Check out this fight in BattleBots Season 4, Episode 14.
We’re thrilled to have made it back to the playoffs of the tournament. With the work that went into HUGE between the 2018 and 2019 seasons, we would be disappointed without making it this far. While our record is the same on the surface, our performance has been far better than last year’s, and we have to think that 2018’s HUGE would have split in half in 2 if not 3 of our fights this year. Still more work to do though, as now we have an extra fight in our way before getting back to the Top 16.
After fighting Bronco, we made sure to replace all of the belts on our weapon bar. The spikes on Bronco’s flipper left gouges in our weapon hub, and we didn’t want to take any chances that a belt was damaged. Otherwise, we inspected everything, charged the batteries, and were ready to go. The lack of debilitating maintenance is a very new feature for us as a team. We have strong plans to make things easier to assemble/inspect next year, but we were proud of the new reliability compared to last year’s continuous effort just to keep the robot functional.
We were very excited to be paired with HyperShock. Finally we get the chance to do what we came to BattleBots to do. Take on small vertical spinners! These types of bots are our bread and butter, and there has been few bigger names in that space than HyperShock this season. They cruised into the post-season as well, taking a strong loss to Bite Force. Our plan first would be to disable the spinner, before moving to attack the body and doing as much damage as we can. To complicate things, we had spent the entire event pitted next to each other, and a little trash talk may or may not have been hurled between the pits. We also had a good view of some shenanigans going on in the HyperShock pit, as gardening equipment started to arrive.
Their wedge was well-designed this year, and did a good job of protecting us from getting at their pulleys immediately. We had to hit them very straight-on to be able to reach them, and the rakes definitely messed up our plan at the beginning. After we came down off the screws, we took belts off on one side of the weapon. Luckily enough, instead of having to hit the other side, the spinner sucked a rake through, weapon-locking itself and disabling the disc. Now HyperShock was just a wedge, but it was the fastest and most controlled wedge that we’d ever fought. Our bar takes at least 10 seconds to get to full speed, and we knew that HyperShock would love to just sit under us and drive us around, to keep us from attacking or spinning. We settled into a strategy of protecting our slowly accelerating bar with a wheel, letting him push into it until we were ready to turn around and attack. Through this, we damaged the front wheels badly, ripped off a panel, and got a few more shots in to the frame. We don’t know what went wrong with the drive, but we assume that all these shots didn’t do it any favors. Once HyperShock was down a side of drive, we circled around to come in and take off a rear wheel, disabling the other side of drive and knocking HyperShock out fully. Just in time too! KO at 2:57!
And just like that, we made the Top 16 in our first two BattleBots seasons! We're proud to be the only Discovery-era team to make the Top 16 in both of our competing seasons!
This fight cost us our weapon motors again, as they were damaged and we swapped to spares. We also had damage to one of our wheels from all the spinner bites from HyperShock, and one of our support legs was starting to get pretty ugly. But all in all, we’re happy to the win, and our second official knockout! It’s rare that we get a full countout and it definitely saves us the heartache of waiting for a decision.
After this fight, we cut a fresh wheel to replace the chewed-up one, but it was solid enough to keep it and use in a pinch going forwards. We also replaced the damaged weapon motors and noticed that through our Gigabyte, Bronco, and HyperShock fights, we had around 30% of our drive batteries remaining by the end of the fight. Time to crank it up! We're geared for around 23mph, so let's hope the extra speed works to our advantage!
Photo Gallery
Find someone who looks at you the way Faruq looks at rakes...
Photo credit: JCRB Photography
On us within a second. HyperShock doesn’t give you time to breathe in the arena.
Photo credit: Dan Longmire
HUGE is getting pushed backwards faster here than it's ever driven on its own. And Kenny is loving it.
Photo credit: JCRB Photography
At this point, things could be going better.
Photo credit: JCRB Photography
Finally, HUGE swings back. This hit cost HyperShock its right-side belts, and a good weapon-to-weapon blast makes us thankful once again for the improved center-shaft.
Photo credit: JCRB Photography
Cool shot of the panel flying away, as HyperShock sucks the rake through its weapon. This is the hit that turned the fight in our favor.
Photo credit: Dan Longmire
Final hit of the match, and elation as we see a puff of smoke emerge from HyperShock!
Photo credit: Dan Longmire
The eyes tell the story: bruised but still kicking.
This is a good shot of our wheel damage. The wheel fared perfectly, warping and chunking but not losing it’s shape or strength. HyperShock was one of our most feared vertical spinner opponents due to it’s thin, sharp, and fast spinner, with the power and speed to take clean cuts through the wheel. Safe to say HUGE passed the test!
Photo credit: JCRB Photography
The aftermath: Missing electronics cover, dead weapon pulley, cracked wedge weld, two trashed rakes, and 3 smashed wheels. Plus some melted drive pullies.
Close-up on that pulley. A perfect shot!
The damage to us! We’d run this again, but quickly cut out a spare before our next fight and ran with that instead. We didn't expect damage to the inner ring but they hit high once we were tipped up on the screws.
More damage on the same wheel. This sent the wheel spinning by hitting off-center. Plenty of missing plastic but we kept rolling!
Our memento shelf is getting very heavy these days! Such a cool piece though!