Check out this fight in Battlebots Season 3, Episode 5, or here on Facebook.
Our second fight of the 2018 season was against Free Shipping, a robot built from the base of 7-time ‘Robogames’ and 3-time ‘Combots Cup’ champion Original Sin with the addition of a forklift and a gigantic flamethrower. Similar to SubZero, we didn’t know much of what to expect from Free Shipping. It was a robot new to Battlebots, with a very unique weapon and enough fire to make us worried. We took the time to watch as many videos of Original Sin fighting vertical spinners as we possibly could, and expected their strategy to be simply trying to break our weapon by hitting it over and over again.
Our strategy was similar to our fight with SubZero: Hit them as much as we can, as hard as we can, and hope that we designed a reliable enough robot to give out that many hits. Otherwise we had to avoid or disable the flamethrowers, and flip them over if possible (since they had far less control when upside-down). We made a few modifications for this fight, one of which being to add two small shoes to the end of HUGE’s rear stabilizers, which would hopefully keep them from getting stuck down the killsaw slots again.
This fight was brutal, with over a dozen hits given out and both robots still half-functional by the end. HUGE’s drive motor mounts cracked once again from the force of the blows, slowing our drive down. Our wheels also warped from the heat, and our weapon motors were damaged badly. One weapon motor also was unplugged during the fight, leading to a slower spinup during the later stages.
Free Shipping took the real brunt of the damage though. The forklift and flamethrowers were torn apart, leading to a large uncontrolled fire on top of the robot. The front of the robot took many hits, bending up most of the mounts and frontal armor. Their driving base stayed functional besides a wheel jammed up from a cut through the side of the robot, which was essentially resolved when Free Shipping was flipped and that wheel was lifted off the ground. Both robots lasted the full three minutes to the buzzer, and the fight was decided by the judges. Once again, HUGE pulled out the win!
Check out this damage walkthrough from the Free Shipping team’s Facebook page.
Photo credits: Dan Longmire
Photo Gallery
Free Shipping’s configuration for this fight, with extra teeth on the forklift forks
The fight begins with a quick blast of fire
The fight really begins with a massive punch to the forklift
A fireball erupts when the flame system is damaged
A soot outline of the angry eye…
Damage close-up