BattleBots - IT'S ROBOT FIGHTING TIME (probably spoilers)

Jesus, I just want to post about the championship fights and now I have to do it through TOR.

We'll go quick again:
S08E16
Jackpot vs Witchdoctor
Witchdoctor dominated, Jackpot was wrecked after this.
Hypershock vs Lucky
The RC car wins again. Surprised that Lucky made it this far.
Bloodsport vs Lock-Jaw
Bloodsport almost had it, then the bot died and Lock-Jaw had like 2 wheels left, good fight.
Shatter vs Riptide
So that egg beater is deadly, to the point where they left Shatter a smoking wreck and unable to move.
Mad Catter vs Claw Viper
Catter won on damage here I think. Viper could move around but Catter did more obvious damage.
Skorpios vs Huge.
Got the bars on the side of Huge, but then that spinner just wrecked the top of Skorpios.
Rotator vs Copperhead
Full 3 minutes here and by the end both bots had lost their weapons, went to Copperhead.
Tantrum vs End Game
Shouldn't come as a surprise that End Game won, meaning the defending champ is out and possibly someone new will get the nut this year.

S08E17
Black Dragon vs Ripperoni
I thought Ripperoni had this one, that massive spinner carved into Black Dragon enough to make it on fire, only for it to land on the upper deck and die.
Monsoon vs Cobalt.
Another fight I thought that Cobalt would have, sending the front forks of Cobalt up into the lights then flipping it over with Cobalt's weapon dead.
Fusion vs Minotaur
One good hit from Fusion then it self combusts. What more is there to say.
Deathroll vs Hydra
Deathroll went 22 feet into the air on some flips, the lights are 25 feet high so it's almost possible to send a bot up there. Hydra won because of course it did.
Ribbot vs Quantum
Managed to get right into Quantum's bite and shave the hydraulics, the team actually let the bot die because being upside down like that they're rather forfeit than have to spend more on the repair bill.
Switchback vs Malice
This one was back and forth, ending with Malice winning. Not much to say.
Whiplash vs Beta
Beta got pushed up onto the upper deck where it died, Whiplash goes through.
Blip vs Sawblaze
Sawblaze dominated, even with it's thinner forks, that hammer just chewing into the top of Blip.
 
The round of 16 was good. Some good fights, big excitement, and no weenery or tomfoolery. During an interview with Ripperoni, they talk about cooling the motors pre-match using liquid nitrogen. Makes sense, heat kills. Then I see teams running their weapons full throttle for the entire match. Why is it every time the ref starts the 10 second countdown, teams don't power down to save wear & tear and prevent a possible fluke accident?

Riptide is a very destructive bot, but the team captian Ethan registers highly on my retardar.
 
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judging from how little they know about riptide's situation, they don't seem to check bots very much before giving them a live audience.
you previously have deep six being '''accidentally''' too powerful, several bomb-like compressed air canister explosions scaring people more than the actual robots fighting.

some of the babies in the audience have headphones on to protect their ears, but you got kenny saying he "felt it in his gut"

battlebots went from "test near a busy public street" to "test outside in a parking lot with busy street still surrounding it"
battlebots competitors have to be around modern 24hr convenience, so they are IN A CITY and not safely outside in a sandy test zone specially made far from civilization.

there is a silent background battle of battlebots being for adults, or kids.
trey wants everyone's money so they wont make up their mind on age.
we might as well see a new born baby try to drive the next robot thanks to rodski and his idiocracy style of running entertainment.

battlebots used to be a fight that was very matched by the championship finals.
hypershock did a reasonable upgrade with driving motors, claw viper took note and upgraded his drive too and was better with it.
however with riptide, there is not only a lack of an explainable upgrade that causes the sudden superiority, but it hits people so hard that it outdoes upgrades and sooner lines up with cheating.

i felt like something was up when riptide smacked hypershock into the ceiling in one hit, something just doesn't seem right.
they are forced to limit tip speeds, so who hasn't thought of going beyond the limit just for a second to win on battlebots? they've all thought of it but who would do it?

we don't really know how biteforce won year after year but everyone accepted it because it was like ok whatever, but with riptide's jock attitude, everyone got sick of it real fast and sooner thought of the questions they never asked biteforce. like increasing your tip speed for just a second, who would know how to flag you for it? you made the robot and they don't know what you set your controller up to do.

how do you test box enough to know every person's controller and everything it does inside? what every wire goes to and what it makes the robot do? they don't know.
what they do know is they're going to let everyone smash their bots anyway and let competitors waste their money on a potentially fraudulent competition.
 
