Robot Wars!

[Axeman52]

Any fans around here? Or even robot builders?

In which case you'll probably already know that it's back for a brand new series this sunday (24th of July) on BBC2 at 8pm. If you're a fan of the show but aren't aware there's a new series... Now you are, lol.

Really looking forward to it - Lots of old favourites return, some with different teams, heavily upgraded, etc. And lots of returning roboteers have built all new robots. It's not making any attempt at following on from where the old series left off, for a good reason - so much has happened in the world of robotics since then. It's a whole new series, a fresh start.

The arena has been redesigned and is much larger, with taller side walls. flipping a robot out of the arena is still possible as there are lower spots in the middle of each wall which are used to load robots in and out of the arena and activate/deactivate them. But much harder to do. The iconic arena hazards (pit of oblivion, floor flipper, flame pit, floor spikes and corner patrol zones) are still there - and 4 of the house robots return, but have been re-designed and rebuilt and are now 3x heavier and a lot more powerful and more solidly constructed than they were before - Shunt, Dead Metal, Matilda and Sir Killalot. A few people are complaining about the absence of Sgt Bash but... I'm just happy Robot Wars is back on TV!

Hopefully this series will be a success and we'll see it keep on going for a long time like the original run. I always wanted to build a robot to try and enter Robot Wars. I've been advised by the FRA forum to start with featherweights because they are cheaper, easier and there are more opportunities to compete with fewer restrictions on the type of weapons that can be used safely in the temporary arena setups, which makes sense, so hopefully it won't have been cancelled again by the time I'm ready to build a heavyweight! (or maybe they'll start featuring featherweights in future - they used to occasionally during the original run, in fact, the first series had a whole episode for featherweights).

 

[AGXStarseed]

While I do hope Bash makes a return if the series proves a success, I'm more then happy to see Robot Wars coming back.

( Especially after seeing this: - http://sendvid.com/kh8fckhv )

 

[Axeman52]

That link set off an alert from my anti-virus software due to a pop up window which attempted to install something that it said was a "fake flash player update" :/

I saw that on BBC Iplayer - I must admit I wasn't too impressed with the upgraded and revamped house robots at first but they've grown on me now that I've seen a glimpse of what they can do.

I saw an advert for it on TV for the first time this evening - before university challenge. My mum was asking who Angela Scanlon was when I showed her the TV listing, and about half an hour later I saw the ad on TV and said "I think that's Angela Scanlon... wait.. Yes, it is, that's an advert for Robot Wars."

The new format is cool but I also have a few concerns about the 2nd round:

First round consists of two fights with 4 robots - 2 survivors from each go through to the next round, just like in the sixth and seventh wars.

Secound round is a group stage with a mini league table - every surviving robot fights each of the other robots head to head separately, and the two with the least points at the end are eliminated - my concerns here are: Will this be the same as the new Battlebots TV show, and only show a couple of highlights from some of these fights? Because it's a lot to fit in to a 1 hour show. My other concerns are: If a robot gets badly destroyed in its first fight in this round and then the team can't repair it in time for the next fight, then it'll possibly have to forefeit, or fight with the robot not working correctly, which doesn't really make good TV.

Heat final is.. just as it always used to be. The top two robots face off head to head.

They have 5 heats in total, and then a Grand Final show consisting of the 5 heat winners and one other robot from the previous heats that impressed the judges the most. I think the format for the grand final format will be the same only with 3 robots in the first round melées with one being eliminated from each of them.