Check out this fight in BattleBots Season 4, Episode 9.
I feel like we’ve been here before. Gigabyte is about the closest robot in the field to Son of Whyachi, and not a robot we were thrilled to fight. Giant horizontal spinners are one of our least-favorite types of opponent. Nevertheless we got to work, rewiring the robot’s batteries to siphon more power for our weapon, and setting all of our current limits to ensure we wouldn’t run out of power during the fight. Sadly, this meant limiting our drive and weapons even further than they were before, guaranteeing sluggish response.
While looking over our wheel configuration options, we had a dilemma. Our short, anti-horizontal spinner wheels made us too short to hit anything on Gigabyte besides the thickly armored angled sides, which we knew we could hardly scratch. Plus, they had proven too stiff against Son of Whyachi, resulting in an impressive wheelsplosion. Turns out, we can solve both of these problems at the same time! These full-size new wheels are 75% as thick as our normal anti-spinner wheels, but gain us 7 inches in height back to our normal size. Plus, they should be able to wobble out of the way more effectively, rather than transferring that energy back into the frame or catching an opponent’s weapon and causing a massive rip. We bought the plastic on site, and hid it in the crate until RDC had left for the night. Until then, HUGE was set up with it’s traditional full-size wheels on. Starting at around 10PM, we were a well-oiled machine to cut out two brand new wheels and get them mounted to the bot. We weren’t sure if they’d have a different plan to strategize against the new wheels, but decided that we didn’t want to give them the evening to think about it.
Speaking of bright ideas that we came up with at the event, we had another one brewing…
Some little birdies told us that the steel on top of Gigabyte’s shell was thinner than the rest, and we had already known that we would be able to take a solid bite if hitting there. Plus, it was full of holes. So going against our original plan for Gigabyte, we wired the spinner in reverse. With some careful math, we figured out which bar length could hit the top of Gigabyte’s shell, rather than glancing off the sides. Like it or not, we were ready.
As the first fight of the next morning, we knew we’d have to be in line as soon as we got to the venue. We wheeled out and went into the box for our fight after weigh-in/functional test. It was scary not giving the robot a full test, since we were worried about battery life. In the ring, we knew we’d need to drive carefully, but attack quick. It could go south fast, but we had almost no path to a quick KO in this fight. Our original hope had been to bend over their drive axle from the downwards hits, but we realized once looking closely how thick their axles were. No chance there. Now that we had finally gave up on running shorter bars against horizontal spinners, we had to really go on the attack to start winning these fights.
The fight started fast, and after a few perfectly precise Pulverizer poundings, we got our big hit on the top of the shell. We were lucky not to throw ourselves out of the arena on that hit. Gigabyte scooted away while we got our bar back up to speed, and we noticed the shell wasn't spinning at all. Our hopes were confirmed when a big puff of smoke came out of Gigabyte, and we went wild. The shell was jammed! One problem, what to do for the next 2 minutes and 45 seconds?
So we kept hitting them.
After a very perilous brush with death up on the screws, we kept running the full fight, without draining batteries or killing ourselves from the incredibly stressful upwards punches to the frame with each hit. Gigabyte did smoke out at the end of the fight, we are guessing just from the stress in the drive motors from pushing us around for two and a half minutes. We’re definitely going to run some more bike tire next time.
Post-fight, we had to replace our weapon motors due to cracked magnets from the hits we gave ourselves. But that’s a trade we’re happy to make for the biggest win we’ve had to date! The cost of the wheels and the motors made this an expensive fight, but cheaper than a loss would have been. That would have cost us our shot at the Top 16 for sure. Now sitting at 2-1, we feel much better about the season ahead. Time to get to work, fix the damage and prep for our next fight. Stay tuned!
Photo credits: Dan Longmire
Photo Gallery
Gigabyte during the 2019 season
Tiny Huge is the only other version of HUGE that has fought a shell spinner before. It lost. Still, it came out as our good luck charm anyhow.
Just missed this first hit with a full-box runup. I was worried we wouldn’t get a chance at a good hit again. Note Gigabyte’s missing teeth. Do we survive this fight if they keep the teeth on? Who knows, but we're happy we don’t have to find out.
The HUGE grows ever angrier.
This could have been bad.
Biiiig hit. Also the source of our new Harry Potter scar, as their pole caught our frame during our hop over.
Much more like it.
Three people who didn’t expect this fight outcome.
That is some gourmet damage. Once the shell was locked, we were basically hitting in the same spots for the rest of the fight. We don’t know thicknesses but we know it’s all hardened steel. Our first hit to jam the shell was the one over the “I”.
Glad to see this tooth bent over as well. Our biggest worry with this plan was these teeth knocking our spinner away, good to see that the fears were unfounded!
Another memento! Gigabyte broke off this tooth during one of it’s hits into the wall near the beginning of the fight. You can’t always count on luck like that, but I’ll never turn it down either!