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I'll just say the Bots are checked before every match, the officials have official limits on how much a bot can weigh and how fast it's weapon can spin.
The Riptide situation came up because they were doing "something" in the tunnel before their exit which Shatter objected too. They ended up coming up two pounds lighter somehow so they were allowed to go through. The reason for the limit on horizontal blades now is because of Deep Six, an 80 pound blade that could spin up to 200 mp/h but were forced to limit to 80 to keep the bot stable and not damage the box. This rule was made after they had competed that year.
Bots are tested in a isolated area, generally to test to see if all connections are made and motors are functioning properly. For instance you can see Rotator here in a test box before a fight:
ROTATOR_test_box_WC_VII.jpg

Builders do this before every match to make sure everything works and Battlebots checks the bots to make sure they're not over the weight limit.

RIptide's latest run can be attributed to it's design finally finding success, the egg beater drum is alot larger in area than usual vert spinners. That spinner also weighs 55 pounds going 250 mp/h, which is the limit in the spin up speed this season. That does alot of damage over the spinner of someone like Bite Force which was only 40 pounds.
You could say it's even had an easy run at things. Glitch, Captian Shread and Shatter didn't prove alot of challenge, then Mad Catter, Black Dragon and Hypershock proved some competition. Remains to be seen if they win.

Someone going beyond the speed limit? Not possible. High speed cameras capture the entire battle, if a bot is running a weapon at a higher speed than usual, it will be detected. There's also the fostering of community among the builders. Ray from Tombstone couldn't compete this year so he helped out Malice's team instead, any team caught using sped up weapons that could injury the crowd or the builders would be shunned out of the community and out of Battlebots. Good luck robot fighting with the only venue in America allowing heavyweights kicking you out.
Biteforce won those 3 years because Paul Ventimiglia did something absolutely ridiculous.
This here:
192843.jpg

Is a set of 5Ah 6S Turnigy Nano-tech LiPo batteries. Bite Force's main weapon ran on Ten of these. A set of one of these is $100 USD easy. So Paul had about a $1,000 USD invested in Bite Force's weapon alone.
Paul then replaced all ten batteries after every battle with fresh ones.
He came to Battlebots with about $10k worth of batteries because he exchanged them whether they were fresh or not. He didn't take any chances, just like he came with about 5 different sets of replacement parts for Biteforce. It's estimated that Bite Force as a single bot could cost about $15k. Factoring in replacement parts like I just described and that easily goes up to $30k - $50k.

I say all this because Paul retired Bite Force at the top of the game, before the vert spinner became the meta and you can see why he did. He's like Biohazard in that he was one of the first vert spinners in the competition and then had the resources to back up his maintenance needs to win his competition. Biohazard was the fight computer design bot back in the CW era and being so low to the ground, alot of the garage built bots could deal with a small little thing that could just flip them over.

That last one is easy. Design specs are submitted to Battlebots upon wanting to enter the competition. They then examin the bot before the competition and before each fight to make sure it's still within compliance. I know the producers like to show the drama of the show because for some reason they need it to pad out the 90 minute run time but when dealing with controversy like this they will deliberately obscure stuff to keep things juicy.

Right, second to last episode S08E18:
Ribbot vs Black Dragon
Back and forth, Black Dragon loses a wheel and then weapon to weapon strikes. Look at these sparks. Ribbot goes through.
Untitled.png

Lock-Jaw vs Witch Doctor
Lock-Jaw Demolished. Donald is out for another year.
Malice vs Minotaur
Malice almost had Minotaur, then it lost it's weapon. Minotaur goes through.
End Game vs Copperhead
Copperhead is knocked over and away by End Game. Then it loses it's weapon and it's Copperheads turn. You can see all the glass coming down from the ceiling. They actually manage to stall End Game on it's weapon but it survives to the bell. Copperhead amazingly goes through.
Monsoon vs Sawblaze
Back and forth, then Sawblaze scoops them into an unrecoverable position. If only Monsoon's weapon worked. They go through.
Hydra vs Whiplash
Whelp, Whiplash tried. Hydra did a few flips then Whiplash couldn't flip back.
Mad Catter vs Huge.
Another light goes. Huge's weapon dies 60 seconds mark, Chris says there's 90 seconds left, then 30, meaning they cut an entire minute of this shoving match. Huge goes back to it's square and shows it's weapon still working. Huge goes through.
Hypershock vs Riptide
Up to the lights. 20 feet up.
bbs12e18_hypershockceiling.jpg


>Riptide’s weapon is spinning upward. Hypershock’s weapon is spinning downward on account of being upside down. Both weapons spin at around 250 MPH. When they meet that’s the equivalent of a goddamned 500 MPH collision. Hypershock gets fucking launched. The ceiling camera tries to keep Hypershock in shot but fails to do so because Hypershock flies higher than the camera can keep up with. Yes, Hypershock flies into the goddamned rafters and takes out a light in the process.

