The Monsterworks: New Monsters
Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 4:52 am
Hey, I'm ForceAndFury from Reddit. I'm pretty new here, but as some of you may have guessed, I like to go big on things that I do and I'm a sucker for unconventional designs. Weird is wonderful, even if it doesn't always win.
I've worked out a few different 'teams' for entry in different events. Mostly, I'll go with a prehistoric theme, since paleobiology has been a longtime hobby of mine. Periodic updates will come as I CAD more things.
I'd like to introduce some of my designs:
Superheavyweight: Triceratops
So, it's a 2WD rear-hinged flipper in the vein of Inertia Labs' machines, with a chunky front plow that'll soak damage like a juggernaut in one configuration and wheels near the front of the chassis so that it can always keep its weapon pointed towards its opponents. It has a bit of a longer stroke, however, since that matters in the ARC stat system. Triceratops is probably the most conventional bot on my team, but it may end up being one of the stronger performers.
Speed: 7 | Weapon: 5 | Armour: 11 (optional +2 to the front plow) | Traction: 5 | Torque: 2
Superheavyweight: Ankylosaurus
This is a walker, because I like walkers and because I feel as if an Ankylosaurus should be slow and heavily armoured. A single large tank runs both a gas-powered flipper and a tail that contains a gas-powered spinner similar to The Butcher from Battlebots S5. The tail has a pair of trackball castor wheels that are not motorized but can be made to spin rapidly by the same mechanism that powers the blade, thereby whipping the tail around to attack only when the blade starts spinning. Of course, both weapons cannot operate at the same time. That'd just be cheap. See the linked CADs for more details.
Speed: 5 | Weapon: 15 | Armour: 12 | Traction: 3 | Torque: 1
Superheavyweight: Euphoberia Ferox
I'd like to present the newest nightmare built by The Monsterworks and ready to fight in the Superheavyweight division. Introducing Euphoberia Ferox
Yes, it's a slithering robot, in the same vein as the famous 'Snake' built by Mark Setrakian seventeen years ago. However, slithering technology has come a long way since then. Here are some videos for proof of concept:
One
Two
So, with that cleared up, I'd like to talk about the weapons modules for this serpentine terror. First up, and pictured, are the crushing jaws. The two small teeth at the front are purely ornamental and can easily be removed for fights. The large tooth in the center of the jaw is what bites into enemy machines. While it looks small compared to the robot, keep in mind that this is a superheavyweight that operates under walker+ rules. The tooth is over eight inches long and can sink deep into its victims. It also crushes with a force of 16 weapon power, meaning that it will kill anything that it grabs in a single bite. Second is the bulb spinner, which still needs to be rendered and will be added later on. It also strikes with 16 weapon power, and its recoil is dissipated through Euphoberia's 20 segments, resulting in very little to no knockback.
Coiling, Pressing, and Attacking
Snakes coil, as shown in one of the pictures if you scroll down. Incidentally, by sidewinding, Euphoberia is also able to strafe. However, this robot doesn't need to be particularly fast. For the sake of movement, its entire body is actuated. That means that the flat plate on its tail can be both pressed against the ground and used as a powerful lifter, making it inadvisable to attack. Any segment can also be pressed, so attacking the body will not result in getting beneath it. If you're fortunate, you may get beneath the spines of one segment. Even if you do, Euphoberia has you right where it wants you. Its primary attacking strategy involves coiling around attacking robots, trapping them in its spiny embrace, and bringing its crusher to bear. Its speed across the arena floor has absolutely no bearing on its effectiveness in this regard.
Defense
As previously mentioned, any segment, being actuated, can naturally press, and the head, with the jaws, can swivel. Flipping a robot so large, heavy, and awkward is nearly impossible, especially, since segments can just lift themselves up. In the event that Euphoberia is somehow flipped, it can fairly easily roll itself over. In the event of an OOTA, it should be able to rear up and climb back in unless there is a significant drop involved.
Additionally, one might think to attack the joints between segments. This is definitely a potential weakness. That's why the spikes exist. Rammers will only ride up the lower spikes and impale themselves on the middle spikes should they attempt a high speed run at Euphoberia. The segments can articulate to block incoming axe blows with their spikes, and spinners will be promptly coiled around and smothered.
