Judge Dave's Guide to Winning

OK, if you write one of these books, you've got to know what you're talking about. Let me give you a number. I've judged over two thousand combat robot matches - Battlebots, BattleBots IQ, Steel Conflict, BotBash, Robot Street Fight, SOZBots (not to mention FIRST Lego League, BotBall, and Robot Sumo.) Up close, nose to the lexan, holding my breath for three minutes while two drivers try to make the other guy cry like a 6 month old baby. In other words, I've seen it all. The below guidelines all come from watching those matches and seeing people who thought that they were invincible make mistakes that they never should have made.

If you want to abandon your snug cubicle for a life of robot action, do me a favor, and follow the below guidelines to give yourself a decent chance of winning (remember, there's a 50% chance you'll lose in any given round. By round two, you've got a 75% chance of loosing. By round three, 88%, etc.).

Do you have any idea how hard it is to declare a winner between two identical push bots who fail miserably at ever hitting each other? Do us both a favor - Read the below ten guidelines and live by them. It will make everyone's life a whole lot easier.

1. Read Carlo's Law and Live By It.

Carlo Bertocchini, builder of Biohazard (three time Heavy-weight Champion), wrote an article for Battlebots on-line, and he put it better than I can, so here it is (abbreviated for space - reprinted with permission of Battlebots, Inc.):

"Finish your robot before you come to the competition!

This seems too obvious to even mention, let alone to place at the very top of a list of secrets to success. Besides, so what if you just have a little wiring to do, or that one last gear to mount? It's 3:00 AM you have been working for 36 hours straight and it is almost time to load the robot in the car and get to the competition. You can do that last bit of wiring in the pits, right? Well, the fact is, if you are in this situation, you have probably already ensured a loss in the BattleBox.

"Moe" got in late with just a few "minor" adjustments left to do. He spent his whole day trying to work on the robot while at the same time getting through all the required procedures. He was somehow able to convince the inspectors that his robot was safe and able to move under its own power.

Now it is the first day of competition. Moe is still working on his robot after having slept just two hours last night under the pit canopy. Moe found that the minor adjustments took longer than he expected, and he found a few more changes that just had to be made.

Now Moe is called to battle. He drags his toolbox to the battle queue and continues to wrench on his robot. Time to fight. He sets up his robot and steps out of the arena. The box is locked. The blue driver is ready. "Red driver are you ready?" "Uh, I guess."

Three thousand people watch anxiously from the stands as the starting lights count down to green... Three thousand people watch with disappointment and ill-disguised hatred as Moe walks in to the box to collect his robot, which never got off the red square.

What I am suggesting here is not easy. It takes good planning, discipline, and lots of free time to get the job done. But here is one simple way to guarantee that your robot will be finished: If it looks like time is running short, rather than drive or fly hundreds of miles just to work on your robot in a tent, why don't you just leave your robot home! Come and see the show, have the time of your life, learn a few things, and set your sights on doing well and enjoying the next competition."

Think the above is silly? Happens one in twenty times during the prelims. I don't even get annoyed anymore. I just use the extra time to grab another soda. Don't make me say "I told you so." Your bot should be finished two months before the event. If it's not, just go to the event without your bot and watch and learn.

2. Practice Driving.

Sounds obvious, I know. So do all the other guidelines. But less that 60% of contestants obey this guideline. So many competitors spend countless hours making tiny little changes to their robot to make it "perfect" that they don't spend any time driving it. I am not making it up when I say that I've met at least 100 competitors who have had less than an hour of driving practice before they step into the arena.

Listen guys, do you think Barry Bonds woke up one day, walked onto the field and became the slugger he is? Thousand of hours in the batting cage. Dale Earnhardt didn't just hop into the driver's seat and start winning at NASCAR. Pay very close attention to this next sentence, because if you want to compete in Battlebots, Robot Wars, Steel Conflict, or any other competition, it's the most important thing I can say to you: The single greatest common denominator to winning is driving ability. Get that?

The first time I saw Jason Bardis (two-time champion) and Dr. Inferno Jr. I thought it was a joke. His robot was an old plastic toy with a couple of motors attached. No one thought he'd make it past the first round. But let me tell you, most of Jason's competitor's never got off more than a single blow against him. He drove circles around them. He deftly avoided arena hazards. He struck and dodged -- like the finest boxer. He won time and time again. Watching Donald Hutson (three-time champion) drive Tazbot or Diesector is like poetry in motion. Donald is one with his remote. Ditto Stephen Felk, Jim Smentowski, Carlo, and most of the other winners you know.