Amazing end to the fight. The championship bouts usually produce some very good fights.
 
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The Championship matches, S08E19
Sawblaze vs Minotaur
Sawblaze managed to get one up on Minotaur, the RioBot going up in flames and not surviving to the bell. A good match.
Huge vs Witchdoctor
Witchdoctor does what it can but against Huge's blade, there's not much you can do as a vert spinner, even chasing after the wheels. Goes to Huge.
Ribbot vs Hydra
Hydra gets one flip, the Ribbot manages to get into the face of Hydra and damage it enough to be counted out.
Copperhead vs Riptide.
You would think this is an easy win for Riptide, except Copperhead's drum is really durable. So they go weapon to weapon and Riptide actually comes out the weaker. He gets flipped and is out via judges decision.
Ribbot vs Sawblaze
Sawblaze scoops up Ribbot and manages to damage the batteries in the bot. It goes to the judges and they give it to Sawblaze.
Copperhead vs Huge
Copperhead tries but it ends up underneath the blade of huge and it gets knocked out.
Huge vs Sawblaze
This is an actual close one. Huge flips Sawblaze away, Sawblaze manages to gets Huge's weapon belts. And then the judges come into the box to judge actual damage done. It ends up going to Sawblaze.

So that's it for this year. Golden Bolts should be in the off season like last year and then Season 9 probably over the new year.
A good season this year, the new rules work. The shelf still needs to go.
 
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I mean, looking at the Discords, its not like he's wrong.
Cause it's Discord, not Battlebots. There's been a tranny team in before and they got BTFO by fugging Rusty. This is a bot that was made of rusted old farm equipment.
"I separate an "as is" cost and what it took me to get to BB. As is, he's 1500-2K. That's not including spares and such. To get to BB, with spares, time, to compete, easily 10K+. Just gas to drive out there racked up quick, and that's what catches up quickly, bits here and there and odds and ends."
 
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Yeah, I used to watch every hour to 2 hour episode and then they got political with their last season. With the sheeple crowds all in their face diapers, holding up "Okay boomer" signs (no really, look it up) and when we got the Wyachi faggots making a TDS explanation, I was done.

Fuck politics in Battlebots.

I did laugh at the troons who tried and failed tho.
 
Golden bolt II was aired over the last 6 weeks, with Endgame winning it's second Golden Bolt.

Season 8 is on the horizon sometime. Probably sometime next year in Janurary as it'll take 2 weeks to film and the Christmas rush at the end of the year will probably be avoided.
 
With the sheeple crowds all in their face diapers
They literally wouldn't let you in the venue without one. They also had a crew checking vax cards but they got overwhelmed on the first couple days of taping so they stopped checking but they still required a mask.

Source: I went to the taping of the previous season.
Season 8 is on the horizon sometime. Probably sometime next year in Janurary as it'll take 2 weeks to film and the Christmas rush at the end of the year will probably be avoided.
I don't have high confidence that BattleBots will be renewed for an eighth season. Seasons 6 and 7 were greenlit together by an agreement between BattleBots and Discovery Channel after season 5 finished airing. In the two seasons since that deal was signed there was the huge Discovery Warner Bros merger and a complete restructuring of Discovery+ being absorbed into HBO Max (which later became just "Max"). During the merger a handful of shows got cancelled, though BattleBots avoided it because they had that two season agreement that was in progress at the time.

However... viewership for the show has trended sightly downward and with Discovery+ getting cast to the wind that's further bad news because BattleBots performed incredibly well on D+. Now it's buried somewhere in Max and it might even be exclusive to an add-on subscription that doesn't come with basic Max. (I don't use Max but I did use D+.)