Stats
So how do you stat a monstrosity like this? You play to its strengths and protect its weaknesses. So the stats look like this:
Speed: 4 | Weapon: 16 | Armour: 13 | Traction: 2 | Torque: 1
Heavyweight: Torosaurus
Additional Renders by Brian
Yes, the name and the robot are blatant homages to Toro, although it's really in the same weight class as The Matador. It's just as tough as its larger cousin, but sacrifices some speed in order to have a really scary flipper. Same deal, though' overall. It's a 2WD rear-hinged flipper with a chunky front plow that'll soak damage like a juggernaut and wheels near the front of the chassis so that it can always keep its weapon pointed towards its opponents. Torosaurus is pretty conventional, but not everything out there has to be a special snowflake, right?
Speed: 6 | Weapon: 8 | Armour: 11 | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
Heavyweight: Dunkleosteus
This is a wide-faced, invertible plow/crusher, weighted towards the front so that it can pivot effortlessly around its massive plow/mouth. The face is designed so that it <del>is really fucking ugly</del> works either way up (though it works better right side up). For the sake of knockback mitigation, Dunkleosteus is encircled by four large tracks, which ensure both full invertibility using the central joint as a pivot, and that this prehistoric terror's footprint on the ground is huge. Feel like going fishing?
Speed: 8 | Weapon: 1 | Armour: 12 | Traction: 6 | Torque: 3
Heavyweight: Mastodon
I like prehistoric animals, but they're all dead, and I like walkers, but they're slow like Forrest Gump, so unidirectional weaponry is usually a waste of space because they'll never hit anything. I solved this by making a hammer on a turret on a goddamned Mastodon. It also has a nice shield in front that pivots with the turret to provide a second, movable layer of armour because, a) you can never have enough armour, and b) why the fuck not? When mastodon gets really angry he can fling you with either a 15 power, long-stroke turreted flipper or gore you with a nightmarish 18 power, single-toothed spinner: his flailing tusks. The flipper and turret shield while in hammer mode also both press in a gimpy way. Located directly opposite from the face of the turret is a trackball wheel. It applies upward pressure to the back of the turret by pressing against the main chassis, thereby forcing the front downward.
Speed: 4 | Weapon: 18 (+3 to the turret in hammer and flipper configs) | Armour: 11 | Traction: 2 | Torque: 1
Middleweight: Machairoceratops
The third member of the Tricerabot club is Machairoceratops. Just as tough as his big brother, and already decked out in black and blue so you can't see the bruises, this midsized mauler comes ready to fight. The shield is part of the rear-hinged flipper and benefits from a +2 weapon armour bonus as well as +1 taken from other places, meaning that this dinobot has 14 armour up front and ten on the body. Take that, spinners. Oh, and if you thought that hammers might be able to do something against this tank of a battlebot, you'd be wrong. See how the shield extends up a fair bit past the body? Yeah.
Speed: 7 | Weapon: 5 | Armour: 11 | Traction: 5 | Torque: 2
Middleweight: Orthocone
Seriously, wtf is this thing? My best description would be a 'cone spinner'. It's close to being a vertical FBS, but it has a stable footprint on the ground and moves, like Dunkleosteus, on two trackball wheels that allow it to bring its unique weaponry to bear, and especially to whip the light rear portion around really quickly for some fun decimation. Basically, a single shaft, powered via chain drive by a titanic brushless motor, links the spinning head and tail, with a static section in the middle of the robot around the eyes (painted the same as the rear spinning part). Effectively, almost 2/3 of the robot benefits from weapon armour bonuses and you know what, Orthocone just looks cool, okay? I can't think of any other excuses for making something like this.
Speed: 5 | Weapon: 15 | Armour: 6 | Traction: 3 | Torque: 1
Middleweight: Carbonemys
Yeah, it's a giant 4WD omniwheel turtle. <del>No, I didn't make the shell spin because that shit, my friend, is what we call 'predictabure' here in China.</del> Fuck it, I made the shell spin. It's a dome spinner that stores up kinetic energy a la Warrior SKF, but instead of putting that power into a flipper, it powers a truly unique weapon. The front of the robot is its 'head', which possesses a massive, gaping jaw capable of fitting almost any robot inside. "Ahh, so it's a crusher," you might ask? No, my friend, because that shit is what we call... fuck it. Basically, there's only an upper jaw and enough space that it can get that upper jaw over opposing bots. Then it fires 13 stored up weapon power straight downwards into your bot via a pneumatic spike with the floor to brace it, because Carbonemys is too hungry to wait like 2 minutes to nom nom nom bots and crushers are wimpy anyway.
