an extract from it we spun up everything worked we slowly ramped up this was running for safety so no need to push things hard when the hammers were cruising at 1200 rpm i saw another rag shoot off for about 10 feet and suck back towards the bot due to the vortex we were creating the rag entered the bot through the gap between the base and the spinning shell went through some three-inch cam followers and started ripping the studs out of the aluminium then hit the battery box and started spinning the lipo batteries around in the shell then we had a huge fire in the box burned to the ground that sounds scary to summarize the rest they rebuilt the box with a different weapon config reduced the speed to about 30 percent but basketballs were still quite nervous about allowing them to compete they ultimately decided to withdraw from the competition but how does this tie into the rules for one thing the tip speed limit was changed from 200 miles per hour to 250 miles per hour although most parts don't need to run higher than 250 miles per hour anyway for the reason of getting a good bite on an opponent secondly any spinning weapons made of multiple parts like helicopters which was cables hammers and a shell essentially needs to be pre-approved by battlebots and they specifically request detailed statistics about the weapon as well like tip speed and energy and such safety is paramount if something goes crashing through the battle box the reputation of the sport goes crashing with this any rule needs to ensure safety is a good rule so thanks heather chopper fast forward two years we end up in 2018 the first year of the exciting new fight card format and of course the last chance rumble a rumble of six machines that would decide who gets the 16th seed the six spots were a red devil gigabyte valkyrie lucky duck and bombshell so it was chaos for the first minute or so bombshell got some good attacks with the spinner and eliminated red devil but suddenly stopped moving in the meantime duck basically tidied up the arena with some excellent attacks on valkyrie lucky and even used gigabyte as an arena hazard at one point but in the final seconds bombshell came back to life it didn't even hit anything it just moved around slightly remember that passive armor reduces aggression rule from 2016. yeah duck lost the fight despite doing all the work it's attacked on mostly rounds and lifts so yeah under the rules it did lose out on points rumbles are strange and the bots don't get counted out individually so bombshell despite being mostly immobile was allowed to be considered for the decision as far as i can tell that rule hasn't yet been changed in fact as we mentioned before the whole primary weapon rule itself has since been rectified but the added complication of the rumble made this incident stand out more duck and bombshell did settle the dispute with a rematch in 2019 which duck won so justice was eventually served in 2019 we saw the debut of deep six the biggest vertical spinner ever seen in battlebots it caused mayhem often taking itself out along with his opponents in its fight with nearly yellowbot from the uk it knocked out its opponent before falling forward and leaving a huge gash in the floor this resulted in the introduction of rule known colloquially as the deep six rule which limits the weight of individuals spinning bars and discs and drums and egg beaters and things to 80 pounds and spinning shells in cages to 120 pounds previously the only kind of limit on spinners like that was that they had to come to a standstill within 60 seconds but the battle box isn't invincible and a limit like this prevents expensive and more importantly dangerous damage to the arena furthermore you know those 500 pound walkers we were talking about before it stops them from strolling into the arena with a shell weighing more than the opponent as hilarious as that would be so just in case team wyatchi were getting any ideas for a 500 pound son of wayachi it's not happening now for some fun ones free shipping single-handedly caused their crackdown on flamethrowers that were longer than the four-foot limit after beating bronco it shot its flamethrower into the ceiling in celebration very much angering the producers apologies i couldn't actually find a clip of this flames aren't considered weapons anyway since they look more destructive than they are but battlebots decided that after this every flamethrower system has to be completely removable and that they can tell teams to get rid of them whenever they want to robot in 2019 this innocent looking amphibian used expanding foam to create its frog-like appearance but it caused such a mess in the arena the expanding foam was banned henceforth they had to switch to vacuum form plastic next season and finally the thing you've all been waiting for hydra vs huge if you haven't heard about this match it caused a huge commotion in the community huge is a toolbox with a spinner in the center and hydra is a flipper but they attach this spike crack looking thing for this fight that would block huge's weapon the rack didn't block the path of hydra's weapon and they showed that before the match they just chose not to use it strategically because they'd lose control of huge they did deserve to win the fight because well huge can and didn't really do anything attachments like that have never been banned before and i hope they're never banned because adapting to the opponent is a very important aspect of the sport battlebots however did threaten to introduce a penalty for intentionally not using a weapon but i don't think they picked up as much support for that as they'd hoped there was a new addition to the rules however known as corralling this was caused by hydra keeping huge in the corner but not physically touching it he just couldn't have escaped even if it wanted to jake hewett tried to get away with this but the ref dealt with it quite swiftly now it's all official if robot refuses to listen to the referee who's telling it to stop keeping an opponent in the corner they can be counted out themselves quite a good deterrent although i don't think anyone was going to try that strategy again anyway because of the backlash hydro vs huge isn't a situation that will happen repeatedly it was simply hydra adapting to an opponent that would have definitely otherwise destroyed them spectacularly most teams won't need to do that now because the way to beat huge has pretty much been revealed anyway try and get in the path of the spinner and stop her from getting a good hit like the plush did this match it wasn't an exciting match at all to be honest and many felt that it wasn't even a fight but seeing as the rack didn't interfere with the part of hydra's weapon there's no rule that can be implemented really that stops hydra from using such an attachment that i can think of anyway what are your thoughts on the matter let me know down in the comments thank you all very much for watching this video i know it's been a while but you know life gets in the way sometimes you know it is excited to see the return of battlebots for two new seasons at least and it's coming to netflix here in the uk which is lovely are there any rules that i missed again let me know down below in the comments if you liked the video please consider subscribing and i hope to continue to make these and i'll see you all very soon bye

Channel: Hex

Views: 1,619,622

Rating: 4.8473678 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: nZ2dRI1W1Y0

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Ok_Faithlessness_259]

I didn't realize that shufflers might be able to get a weight bonus until I watched this video. I think allowing for it is a great idea and I'd like to see a shuffler do well.