User blog comment:SpaceManiac888/Rusty Spanner and Golden Wrench of the Decade (2010s)/@comment-2118191-20191231084127

Rusty Spanners for BattleBots

3: When the most damaging thing is a small bump.... As much as I enjoy BattleBots, I always felt that some of the fights of the original series ended up being ruined because of all the hazards. There were just so many of them and often they'd pop up at just the wrong moment to take out a robot otherwise dominating its fight - if anything, the arena was like a minefield. I think the fact that the reboot now only has the killsaws, pulverizers and screws was initially a good improvement. However, as the series has gone on, virtually all the hazards have been rendered useless. I legit can't remember the last time the killsaws played a proper role in a fight and they were BattleBots' main hazard back in the day. These days, you're more likely to lose thanks to the arena floor not being set properly...and that's a MASSIVE problem in and of itself. Duck! vs Cobalt was an absolute travesty and I'm absolutely confident something like this would never have flown in any other robot combat competition. You NEED to get that floor fixed, BattleBots producers.

2: Spinner spinner spinner spinner spinner spinner spinner spinner BATMAN!. The Americans always joke that "every British robot is a wedge flipper" yet seem to ignore the fact that every American robot is a spinner of some kind. Jokes aside, the sheer amount of robots with spinners in BattleBots these days is just ridiculous. Nearly all the robots in the Top 16 of the last two seasons were spinners, as well as most of the robots in the play-in battles. I understand spinners are extremely destructive and look flashy, but this lack of variety is dangerous - it often makes fights and sometimes even robots feel very samey. Think back to Robot Wars' ten robot rumble - you had two flippers, two drum spinners, two axes, one face spinner, one horizontal crusher, one vertical crusher and technically one wedge. That's one of Robot Wars' biggest strengths for me - the variety. BattleBots just doesn't have that any more - any robots that aren't spinners are just kicked to the sides. And half of that reason I'm positive has to do with the biggest Rusty Spanner BattleBots has EVER had.

1: NO! NOT THE JUDGES!. Was it ever going to be anything else? The problem isn't with the judges themselves, you understand, but the scoring system the judges have to work with and ever since the first series, they have ALL been terrible, with all of their priorities heavily skewed to the point where robots are losing fights for reasons beyond their control. First of all, there's the infamous meme-worthy Primary Weapon rule, which was introduced after New Season 1 to effectively penalise robots who didn't use their active weapon in a fight, in an attempt to stop a repeat from the final where Bite Force just fed its wedge to Tombstone the whole battle until it broke. This could have worked if they'd perhaps docked points from a robot for being defensive, but instead the rule stated that if a robot wasn't attacking with its active weapon then it didn't count. Thus we ended up with fights like Chomp vs Bite Force, where Bite Force was all over Chomp for nearly the entire fight, pushing it around the arena and knocking it over numerous times, only to lose the fight unanimously SOLELY because Chomp was the only one who used its primary weapon - which only happened because Chomp's very first hit just happened to hit Bite Force's weapon chain, rendering the weapon completely immobile. An admittedly great hit, yes, but the rules simply didn't distinguish the difference between not using a primary weapon and not being able to use a primary weapon. Basically, this one hit rendered Bite Force's contribution for the entire rest of the fight invalid. Now, to be fair, TPTB did try to fix this for future seasons...but frankly, it's still heavily flawed. Priority still seems to be stacked heavily in favour of the robot who is actually using its weapon, even when the other robot is pushing it all around the arena. Texas Tornado vs Black Dragon of NS4 is exactly the same as Brutus vs Lock-Jaw in NS2, with literally the only difference being at least one of the judges actually took Black Dragon's aggressive rams into consideration (as opposed to ignoring them completely like they would have with Lock-Jaw). It's even more annoying when the judges seem to take weapon mobility more seriously than DRIVE MOBILITY. In two of its fights, Witch Doctor, after disabling Shatter! and Death Roll's weapons, ended up on fire and barely moving, but STILL got the win on the judges decision because, apparantly, it doesn't matter what internal damage you suffer as long as you don't stop. As far as I can tell, having your drive motor burn out, something that would be a serious issue with other robot combat shows, literally doesn't count towards anything in BattleBots. And lets not even talk about NS3's six-way rumble where Bombshell was able to snipe a win over Duck! despite it being unable to drive properly for a good portion of the fight. Even if robots aren't declared immobile in a rumble unless they're unable to move at the fight's end, the fact that it wasn't functioning properly SURELY should have counted for SOMETHING. Oh, and to top it all off, the scoring system BattleBots uses is heavily flawed as well. I understand the logic, but the fact that ALL the points HAVE to be allocated is, again, a detriment that seriously penalises robots that don't have a super aggressive spinning weapon. That's when we get fights like Whiplash vs HUGE that end up going to split decisions despite the fact that Whiplash was all over HUGE and not giving it the time of day at all - just because HUGE managed to pull off one of Whiplash's tyres. A minor attack that ended up not hindering Whiplash in the slightest, but it ended up giving HUGE all three damage points because that was the only damaging attack in the entire fight and that's literally the only way the point system works...meaning that having one small part being pulled off effectively is the same as being totally eviserated. There's literally no distinction between the two. I know I'm ranting on a bit here, but when you have fights like The Four Horsemen vs Extinguisher going to split decisions, even when one of the robots barely even drives properly, then there's a MASSIVE PROBLEM!!