Speed: 6 (pretty fast for a turtle) | Weapon: 13 | Armour: 6 (but 10 really because weapon armour :P) | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
Lightweight: Spiclypeus (Spicy)
The final, smallest member of the tricerabot quartet, Spiclypeus, nicknamed 'Spicy', is a rear-hinged flipper with a good turn of speed, solid flipping power, and a whole lot of armour. The shield on this little bastard is part of its flipper and benefits from both a +2 weapon armour bonus (yeah, it's less than 1/3 of the surface area) and a +1 armour buff for a total of 12 frontal armour. It also sticks up enough to strand hammers before they can hit the body, and the notch in the middle is great for catching and wrenching them with a quick turn. Keeping the weapon touching the ground as well as keeping it and the shield facing opponents should be a cinch, what with 2D and the wheels located right near the front but just barely behind the centre of gravity. All in all, I'm confident that this hot tamale will prove too hot to handle.
Speed: 8 | Weapon: 6 | Armour: 9 | Traction: 6 | Torque: 1
Lightweight: Anomalocaris
Image Coming Soon!
It just wants to hug you, and then slowly devour you. basically, it's an low, arch-shaped wedge that your bot can get beached on. It has a reverse firing flipper on the back, that comes down instead of going up, so really, it has a clamp. The flipper is linked to a movable plate at the front and they fire at the same time. When the flipper is up, the plate is down and pressed against the ground. When the flipper comes down that usually means that opponents are trapped and about to be nommed, and the plate comes up. Anomalocaris feeds via a super high RPM diamond-tipped circular saw that pops out from its body. Normally, saws are weaksauce, because they just don't have the same kind of motor power that big spinners and stuff do, so they need longer period of contact with their target to damage it significantly. The design of this robot gives its saw that time, by beaching opponents, and then clamping down on them. The saw then gets to slice and dice through the generally weaker armour on robots' underbellies for as long as it feels like. Yum yum.
Speed: 6 | Weapon: 9 (1 flipper and 8 saw) | Armour: 10 | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
Lightweight: Wiwaxia
Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight? This murderous little spinner is a combination melty-brain and shell with terrifying power, decent speed, and solid armour (especially as it makes use of the FBS bonus). Mostly, it's a shell spinner, but the melty-brain drive, which is geared more for translational motion, can be viewed as augmenting the weapon, giving it about 50% more power than it would otherwise have and turning a pretty average FBS into something terrifying. Due to the superior traction, it also spins up very quickly.
Wiwaxia can spin in either direction, which helps it to torque self-right with the assistance of its summit pole, which guarantees that it will always land on its side when flipped and not come to rest on any one surface, aided by its bottom-heavy weight distribution. However, this system, though it works, is less than ideal, so for fights where it may be flipped often, Wiwaxia can give up one weapon power for a proper srimech as shown in the last two album pictures. Due to its unique weapons system, Wiwaxia effectively hits opposing machines with a horizontal spinning power of 18 and possesses 9 armour over its chassis.
Speed: 6 | Weapon: 12 | Armour: 7 | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
I've worked out a few different 'teams' for entry in different events. Mostly, I'll go with a prehistoric theme, since paleobiology has been a longtime hobby of mine. Periodic updates will come as I CAD more things.
I'd like to introduce some of my designs:
Superheavyweight: Triceratops
So, it's a 2WD rear-hinged flipper in the vein of Inertia Labs' machines, with a chunky front plow that'll soak damage like a juggernaut in one configuration and wheels near the front of the chassis so that it can always keep its weapon pointed towards its opponents. It has a bit of a longer stroke, however, since that matters in the ARC stat system. Triceratops is probably the most conventional bot on my team, but it may end up being one of the stronger performers.
Speed: 7 | Weapon: 5 | Armour: 11 (optional +2 to the front plow) | Traction: 5 | Torque: 2
Superheavyweight: Ankylosaurus
This is a walker, because I like walkers and because I feel as if an Ankylosaurus should be slow and heavily armoured. A single large tank runs both a gas-powered flipper and a tail that contains a gas-powered spinner similar to The Butcher from Battlebots S5. The tail has a pair of trackball castor wheels that are not motorized but can be made to spin rapidly by the same mechanism that powers the blade, thereby whipping the tail around to attack only when the blade starts spinning. Of course, both weapons cannot operate at the same time. That'd just be cheap. See the linked CADs for more details.
