| Weapon Type |
Pros |
Cons
| Twists |
Who uses it? |
| Wedges |
A wedge is a simple inclined plane designed to interrupt it's opponent's drivetrain and push them around, even flip them over. It is simple, proven effective, and widely used. |
It's boring. The judges tend to lean in favor of active weaponry when making decisions. Wedges have been around since the beginning and many feel they are uncreative and should be shunned. |
Wedges with lifting arms similar to Voltronic, Biohazard, and Strange Brew have all of the advantages of wedges with the excitement and added effectiveness of active weaponry. Rammstein has a pneumatic punch on his wedge, and malvolio has a spinning titanium bar on his. Hinges are also used on Biohazard to ensure contact with the ground at all times. |
La Machine, Bad Attitude, The Crusher, Subject To Change Without Reason, countless others. |
| Passive Spikes and Rammers |
Once again, a very simple design. A heavy bot moving at high speeds can puncture even very heavy armor with a direct hit as seen with Grey Matter vs. Minion. A normal rammer only delivers the stored Kinetic Energy into the target in an attempt to break something inside instead of puncturing it. |
A very beefy drivetrain is an absolute must. The bot needs to have a high top speed and a lot of torque to get UP to that speed to boot. This is not one of the most successful designs, but it is a quick one. |
The spike could also be used as a lifting bar a la Vladiator and Hercules. |
Grey Matter, Kill-o-Amp, MaddGoth, Death By Monkeys, many others. |
| Drivetrain Spinners (thwackbots) |
This is the simplest way to be able to do real damage to another robot. A 120 pound machine spinning at 90mph with a big steel spike on the end is definately gonna hurt something. Nothing active is needed for this, just a long arm with a spike on it connected to a couple wheels. This is a good place to start unless you plan on doing a "meltybrain" spinner . |
They are typically not mobile while spinning, though some have developed systems known as "tornado drive" or "Meltybrain" tha use onboard computers to move while spinning. They also need fairly beefy motors to get up to a dangerous speed within only a couple rotations and do damage asap. With the high spinning speed, there is generally a high straight translational speed while not spinning which could be difficult to control. |
Ilya Polyokov of Blade Runner fame developed a system to allow his bot to spin and move at the same time. This has also been done with Tesla's Tornado, and Herr Gepounden. In a bit of a class of its own are Y-pout and WhyNot which each use three wheels and a mechanical Navbot system that physically turns their wheels to move. These hit VERY hard, much harder than any thwackbot (or just about any spinbot for that matter) before them. Unfortunately I don't understand this system fully, but it sure looks cool! |
Blade Runner, T-Wrex, Y-pout, many more. |
| Conventional Kinetic Spinners |
These are generally the most destructive bots in the sport. They use electic or gasoline motors to dump watts into a spinning shell/bar/blade/hammer/whatever. A spinning mechanism acts a bit like an energy sponge and absorbs this energy as it spins faster and faster. The crowd loves a good spinner match because parts and sparks are a-flyin! |
The harder you hit, the harder you ARE hit. Spinners live and die by the equation Ke=1/2m*v^2. This means that if a spinner spins twice as fast, it stores 4 times as much energy and thus hits four times as hard. According to newton's third bastard of a law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so as hard as you hit the other guy, the same impact is also delivered to your bot. Spinup timre is also the bane of many a spinner builder, so very high powered motors are needed to get their discs and whatnot up to speed. Son of Whyachi currently uses 2 12-horsepower Briggs & Stratton E-tek motors to do this, while backlash uses a surplus 2.2 horsepower surplus motor. The MagMotor is very popular for this purpose. Lastly if any robot is likely to kill you, this is probably the kind. |
Nightmare and Backlash's blades are placed vertically which can grip and flip opponents with a goood hit as seen in SlamJob vs. Nightmare in season 3.0. Little Drummer Boy's entire front side was protected by a high-speed spinning drum that could hit multiple times. Son of Whyachi and Whyachi's trademark steel cages are adjustable up and down to best attack the opponent. |
Son of Whyachi, Little Drummer Boy, Ziggo, Backlash, Hazard, Malvolio |
| Flippers/lifters/tossers |