BattleBots sent out an email to everyone subscribed to their newsletter and basically said "we're working very hard to get World Championship VIII to happen but there's no news on it yet, our Destruct-A-Thon show will continue weekly in Vegas". We're well past the time of year when season 7 was filmed and each day that passes just puts the show further and further behind. I really do hope they get renewed but it's not looking good. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
 

@HedgehogBoysVEVO

Regarding Season 8. An e-mail went out on Jan 4 saying they're talking to the network about the next season.
Needless to say, the BattleBots TV show was stymied in 2023 by an unprecedented number of factors: The WGA and SAG strikes, the Discovery/Warner merger, and F1 taking over Las Vegas. The good news is most of these obstacles are no longer, and we are now into network discussions for World Championship VIII! Once we have actionable news/dates we'll let everyone know."
The strikes were an on-going thing which scripts didn't get written for Chris and Kenny, the F1 have signed a ten year deal to appear every November in Vegas, meaning the filming will either be earlier or later, depending on the schedule. And the merger, that's probably the biggest issue. You have a point about them playing with new executives now. Those that were in charge Discovery+ probably liked Battlebots but they might have got shuffled and the new execs might not see the appeal of robot based combat, even with the previous seasons being one of the most popular shows on the platform.

I still think S8 will go ahead, just maybe April or May this time, give them 3 months to edit, start airing it in September.
 
Battlebots should be pretty cheap to film. Most teams get performance fees (often in the form of hotel rooms) but the most expensive thing, the robots, get built by the teams themselves. The Battlebox actually is expensive to build but now that they have a permanent location they don't have to rebuild it every year, just maintain it. Of course, when the TV studio is in the middle of going bankrupt that doesn't matter.

Whats funny is that Discovery was actually in a great place financially, prior to this. Its all the debt they took on to finance the deal, the boondoggle that was them merging the subscription services poorly, plus some really questionable content cuts (its like they cut the programs' expenses without realizing that that also means people wouldn't have anything to buy subs/tickets for,) that are doing them in.
 
I basically missed the entire conversation in this thread so I've gone back through all 12 pages and tagged some posts that I feel I could add something to. Hopefully if we get a season 8 I can talk about bots with you guys here since /r/BattleBots on Reddit sucks and the Discords are full of retards.

And yeah I can see Mystrsyko trooning out for sure if he really did buy and wear clothes Team Hypershock made for women. He's added the new lesbian flag on the right too - probably as a way of increasing his virtue signalling points. What LGBTAOMGWTFBBQ+ flag do you guys think he'll add to his setup next?
I was unaware that Mystrsyko wore the Hypershock dress, but I did notice the trans and lesbian flag in his videos. I get the impression he's down with the girldick and wants to virtue signal. He also has a plush Nelly the Ellybot on his shelves which was a shitty robot built by a boisterous British woman who's also big into virtue signaling. He's since ended his YouTube series though so I guess it doesn't really matter.
It's nuts how big bots really are when compared to humans. Like I always know they are that size yet end up being shocked when I see the comparison. Long-bois like Lucky and Free Shipping are probably actually human shaped.
I've seen these bots IRL and they are absolutely massive! Nightmare in particular, it's so much bigger when you see it in person. Lucky and Free Shipping are also very large, Lucky specifically because there has to be room for its air tanks.
Found something really interesting.
So Dracophile. His name is that of a furry yet he himself is a former one. I'll spare you long winded posts but suffice to say Draco has seen the light, cut ties with people he knew and spent some time just getting back to normal.
This is way late but I can possibly shed some light on this as I've followed Draco's work on BattleBots Update and he and I have spoken from time to time. You are right, he is an ex-furry. His username was his nickname in high school (I think). He's been to the filming of almost every season of the show and for some of those trips he went with Varka and some other people from the Bad Dragon company. This is just my speculation but I think Draco was aware of Varka's reputation but really wanted to go to BattleBots so he "made a deal with the devil" so to speak. This eventually caught up to him and something happened that really freaked him out and he clammed up. Since then he's loosened up a bit and takes pot shots at Bad Dragon any time they get brought up. The post you linked to has been taken down so I guess it served its purpose and he's moved on.
Another bit of minor news, Draco has released the un-released prototype copy of the gamecube Battlebots game out to the public.
View attachment 3267890
Short story is this game was vaporware for years. Produced in the waning days of the Comedy Central era, it never saw a release before Battlebots went off the air. It's been floating around in various builds and rumored copies for years before Draco managed to source it from someone. I'd recommend reading his article to how he tracked it down.
Man this was a huge deal when it happened! I missed the livestream of the prototype but I downloaded it and played it myself and it feels like I've finally gotten closure on a part of my childhood. I wanted this game so badly back then and I was devastated when it was cancelled. There were a few months between the livestream and the release of the prototype where it wasn't available due to "trademark reasons" but I guess those got sorted out because Draco eventually posted the prototype to archive.org.
Something interesting is the lack of Sporkinrok videos left on Youtube (sadly including the Rusty fights :(). Remember when everyone was "hyped" about that team and how well they were going to do in BB? Good times. Goooood times.
Fuck Sporkinok. Apparently the team had applied for multiple seasons and was turned down before they finally got a chance and when they were finally let in the robot was a massive piece of shit. All robots were supposed to get four qualification matches in the preliminaries but Sporkinok made it to two, lost both fights by KO, and dropped out of the competition. It showed up in the Bounty Hunters event and lost to Hypershock and I bring this fight up because according to the BattleBots Wiki this is the one singular fight that has never been aired nor uploaded to YouTube. It was that bad. No one has seen it except for people in Italy apparently?

