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evil_steve
Joined: 06 Sep 2015
Posts: 304
Location: Adelaide, SA
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Allright, time for me to do another overly-wordy post-event write-up, this time for Rusty! As I said in the Zenghiaro thread I'm doing them separately because I think it's nicer, even if 90% of the world disagrees.
Honestly, Rusty exceeded my expectations at Nationals – I fully expected him to get obliterated in his first fight, especially after I drew the scary vertical eggbeater of Shiny. Thankfully, despite getting more air time than half the drones in Battlebots Rusty was driving fine once put the right way up and really only needed the anti-spinner armour bolted back on. Which I needed to, because I then drew the horizontal spinner Bender 3. That fight was a mad adrenaline rush (which then caused me to blabber like a loon when I was interviewed by the ABC guys afterwards, which made the news – fortunately anyone who already knows me knows my madness), and I can't believe that Rusty survived enough to take it to the judges.
The repairs after that were a bit hectic as a lot of armour needed replacing as well as one of the drive motors. Unfortunately in his third fight against Faceslasher (where we might have actually had a chance for an upset win) Rusty was dragging on one side. At the time I thought it was some of the poorly cut replacement armour high-siding that wheel, but after I got home I realised that I'd replaced the wrong drive motor! He was ready to go for the melee but unfortunately we ran out of time for that.
At this point, I have no plans to rebuild Rusty beyond swapping back in the good motor. Instead he'll become a demo bot and a chew toy to test Zenghiaro and future bots. I am really happy though with how well some of the design elements worked – the shock mounting system and shape was as durable as I had hoped (and more so than I actually expected). However I am planning on building at least one new full fat featherweight again for Nationals next year, two in the unlikely event that I get the time. I have 3 designs that I'm mulling – two are spiritual successors to Rusty in their own special ways, with one taking some of the design ideas that worked and making a much nicer bot out of them (which I'd like to do but is honestly less likely due to time and skill constraints), the other doubling down on the “made poorly in my shed” conceit but again taking some of the things that worked for Rusty. The 3rd idea is an overhead thwackbot (of “torque reaction axlebot for those so inclined) which takes inspiration from both Overkill and Nuts. After watching Gabriel on Robot Wars I may go for the latter.
Pictures:
Rusty before his first fight, sporting the last-minute anti-spinner armour that I am rather glad I bolted on.
After meeting Shiny. That was a bit hit!
After the fight with Bender 3, who managed to somewhat bend the lower ant-spinner panel back into shape! Also pics of some of the damage inside (at that point cumulative from Shiny and Bender).
Rusty all ready to get his face slashed.
Rusty's final form. I had the plunger on ready for the final rumble that never occurred.
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Mon Aug 29, 2016 9:48 pm |
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