Spend one hundred hours practicing driving before you ever get to the event. Robot not done yet? Fine. Go spend $20 on a cheap R/C car and drive until your robot's ready. Switch to your bot as soon as the drive train is finished, even if the weapon isn't done and the armor isn't on. Spend two full hours each day driving - go find some empty lot, parking garage, or cul-de-sac. Now chase that $20 R/C car around with your bot (let the kid next door drive the car, he's probably a better driver than you anyway.) Make sure you can catch it. Corner it. Out-maneuver it. Dominate it.

Got that down pat? Good. Now disconnect a motor. Learn to drive with any given motor disabled. Tape a shim to the underside of a corner and see how you can drive. All of these things will happen in the arena, and you can either learn now, or learn then. Your choice.

This is also the time to find out if you're going to burn out a speed controller. These are the weak links of most robots. Make sure that your battery-pack/speed-controller/motor system can handle heavy loads, and if you're over-volting, make sure you don't burn out your speed controller.

3. Be Able to Self-right

It is not a question of if your robot will be flipped over, it is only a question of when your robot will be flipped over. I have seen competitors, their eyes filled with tears as they take their magnificently engineered robot out of the arena after a loss, saying "I was so sure we wouldn't get flipped." Hoo boy...

Guys slide into second in baseball. Wrestlers get body slammed. Quarterbacks get dog piled. Skiers dump skis along a quarter mile path. What makes you so sure you won't get flipped? I've seen at least fifty matches where Robot A was utterly dominating Robot B and would have won by a landslide if it was a judge's decision. And then, by bad luck, an arena hazard, or just a big collision, SPONK! Robot A is upside down. Five-four-three-two-one Knockout! Your robot design must be able to either self-right (flipper, actuating arm, whatever) or operate upside down.

If you can't self-right, you'll never make it to the finals. Count on that. If there is any position in which your robot is a helpless kitten, count on it ending up that way at some point during the competition. And don't count on the other guys' freeing you. They're there to win, not help you recover from your short-sightedness.

4. Simulate Getting Attacked.

OK, so you've finished your bot with a few months to spare. This is the piece of advice that you are just not going to want to take. The one that's hardest of all to comply with. The one that will make your kids cry.

I want you to go to the hardware store.
Buy the biggest sledgehammer you can find (the really big kind that make you strain when you lift them.)
Now raise it above your robot.
And beat the living hell out of it.
Harder.
Harder.
I SAID HARDER!

Awe, did it bweak? Issums widdle wobot in a big pile uv parts??? Well, I just saved you the indignity of having that happen while 3000 people watched. If your robot cannot survive a good bashing with a sledgehammer, circular saw, and free-fall, it will not last in the arena. Use good 6061 or 7075 Aluminum, Steel, or (preferably) Titanium. My personal philosophy is that Lexan may be bulletproof, but it isn't bot-proof. Make sure you have a good enough infrastructure to support your outer shell.

Ensure that all components are securely mounted. They're going to get knocked around. I long ago lost count of the number of battery packs that I have seen knocked out of a robot and gone flying across the arena because the robot didn't have wrap-around armor. You lose your batteries, you lose the match. It's that simple.

Drop your bot off the roof of your garage. It's a good simulation of what's going to happen when a bot like Toro flips it, or a spin-bot like Mobeous whacks it once. If it can't run after that fall, you need to re-work the guts so that it can withstand that kind of hit.

Even if you're the best driver in the world, you're still going to take lots of knocks (including on the bottom of your bot, so have undercarriage armor as well.) You must be able to survive those hits, and your first match is the wrong time to find out where your weak spots are.

5. Have A Weapon System.

Better yet, have two. This is robot combat. You don't play baseball without a bat, you don't go to war without a gun, and you don't become a pro-wrestler without having at least two frontal lobotomies. If you want to beat the daylights out of the other robot, bring a weapon!

Wedges can be very effective, but it's extremely rare for a wedge with no other weaponry to make it to the finals. Watch lots of matches (everything you can from TV, or better still, buy a week pass for an event) and take lots of notes. See what weapons work, and which don't. Think about why things work. Two weapon systems that look identical may operate completely differently, with greatly different results.

Better yet, come up with a new and unique weapon's system. Something that hasn't been tried before. Every time I go to a competition, somebody has brought along a new robot which garnishes lots of ooh's and ah's from the masses - and more than a few "Why didn't I think of that's."

OK, now you've thought up a great new weapon system. You've built a prototype figured out the kinks, and gone on to build the full system. That brings us to:

6. Simulate Attacking

I swear some people show up to a competition having only ever tested their robots on kittens. Sure, it may give your garage a nice new primer coat of kitty juice, but that doesn't mean it will even scratch the paint on another robot.