These can interrupt an opponent's drivetrain like a wedge, but can also lift them higher allowing them to be flipped over or dammaged when dropped. If the bot is lifted, it can be controlled and thuse paraded around to the various arena hazards. Some lifters are slow like the ones on Biohazard and Voltronic, others are lightning quick with insane amounts of power such as Toro, T-minus, and The Matador. They are powered by electric motors or pneumatics (a small tutorial is available on these two systems under the weapon power section.) Biohazard's arm moves upward and forward to ensure the opponent is flipped over while Toro and his bretheren's arms are designed to throw robots in their weight class several feet into the air. |
Often when a lifting arm goes up it leaves some of the internal parts exposed, though this is easily worked around. |
The super-high-power lifting arm of Toro and his little brothers have yet to be duplicated in sheer awesome power (though Techno Destructo is getting close). The odd suplexing action of Complete Control is quite unique as well. The complicated four-bar mechanism of Biohazard is not seen very often either. |
Biohazard, Toro, T-minus, Complete Control, Revision Z, Strange Brew |
| Overhead Hammers |
Typically a robot's armor is thinnest on top (though that is beginning to change due to the Judge) and a good hammerbot makes use of this. Some are devastatingly powerful such as The Judge, and some are lightning quick and repetitive, such as Deadblow. Next to spinners, these are probably the most destructive robots out there. The Judge can easily pierce 1/8th steel plate and just about anything else out there. Robots such as Deadblow and Frenzy can score many points in a round (the record of well over 100 being held by Deadblow) and impress the judges even if they don't knock the other guy out. |
The hammer needs to get upto a deadly speed within a fraction of a second, which is very difficult to do without obscenely powerful motors or very high power pneumatics. Spinners have the luxury of being able to build up energy over several seconds but hammers don't have that luxury. If the hammer takes a while to actuate (say, 1/2-1 second) it may be difficult to hit a small opponent. The arm is also prone to being torn off as seen with Killerhurtz vs. Mauler in season 2. |
Deadblow's hammer now has a small lifter attachment on it, FreZy's hammer can be used to self-right |
Frenzy, The Judge, Killerhurtz, Deadblow |
| Punches |
Punches are basically the easiest way to use pneumatics. No fancy linkages or gears, just stick a spike on the end of a pneumatic cylidner and fire away! The idea is to puncture the other guy, but that doesn't happen too often. |
They're simple-ish, but weak. You only have as much weight behind the spike as is in the cylinder and no method for maximizing impact such as in a hammer. Any well-armored bot can probably take an infinite number of hits from a punchbot. The rod sticking out is also voulerable to spinners and such. |
Not too much innovation here, but Rammstein has a wedge with his punch. |
Rhino, Patton, Rammstein. |
| Saws |
They cause a great deal of sparks on some metals which is preceived damage to the judges watching. Soft materials such as UHMW and Polycarbonate can be easily cut with a good circular saw. They also don't need the extensive mounting and shock protection that a kinetic spinner would. |
Not the deadliest weapon because you can't cut a moving object. |
Sunshine Lollibot uses his saw as an impact weapon because the teeth are very large and far apart. Village Idiot uses his saws as a flipping mechanism by mounting them vertically at the top of a wedge. |
Sunshine Lollibot, Village Idiot, The Master, BillyBot.
|
| MultiBots |
Multibots are not seen very often, but they're always good for a show. A multibot is 2 or more smaller bots fighting one larger bot, or one mothership bot with smaller orbiting bots to fight one big bot. This allows for the use of two drivers to outwit and outmaneuver the opponent. It's difficult to keep track of more than one opponent. |
If more than half of the weight is knocked out, the bot is considered disabled whether or not there is another machine running. Also each bot has a lower weight so no seriously destructive weapons can be used. Uber-beefy drivetrains must be used to outpush and outmaneuver the bigger robots. Definately "David and Goliath" |
Very unique configuration already, but Chiabot has several very small wedges that come out of it's back, and The Pack Raptors both have lifting arms. |
Pack Raptors, the Swarm, Chiabot, Dumb and Dumber (Eventually) |
| ArtBots |
Very pretty machines generally designed to show off the builder's phenomenal engineering skill. |
Winning matches is generally just a bonus. They don't tend to be very effective. |
They ARE a twist |
Mechadon, Snake, Mongus |
