LAST EDITED ON Mar-16-21 AT 10:52 AM (EDT) by Gryphon (admin)
 
In case no one has watched the last couple of seasons of Battlebots, WPI has had a team in the tournament. Ribbot was kind of a joke last season, but on the most recent season (Just concluded last week on TV) the bot made it as far as the quarterfinals before being knocked out.

So, in celebration of that, here is a link to some of its fightsd on YouTube: Ribbot fights

Craig

They're not the only ones! WPI has another student on the End Game team - a guy named Griffin. Heh. Wonder what happened to End Game this year... =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

i still love the mental image of church of man scumbags being beaten the fuck up by, like, tombstone and witch doctor and so on.

I watched the season with a group of friends this year via a combo of discovery plus, discord, and the black flag.

A lot of them were confused why I kept picking Ribbot to win matches, and my answer was "WPI is a place where just about anything can happen," and I feel like this season rewarded my faith. :)

I enjoyed the season*, and do recommend it and the new Battlebots: Bounty Hunters tournament for those who haven't watched it.

*Minus every time they let Michael Mason or Jake Ewert talk.

>I enjoyed the season*, and do recommend it and the new Battlebots:
>Bounty Hunters tournament for those who haven't watched it.
>
>*Minus every time they let Michael Mason or Jake Ewert talk.

Oh good Christ I know exactly how you feel. Mason's "Tim The Toolman Taylor does a bad impersonation of The Ultimate Warrior" shtick was grating, but Jake Ewert just came across as a fundamentally unpleasant person. I know that Clan Ewert has always been a bunch of deeply objectionable rules lawyers (Son Of Whyachi's title run in 3.0, asaferinstance), but I really wanted to like Hydra, and I did... riiiiight up until the fight with Huge. It's not the attachment that's the issue for me, but Ewert's conduct throughout the fight felt like whiny gamesmanship of the very worst sort. Plus there always seems to be space in the show for their latest Crap Box With Multiple Spinners while a more interesting bot gets rejected - but that's more my weird hatred of the Ewert machines in general.

Me, I'm looking forward to the return of the international contingent next season. So many fantastic bots missed out due to The Present Unpleasantness and related travel restrictions, and I'd love to see them return. Railgun Max, Monsoon, Cobalt, Death Roll, Minotaur, Quantum, the list goes on. I know for a fact that the guys who did Reality back in the 2018 season applied again with a mecanum-drive drum spinner that looks absolutely fucking amazing even when it's half-built, so here's hoping they finish it and get accepted for 2021, whenever that ends up happening. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

I might have Too Many Robot Opinions. I apologise for this.

Yeeeeeah, the fact that Hydra got the win over Huge after Jake ignored warnings from the ref left a bad taste in my mouth. They should have been DQ'd for that.

I'm really looking forward to Duck and Minotaur coming back, and hoping for a better and more consistent Sporkinok for reasons.

Same wrt Sporkinok. It's such a shame that the bot had such problems with the gearbox. The thing's got the potential to be a really fast, really durable bot and it just didn't live up to its potential.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

i wonder if it will undergo some form of in-depth transformation to become the thing it was always gonna be. if only there was some convenient, perhaps colour-based metaphor i could make. oh well.

I just had a horrible thought -- DSM have a combat bot tournament and Soske enters his own bot......

Craig

>I just had a horrible thought -- DSM have a combat bot tournament and
>Soske enters his own bot......
>
SoSUke would probably have it disqualified at the initial inspection due to illegal armaments.

Still, it is a funny/horrible image, isn't it?

>I just had a horrible thought -- DSM have a combat bot tournament and
>Soske enters his own bot......
>
>Craig

Equally likely, Sosuke commandeers one of the combat bots for reasons that I can't imagine.

Shortly after, the DSM combat bot rulebook adds Rule 135: Control of a tournament robot will not be given to the Student Council Sergeant-at-Arms without the express permission of a member of the Student Council.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

...on an only barely related tangent, I would like to see Sosuke and the DSM crew meet their guest tech teacher of the semester, Dr. Bright. Mostly so I can see the really big, really pretty explosions. Anyone else? No? Just me?

>...on an only barely related tangent, I would like to see Sosuke and
>the DSM crew meet their guest tech teacher of the semester, Dr.
>Bright. Mostly so I can see the really big, really pretty explosions.
> Anyone else? No? Just me?

. <--- Your point is flying here

O <--- My head is down here

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>>...on an only barely related tangent, I would like to see Sosuke and
>>the DSM crew meet their guest tech teacher of the semester, Dr.
>>Bright. Mostly so I can see the really big, really pretty explosions.
>> Anyone else? No? Just me?
>
>
>. <--- Your point is flying here
>
>
>
>O <--- My head is down here
>
>

Pretty sure this is an SCP Foundation reference. Though if so, I always thought Clef was more of an explosion magnet than Dr. Bright.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Sometimes fanfic is a love letter to canon, sometimes it's a polite disagreement, and sometimes it's 95 things canon did wrong nailed to a door."

>>>...on an only barely related tangent, I would like to see Sosuke and
>>>the DSM crew meet their guest tech teacher of the semester, Dr.
>>>Bright. Mostly so I can see the really big, really pretty explosions.
>>> Anyone else? No? Just me?
>>
>>
>>. <--- Your point is flying here
>>
>>
>>
>>O <--- My head is down here
>>
>>
>
>Pretty sure this is an SCP Foundation reference. Though if so, I
>always thought Clef was more of an explosion magnet than Dr. Bright.
>

Your both wrong. If any of the SCP crew was to do this it would be Kain.

>In case no one has watched the last couple of seasons of Battlebots,

After having watched the 2018 season, I would like to point out that there were at least THREE teams with a WPI sponsorship or strong association!

And, as I chase through links, the WPI robotics section has apparently set up something called the FRC (or First Robot Combat) group that provides at least PARTS to an extent for up and coming high schools wishing to use the combat remote vehicle concept as a way to involve teens in STEMS topics.