User blog:Jimlaad43/Robot Wars: Battle Royale

Welcome to Robot Wars: Battle Royale. A tournament designed to combine the awesomeness of the 10 Robot Rumble with the (debatable) awesomeness of Fortnite and every other Battle Royale format game. The concept is simple. All competing robots start randomly dotted around an enlarged arena and get into fights. These will be with robots in proximity. As the rounds progress, robots will fall by the wayside until there is just one left - who can take that epic Victory Royale!

I proposed this as a 100 robot Arena tournament, and it was suggested that I ran a tournament on my blog to properly get the idea across. As such, I will run a much smaller version of the tournament, with the 16 Series 7 Semi-Finalists as the robots in question.

Rules in detail

 * The arena is based on the Series 7 arena, but is made a lot bigger to accommodate all the robots, and allow for robots to have sufficient space that they can avoid each other if they want. There are multiple hazards across the arena, so every usual tactic is probably viable in every fight. The edge of the map is an arena wall for throwing opponents over, while there are other zones within the centre for flip outs to occur. The pit appears multiple times to also allow pittings to occur. They are always open, so no need to activate them.


 * The game starts with the competitors randomly allocated space on the arena. Some may be close to each other, some may be spread apart. Each round is equivalent to 1 minute of time, and robots will move, stay, repair or battle during that time.
 * Competitors are given 10HP to represent a fully functional robot. At the end of fights, or trips to the PPZ, the robot will exit with a reduced HP depending on how it is decided the fight went. This shows how damaged a robot is when it enters the next fight. The HP is merely a representation of how the robot is, rather than something that is damaged per hit (so for example, a robot with 5HP taking 5 hits from Typhoon 2 won't automatically go down to 0HP and die, it's more a way of saying "this robot isn't fully fit for the fight").
 * If a robot is not fighting or in a PPZ, it regenerates 1HP per minute it is not fighting. Once it begins fighting it cannot regenerate until it has ceased fighting.


 * Every 3 in game minutes, a Safe Zone will be marked on the map. Within 2 rounds, the PPZ will start to move towards the safe zone, restricting the size of the arena. Robots will have to move into the Safe Zone or risk taking damage from the House Robots in the PPZ. This is the only time HP loss can kill a robot. Each round spent in the PPZ loses the robot 2HP, and if it ticks down to 0HP, it is immobilised.


 * When a robot is immobilised, it automatically despawns, and the remains aren't left on the battlefield.


 * This is a last robot standing tournament, so the winner is the last robot alive. Kill counts are collected, meaning there is kudos for the robot who gets the most kills, but the ultimate winner is the last one left at the end.

What to notice when voting

 * Robots near each other may fight. If they do, a regular battle voting process can start. Voters must decide what will happen within the first minute of the fight. If you think the battle will be over within the minute, vote for KO and explain why that robot will win. If you think it will not be over after a minute, state Continues in the vote and explain what the situation will be after a minute.
 * If after the round is over a KO vote has won, the losing robot will be eliminated, and the winner can continue moving around the map.
 * If the continue vote has won, the situation will continue as described by one of the voters chosen at random. Everyone voting for continue must say where the two robots will likely have moved to and how the robots will be affected (damage, loss of CO2, movement towards/away from hazards). It'll become clearer as this goes on. If the battle is still going into the second minute, voting for the fight will continue in the next round with the same procedure.


 * Robots may also retreat from a fight at any time. If you think a team would start a fight and realise they are outclassed, they may attempt to retreat. A retreating robot can run away, but it can be chased by its assailant. A randomiser will decide if the retreat is successful or not with a 50/50 chance. If it is unsuccessful, the assailant gets a free attack.


 * Battles are not limited to Head-to-Heads. If there are a lot of robots in one area, they can choose to enter a melee. A robot may decide to join a battle late on and score some easy kills on damaged robots. It is a lot easier for robots to retreat from melees, as the opponents might just decide to stay fighting each other. Taking damage while running from a melee is 1/n, where n is the number of other robots in the melee.


 * Each robot can see 3 squares around it in every direction. This can be used for locating enemies and obstacles. A robot with a flipper for example, will want to find arena walls to use to flip opponents out, while pushers will want to find the pit. This can be part of your votes to decide the outcome of a battle.


 * If there is another robot around, you can suggest that they can be brought into the fight whether they like it or not. Look around the map and come up with interesting solutions to the fights if you feel like it.

Movement

 * Robots not fighting can move to different parts of the map. Each robot can move up to 3 squares per round, regardless of how fast they actually are in real life. However, their respective speeds cannot be ignored in fights, and may affect retreating success.


 * Robots can only fight if they are in adjacent squares (non-diagonal)


 * I will allow voters to control how a robot moves. Anyone can control any robot at any time, just give commands using the directions of "up, right, down, left" to say where the robot goes. It can go three squares maximum. If there are multiple commands for a robot, a randomiser will choose which user's commands are used.
 * If we get enough people playing, each user can be assigned robots exclusively under their command.
 * Remember that robots will like to move towards areas of the arena they will do well in - flippers near OotA zones for example.


 * Robots in a fight will not move from their squares during battle once they meet, unless it is stated in the winning votes that a hazard is used. If one robot is close enough to, say, flip an opponent out of the arena, they will move there and finish their turn by the arena wall with the defeated robot out of the arena and therefore despawned.

Arena
Below is an image of the arena with details marked.
 * The robots are shown as images of themselves. If this is too tough to see, I may change it to colour coded three-letter abbreviations for each robot.

Round 1
I will refrain from posting the first round for a couple of days while I let everyone digest what is going on and discuss anything that needs clearing up. This process will likely be a bit of faff and leading by example to start with, but it'll all become clear as we continue (hopefully). Also, if I seem to "invent" a rule midway through the tournament, I have merely remembered to add a forgotten rule, rather than invented one to spite you. As you can tell, there's going to be a lot of interpretation and improvisation, but that's what'll make this fun.