Speed: 5 | Weapon: 15 | Armour: 12 | Traction: 3 | Torque: 1
Superheavyweight: Euphoberia Ferox
I'd like to present the newest nightmare built by The Monsterworks and ready to fight in the Superheavyweight division. Introducing Euphoberia Ferox
Yes, it's a slithering robot, in the same vein as the famous 'Snake' built by Mark Setrakian seventeen years ago. However, slithering technology has come a long way since then. Here are some videos for proof of concept:
One
Two
So, with that cleared up, I'd like to talk about the weapons modules for this serpentine terror. First up, and pictured, are the crushing jaws. The two small teeth at the front are purely ornamental and can easily be removed for fights. The large tooth in the center of the jaw is what bites into enemy machines. While it looks small compared to the robot, keep in mind that this is a superheavyweight that operates under walker+ rules. The tooth is over eight inches long and can sink deep into its victims. It also crushes with a force of 16 weapon power, meaning that it will kill anything that it grabs in a single bite. Second is the bulb spinner, which still needs to be rendered and will be added later on. It also strikes with 16 weapon power, and its recoil is dissipated through Euphoberia's 20 segments, resulting in very little to no knockback.
Coiling, Pressing, and Attacking
Snakes coil, as shown in one of the pictures if you scroll down. Incidentally, by sidewinding, Euphoberia is also able to strafe. However, this robot doesn't need to be particularly fast. For the sake of movement, its entire body is actuated. That means that the flat plate on its tail can be both pressed against the ground and used as a powerful lifter, making it inadvisable to attack. Any segment can also be pressed, so attacking the body will not result in getting beneath it. If you're fortunate, you may get beneath the spines of one segment. Even if you do, Euphoberia has you right where it wants you. Its primary attacking strategy involves coiling around attacking robots, trapping them in its spiny embrace, and bringing its crusher to bear. Its speed across the arena floor has absolutely no bearing on its effectiveness in this regard.
Defense
As previously mentioned, any segment, being actuated, can naturally press, and the head, with the jaws, can swivel. Flipping a robot so large, heavy, and awkward is nearly impossible, especially, since segments can just lift themselves up. In the event that Euphoberia is somehow flipped, it can fairly easily roll itself over. In the event of an OOTA, it should be able to rear up and climb back in unless there is a significant drop involved.
Additionally, one might think to attack the joints between segments. This is definitely a potential weakness. That's why the spikes exist. Rammers will only ride up the lower spikes and impale themselves on the middle spikes should they attempt a high speed run at Euphoberia. The segments can articulate to block incoming axe blows with their spikes, and spinners will be promptly coiled around and smothered.
Stats
So how do you stat a monstrosity like this? You play to its strengths and protect its weaknesses. So the stats look like this:
Speed: 4 | Weapon: 16 | Armour: 13 | Traction: 2 | Torque: 1
Heavyweight: Torosaurus
Additional Renders by Brian
Yes, the name and the robot are blatant homages to Toro, although it's really in the same weight class as The Matador. It's just as tough as its larger cousin, but sacrifices some speed in order to have a really scary flipper. Same deal, though' overall. It's a 2WD rear-hinged flipper with a chunky front plow that'll soak damage like a juggernaut and wheels near the front of the chassis so that it can always keep its weapon pointed towards its opponents. Torosaurus is pretty conventional, but not everything out there has to be a special snowflake, right?
Speed: 6 | Weapon: 8 | Armour: 11 | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
Heavyweight: Dunkleosteus
This is a wide-faced, invertible plow/crusher, weighted towards the front so that it can pivot effortlessly around its massive plow/mouth. The face is designed so that it <del>is really fucking ugly</del> works either way up (though it works better right side up). For the sake of knockback mitigation, Dunkleosteus is encircled by four large tracks, which ensure both full invertibility using the central joint as a pivot, and that this prehistoric terror's footprint on the ground is huge. Feel like going fishing?