Lillith Specht the team captain of Sporkinok was gently pushed forward by the show for DEI points. There's a whole page devoted to him in the book that came out a couple years ago. And in the end his robot was such a massive piece of shit that it couldn't complete its qualifiers and hasn't been invited back since. That's what happens when you accept teams based on diversity points instead of actual engineering prowess.
 
He also has a plush Nelly the Ellybot on his shelves which was a shitty robot built by a boisterous British woman who's also big into virtue signaling.
It was actually designed and largely built by a guy, she was just the captain. There was a lot of drama involved when they kicked him off the team for bullshit reasons and then he had to firesale the parts to them because he was going through unrelated financial trouble. Should have hauled them all to the dump instead, IMO.

Draco absolutely despises the Bad Dragon people ("they're bad dudes", "awful people", "you don't know the horrible things they do") so I guess he's not down with zoophiles or zoophile-adjacent? They could also just be bad tippers, I dunno, he never goes into it.

The Sporkinok/Hypershock fight actually did sneak out on youtube, probably someone on one of the teams leaked it. Hypershock started the match not working properly (or went easy on Sporkinok since they are IRL friends) but eventually spun its weapon up and ended the fight. It was really shit. Remember, also, that was the covid year and they basically let anyone in who could actually make it to the event. We got some pretty refreshing new blood that year but also shit like Sporkinok and Rampage. That book was also a third party project, likely made by a cuck since the whole "BB watcher" community is leftoids even if a bunch of the teams themselves are not.
 
It was actually designed and largely built by a guy, she was just the captain. There was a lot of drama involved when they kicked him off the team for bullshit reasons and then he had to firesale the parts to them because he was going through unrelated financial trouble. Should have hauled them all to the dump instead, IMO.

Draco absolutely despises the Bad Dragon people ("they're bad dudes", "awful people", "you don't know the horrible things they do") so I guess he's not down with zoophiles or zoophile-adjacent? They could also just be bad tippers, I dunno, he never goes into it.

The Sporkinok/Hypershock fight actually did sneak out on youtube, probably someone on one of the teams leaked it. Hypershock started the match not working properly (or went easy on Sporkinok since they are IRL friends) but eventually spun its weapon up and ended the fight. It was really shit. Remember, also, that was the covid year and they basically let anyone in who could actually make it to the event. We got some pretty refreshing new blood that year but also shit like Sporkinok and Rampage. That book was also a third party project, likely made by a cuck since the whole "BB watcher" community is leftoids even if a bunch of the teams themselves are not.
Ah right, Nelly was engineered by that guy Gus(?). After Nelly's only season he joined the crew of Pardon My French and Banshee. Apparently it was a bad split, yeah. The YouTube show Outside The Box interviews tons of drivers, builders, and crew and Gus' segment on the show was cancelled after the host received some kind of BS warning about how toxic or whatever he is. When Nelly's carcass was sold (to Mystrsyko) the marketplace listing had to call it "Purple Elephant Robot" because Sarah the team captain said she wasn't willing to give up the naming rights or whatever for Nelly. People in the Facebook shitposting group were mocking the sale making photoshops of Nelly in different colors and calling it things like "Big Kahuna" and stuff.

As for Draco he most certainly isn't down with zoo stuff. I think that's what fucked him up, to be honest. I don't know how he hooked up with Varka to start with aside from the fact that they're both in the furry fandom and both have dragon fursonas. But we have a litany of information on Varka in the Zoosadists thread that connects not just Varka but at least a half dozen of his Bad Dragon accomplices with animal abuse. We've all heard the rumors for years but I think Draco probably caught wind of it firsthand or something and it scared the hell out of him. That's just my theory though, I have absolutely no proof of my claims.
 
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