I wrote this post on 4/1, but since I'd posted two posts in the last couple of days I decided to schedule it for later.
So Fallen Windmill did not do well in the Tournament my friends and I held (the twenty-first tournament of its kind). I won one fight (against that flipper I was worried about) and lost two (against other horizontals). Something went wrong in a major way in every fight.
In the first fight, against the hand-powered flipper/launcher "Floppy", my gear system wasn't working right from the start. I wasn't able to get the big hits Fallen Windmill is known for, but eventually I won the ramming game and Floppy broke apart.
In the second fight, I went up against the top spinner (big bladed disc spun by hand) Chopper. Even though Chopper hits really hard, I knew my armor was up to the task. I drove right at him and went weapon-to-weapon repeatedly. However, something went very wrong after a massive shot. I flipped over. My weapon was dead (pieces loose in the center) so I couldn't self-right (I normally just spin it to push myself back over) and I lost.
In the losers' bracket I got one more chance. I was put up against Tank, a "Tombclone" offset horizontal spinner powered by a rubber band. Its design is much like this.
I knew that my weapon could hit harder than Tank's, and I felt confident that I wouldn't flip on impact. Boy, was I wrong.
I flipped three times, though I was able to self-right every time. I deal some damage to Tank, but after the second flip my bar broke in half.
My gears were fine, which meant that the bar would still spin whenever I pushed the bot. This is very bad. When that happens to a heavyweight real combat robot, it often shakes itself to death. Of course, it's a bigger problem for heavyweights, since those things' bars weigh up to 80 lbs and spin at 250 mph at the tips, but it's still not fun for me. The imbalance means that I can barely steer and can't attack as quickly.
And then I flipped a third time, and barely managed to self-right. The fight went to a judge's decision and I lost.
And that was the end of the tournament for me, save one more fight where I subbed in as a driver. It was an awesome and unpredictable season, and still very enjoyable.
I also learned a lot (after almost every tournament I say to myself, "Wow, I really learned a lot in that one! Next time I'll have fixed those issues!"). I learned that my anti-flip prongs were not as effective as I thought. I even lost on of the thicker front ones twice, apparently from hitting the ground after a big hit. More importantly, the prongs helped against backwards and side-front flipping, but not against side-back flipping, which is what has been giving me trouble ever since I abandoned the earlier low-front design. I've added prongs behind the wheels as well as in front of them, to prevent this. I also want to address the root cause of it—a high center of mass. Fallen Windmill has large wheels, so its center of mass is quite a ways off the ground for such a compact bot. Compare that to Icewave's:
(Image taken from Team Icewave website.)
Icewave has a big heavy engine above its blade, yet it still has a low center of gravity due to having a low and dense chassis. Fallen Windmill's big wheels cause it to have a center of gravity that's low enough for most hits, but in the event of a full-power hit from a top, or a weapon-on-weapon hit at the wrong angle, it's too high.
I'm not really sure how to fix it, however, since the base is already pretty solid and I can't really afford to switch to a lighter weapon system.
I also learned that I should remember to check my weapon before every fight. The Thick bar sustained damage in its first fight (against Chopper, I think) and thus broke against Tank. The Balance Beam failed to hold up well, but at least worked for a while. I did not use the Long and Thin bars, and I've decided to scrap the latter.
And now for the new couple of weapon bars:
These are experimental and I doubt I'll end up using either of them, but I thought it'd be cool to tell you about them so you can understand my design process better.
The top one is the I-Beam. It's got an I-beam shape, with the edges being thicker than the center, making it vertically strong for its weight. It's also quite short—only twenty studs long. That's six studs shorter than the Thick bar, and eight shorter than the Long bar. For this reason, I will have to make it longer for effectiveness.
The bottom one is the Wings of Fear. It's not too strong, but it's decently stable and has anti-vert back edges like the Long bar, curved for maximum sturdiness. It's the same length as the Thick bar.
Edit: I've redesigned the I-Beam to be 24 studs long. I think I'll use it.
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