Defensive Strategies

Remember, if your bot can dish it, that doesn't mean it can take it. Bots get more destructive every time they compete as new destructive designs come out and one must be prepared. Included are the various techniques for Stayin Alive as it were.

Armor is the most important of the defenses because it will make sure that your bot can take a few hits and not get terribly destroyed. There are many choices for armor so I will try to pick out all materials I can think of and tell you the good the bad and the ugly.

Armor
Material Good Bad Final Verdict
Aluminum plate Light. fairly stiff. Easy to find. Rather stiff and easy to mill. Comes in all shapes and sizes Not too strong. Most alloys can be bent easily. Can be easily pierced by strong hammers and rams. Generally standard aluminum is not good armor. Some stronger alloys, such as 7075 can make a good strong shell for your internal junk. Just don't go in with 6061 alloy diamond plate and expect to live through a bout with the hammers.
Acrylic (Plexiglas) Very Light, clear, comes in all colors. Easily cracked, pierced, cut, shattered, and otherwise broken DO NOT USE. You might as well use aluminum.
Steel Very strong. Wide variety of alloys. Comes in all shapes and sizes. Easily welded. Can be very hard. Cheap. Most alloys are VERY heavy. Not good for a light or middleweight robot, but great for the upper weight classes
Titanium Freakishly strong. Lighter than steel. Variety of alloys can be very light or very very strong, even both. EXPENSIVE. Hard to work with. Breaks your drill quite easily. Very hard to weld Good if you have the money and machines to do it.
Polycarbonate (lexan) Very light. Great impact resistance. Easy to drill and cut to fit your needs. Comes in a few different colors. A tad expensive, can be cut easily by killsaws and saw-bots. Can't be welded to metal frame. Good for most applications except killsaw armor


SRiMechs
Another important defensive strategy is the SRiMech, or Self Righting Mechanism. This is pretty important if your robot is succeptable to being flipped (high ground clearance) or cannot drive on its back. Srimechs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and many times are implemented into their weaponry as is the case with Mortis and our own Ground Zero among many others. This allows us to flip ourselves back over without spending our weight on a seconadry system to self right such as the actuating antenna on Vlad the Impaler. Some Srimechs are fast, such as the ones on T-Minus or Strange Brew who both have pneuamatic Srimechs, some are just slow enough to get the job done such as on Mortis who's arm is electrically actuated. Either way they are a great way to spend your extra weight or at least try to integrate into a current weapons design.

Skirts
These aren't your father's skirts! A skirt refers to any external, hinged material that keeps contact with the ground to guard against wedges and to accentuate the effectiveness of one's own wedge (ooh! big words!). These have been used most effectively on Heavyweight champion Biohazard. They are NOT easy to do well. The anti-wedge skirts need to be stiffer than all hell and resist bending to be effective (such as titanium), or very soft and flexible (such as rubber or leather), to be truly effective. A good strategy if you can get some nice thick titanium.