I walk the pits before competitions and between matches to see who's doing what and how this year's robots are sizing up. During BattleBots 5.0, I saw this very well designed super heavy weight with a horizontal spinning mass (that's our technical term for a big spinning hunk of metal). Except the metal bar had not a single ding on it. You can give something a nice coat of paint, but you can't hide the dings. No scratches. Nothing. On further inspection, I noticed that the bar (which probably weighed 40 pounds) was held to the rotating shaft with a half ounce pin. An aluminum, 1/32 inch cotter pin. The kind your six-year old niece can bend with her pinky.

"You guys test this against anything?"
"Of course not, it could hurt someone!"

First time that metal bar hit another robot, the pin sheared, the bar went flying and they're as defenseless as my editor is when I miss a deadline after he's given me my advance. [They lost.] If they had spent five minutes in their garage or at some junkyard testing their weapon against a solid object, they would have realized the cotter pin was a weak link and they could have fixed it.

I remember after BattleBots 3.0, Son of Whyachi had gone from a nobody to Heavy Weight Champion (guess which team tested their robot), and come Season 4.0, there were about ten SOW clones. They all looked just like SOW, but not of them had replicated the parts of the weapon system that made it so effective - the one-foot diameter hardened steel direct drive system. Putting a couple hammers on some pipe doesn't do the trick.

There's a term for this - "Cargo Cult" - it comes from south pacific islanders who got used to planes coming in during world war two and bringing supplies. After the war, the planes stopped coming. So islanders fashioned headsets from coconuts, built runway towers, and made landing lights. But the planes never came. Just because something looks the same, doesn't mean it will work the same. Don't be a cargo cult competitor.

And while you're testing, make sure that you're able to actually push twice the amount of dead weight as the maximum in your weight class. This will be a good simulation of a bot pushing against you. If you can't push that much weight, you're probably going to lose. A great many matches come down to pushing matches (5^th round, both bots' weapons systems out, half your armor gone, and a burned out speed controller), so you need to be sure you can win under these circumstances. It's also another time to find out if your speed controller can handle the load, or if it's going to give up its magic smoke.

7. Go To A Competition, Watch As Many Matches As You Can, And Take Notes.

And if you're a contestant and you've lost, don't go home and sulk. Go sit in the stands and watch every damned match until the finals are done. I've seen too many crybaby first timers leave immediately after their first loss (Michael Jordan got cut from his High School basketball team - he did NOT go home and sulk.) You can learn more from other people's victories and mistakes than just your own, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

And take notes. Your memory's not that good, trust me.

8. Use Good Batteries, Have Spares, And Make Sure They'll Last Five Full Minutes.

When you start building bots and playing with them, you're going to learn one lesson the hard way (you won't learn it here, trust me.) Batteries get hot. REAL hot. And they take forever to recharge. At least in robot-combat time. So you should have easy access to replace your batteries between matches. Have at least two full sets. One on the charger, and one in the bot. As soon as a match is over, put your just-used batteries on the charger. Just before a match, take the fresher pair off and install them. No matter how good a driver you are, or how well built your robot is, if the batteries don't last the match, you're not gonna win.

9. Don't Let The Judges Decide The Match For You.

I judge matches based on the full 3 minutes. The first minute is as important as the last. The fact that you kicked ass the last 20 seconds doesn't make up for the first 160 seconds when your competitor was mopping the floor with your rivets. You want to avoid narrow losses? Want to avoid a screaming match with the officials because they didn't share your belief that your completely out-of-control robot was actually using a strategy? Want to see me taking naps and drooling all over the horrible jacket they make me wear?

Simple. Go for a knockout. Don't let the match go to the last second. Design your robot and operate it so that you kill the other robot. So the referee counts him out. Keep your fate in your hands, don't put it ours. In judging matches, we're painfully fair and unbiased. The problem is -- you're not unbiased. You want your bot to win and the other team's bot to lose. I don't care who wins. I'm not picking on you when you get the loss, nor have I been bribed to give the other guy the win. It's just that in a close match, we make the call. Both sides think they've won, but only one of them will be correct.

Avoid hating me. I really am a nice guy. I don't want you to lose. But if the other guy did a better job, he's going to win. But my opinion doesn't have to matter. All you have to do is knock him out. Do not hesitate. Do not get him unstuck. Do not try to avoid extra damage. You are there to win. There's only one way to absolutely ensure that you win.

Go for the knock out.
Every single match.

Besides, I could use the sleep...

10. Read The Damned Rule Book

I cannot count the number of builders who have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars building their dream-come-true, and didn't spend one small hour reading the rule-book from cover to cover. You need to do this for every competition; they vary from game to game and change from season to season.

• Know exactly what the judging criteria are. Hint: Number of hits is not part of the judging criteria
• Know what's allowed and what's not.
• Understand how to pass safety (if you don't pass safety, you don't compete.)
• Understand what can get you disqualified.

If you can't spend the hour reading the rules (don't think that you know them just because you've seen every episode on TV) you probably will never get to compete, much less win.

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