User blog:Mystrsyko/Robot Wars vs Battlebots Randomized: The Intro

What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Who would win if every robot from Robot Wars Series 6 and Battlebots 5.0 fought in a massive knock-out bracket? Nobody knows the answers to these questions, so I may as well dive straight into explaining just what on Earth to expect out of this overly ambitious series of blog articles about a fantasy tournament nobody asked for.

Hello, and welcome to the Robot Wars vs Battlebots Randomized Nonsense tournament. Instead of the usual fantasy tournament format that relies on votes, logic, and reasoning, we're throwing almost all of that out the window purely for the sake of banter and humorous discussion.

The way that this works is incredibly simple. So simple I need 7 paragraphs to even half explain it all. Let's begin with the robots selected to take part.

Selection and seeding
The main reason for choosing Series 6 and season 5.0 was a combination of close proximity in time (they were filmed within two months of each other) and the overall quality of robots present on each show was quite good. So, all 96 heavyweight robots from the 6th British Wars, and 96 of the 102 heavyweight robots from Battlebots' 5.0 season were selected to take part. Partly this was to keep things even between the two shows, and partly it was because a number of the Battlebots machines do not have images of their 5.0 version available online and/or forfeited their very first match. This gives us a nice, even, totally easy to seed into a knock-out bracket 192 robots competing.

These 192 robots have been randomly seeded into a single elimination knock-out bracket using a combination of Random.org and this bracket creator. As a result of the weirdness of fitting 192 entries into a bracket of 256, 64 robots will receive a BYE in the first round. This isn't that big a deal as they were drawn completely at random, so any robot could and did receive a bye.

Choosing winners
To decide which robot wins each fight, I will be using the Spinnerproof podcast's RTNCTI fantasy tournament methods. Simply put, that means that odds will be decided upon for each robot out of 7, and a random number between 1 and 7 will be generated to decide the winner of each match. Afterwards, my task is to write up a semi-plausible explanation of how a fight could possibly end with those results. This is going to be the most fun part.

To decide the odds, there are a number of factors to consider. First and perhaps the easiest to explain is the "home arena" rule. Whichever robot is on the top, or left, or listed first, however it ends up being formatted on screen, will have the privilege of the battle taking place in the arena and on the show they originate from. This includes all arena hazards and that show's respective rules or lack thereof. This could be a critical advantage or disadvantage depending on the robots involved. Crucially, all robots will be assumed to have enough battery power to last for the full fight so there is no 3 minute vs 5 minute nonsense affecting the odds. As a quirk of the bracket generator, all of the robots receiving byes will not get home arena advantage in the second round.

Secondly, each robot will be assumed to work and function as well as it has ever been seen to on its respective show, or live events from the same time period. Unfortunately this does mean that robots that broke down immediately or forfeited their only fight will be assumed to do so again. This also does not preclude reliability from being a factor. Just because a fragile robot had a good performance once does not mean its reliability is no longer a concern. However, these are somewhat edge cases, as for the most part every robot will be assumed to be at its respective peak performance.

Odds
The odds chosen will be out of 7 as if choosing sides on a 7 sided die. If robot A gets 2, then if numbers 1 or 2 are drawn they would win the the fight. Conversely if any number from 3-7 is drawn robot B wins the fight. The robot with the "home arena" advantage will always have the first number and the other robot the second number, and I'll display the odds decided upon for each fight as "6-1" or similar. Except in extraordinary circumstances, there will be no 0-7 or 7-0 odds chosen so as to embrace the natural random luck robot combat is sometimes known for.

Schedule
Each installment of this blog series will consist of 8 fights, and for the first round 8 BYEs as well just to get those out of the way. At some point I will figure out the best way to put a full bracket online so everyone reading can look ahead and see future possible match ups. I would also like to encourage comments so I can take the feedback into consideration if necessary and giggle at all the rampant speculation that the random number generator will have no time for. I have no idea what the time frame will be to get each of these posts together and published, so don't expect regular updates or this to even be finished as I am way too busy for my own good at the moment and silly stuff with a tiny audience is quite low on my list of prioreties.

Coming eventually
To wet your appetite a little bit, these are the first 8 matches that I will be covering in the next part. The first group of robots receiving a bye will be revealed then.


 * T.O.D.D. vs Der BiterBot
 * Vader vs Biohazard
 * 13 Black vs Think Tank
 * Aggrobot vs Bulldog Breed
 * W.A.S.P. vs Riptilion
 * Trilabite vs Robochicken
 * Comengetorix vs frenZy
 * Bermuda Triangle vs Nightmare