Robot Combat League?

Anyone watching this?

It's marginally entertaining, but the technology really isn't up to the task. The robots just can't do enough to even match what the simpler ones on BattleBots could do.

Mike

I watched one episode and wasn't thrilled either. Now, Battlebots, that was the name of the show from five or more years ago that had the remote controlled creations of robot hobbyists facing off against each other? That was great, the robot designs in the three weight classes were amazingly inventive. As I recall, the robots could feature almost any weaponry except strapping on an actual firearm to the bot!

yeah all the robots and crews are provided by the show. Rright now it isn't much more than large scale rock'em sock'em robots, since they are virtually all the same robot with very limited attacks and the large bar leading from the spines to the controls.

When the contestants design and build their robots, and have their own pit crews, then it will get serious.

BattleBots was fun, but after a while it became pretty obvious that there was an Optimal Bot Design and that anything that deviated from that, no matter how creative or appealing, would be smashed by an Optimal Bot. That kind of took some of the fun out of it for me.

Joe Lee wrote:

Rright now it isn't much more than large scale rock'em sock'em robots, since they are virtually all the same robot with very limited attacks and the large bar leading from the spines to the controls.

When the contestants design and build their robots, and have their own pit crews, then it will get serious.

I agree.
Right now its a bit over produced. The show chooses and provides everything. But, it wouldn't take much to open this up a little, and give the contestants a few customizable options for their robots. They already have the weapon option, but use it so sparingly it doesn't matter.

kurt wilcken wrote:

BattleBots was fun, but after a while it became pretty obvious that there was an Optimal Bot Design and that anything that deviated from that, no matter how creative or appealing, would be smashed by an Optimal Bot. That kind of took some of the fun out of it for me.

Thats pretty much whats going on here but they have tried to minimize the differences. That and there are some crap that seems shady...

The last episode ended in what seemed an unfair knockout.

Spoiler....

These things seem to break in the middle quite a bit, losing an shock absorber type thing that act like dominos and if it happens in the first two rounds its called and the team gets twenty minutes to be up and running. And i assume substantially down in points. But the last fight ended after one team was ahead all three rounds but ovbiously the pit crew didnt notice wear and tear that lead to a late third round break. Which was called a "knock out."

Maybe they should have taken a page from nascar and replaced their critical parts going into the last round. It struck me that if the one crew had hit at all well the break may have hsppened sooner, possibly in a round where they could have had 20 minutes to fix it, would lasted to the end the third round.

But instead the team that was behind in points and did less damage over all, benefitted from their own mediochrity.

Timing is everything.