Speed: 8 | Weapon: 1 | Armour: 12 | Traction: 6 | Torque: 3
Heavyweight: Mastodon
I like prehistoric animals, but they're all dead, and I like walkers, but they're slow like Forrest Gump, so unidirectional weaponry is usually a waste of space because they'll never hit anything. I solved this by making a hammer on a turret on a goddamned Mastodon. It also has a nice shield in front that pivots with the turret to provide a second, movable layer of armour because, a) you can never have enough armour, and b) why the fuck not? When mastodon gets really angry he can fling you with either a 15 power, long-stroke turreted flipper or gore you with a nightmarish 18 power, single-toothed spinner: his flailing tusks. The flipper and turret shield while in hammer mode also both press in a gimpy way. Located directly opposite from the face of the turret is a trackball wheel. It applies upward pressure to the back of the turret by pressing against the main chassis, thereby forcing the front downward.
Speed: 4 | Weapon: 18 (+3 to the turret in hammer and flipper configs) | Armour: 11 | Traction: 2 | Torque: 1
Middleweight: Machairoceratops
The third member of the Tricerabot club is Machairoceratops. Just as tough as his big brother, and already decked out in black and blue so you can't see the bruises, this midsized mauler comes ready to fight. The shield is part of the rear-hinged flipper and benefits from a +2 weapon armour bonus as well as +1 taken from other places, meaning that this dinobot has 14 armour up front and ten on the body. Take that, spinners. Oh, and if you thought that hammers might be able to do something against this tank of a battlebot, you'd be wrong. See how the shield extends up a fair bit past the body? Yeah.
Speed: 7 | Weapon: 5 | Armour: 11 | Traction: 5 | Torque: 2
Middleweight: Orthocone
Seriously, wtf is this thing? My best description would be a 'cone spinner'. It's close to being a vertical FBS, but it has a stable footprint on the ground and moves, like Dunkleosteus, on two trackball wheels that allow it to bring its unique weaponry to bear, and especially to whip the light rear portion around really quickly for some fun decimation. Basically, a single shaft, powered via chain drive by a titanic brushless motor, links the spinning head and tail, with a static section in the middle of the robot around the eyes (painted the same as the rear spinning part). Effectively, almost 2/3 of the robot benefits from weapon armour bonuses and you know what, Orthocone just looks cool, okay? I can't think of any other excuses for making something like this.
Speed: 5 | Weapon: 15 | Armour: 6 | Traction: 3 | Torque: 1
Middleweight: Carbonemys
Yeah, it's a giant 4WD omniwheel turtle. <del>No, I didn't make the shell spin because that shit, my friend, is what we call 'predictabure' here in China.</del> Fuck it, I made the shell spin. It's a dome spinner that stores up kinetic energy a la Warrior SKF, but instead of putting that power into a flipper, it powers a truly unique weapon. The front of the robot is its 'head', which possesses a massive, gaping jaw capable of fitting almost any robot inside. "Ahh, so it's a crusher," you might ask? No, my friend, because that shit is what we call... fuck it. Basically, there's only an upper jaw and enough space that it can get that upper jaw over opposing bots. Then it fires 13 stored up weapon power straight downwards into your bot via a pneumatic spike with the floor to brace it, because Carbonemys is too hungry to wait like 2 minutes to nom nom nom bots and crushers are wimpy anyway.
Speed: 6 (pretty fast for a turtle) | Weapon: 13 | Armour: 6 (but 10 really because weapon armour :P) | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
Lightweight: Spiclypeus (Spicy)
The final, smallest member of the tricerabot quartet, Spiclypeus, nicknamed 'Spicy', is a rear-hinged flipper with a good turn of speed, solid flipping power, and a whole lot of armour. The shield on this little bastard is part of its flipper and benefits from both a +2 weapon armour bonus (yeah, it's less than 1/3 of the surface area) and a +1 armour buff for a total of 12 frontal armour. It also sticks up enough to strand hammers before they can hit the body, and the notch in the middle is great for catching and wrenching them with a quick turn. Keeping the weapon touching the ground as well as keeping it and the shield facing opponents should be a cinch, what with 2D and the wheels located right near the front but just barely behind the centre of gravity. All in all, I'm confident that this hot tamale will prove too hot to handle.
Speed: 8 | Weapon: 6 | Armour: 9 | Traction: 6 | Torque: 1
Lightweight: Anomalocaris
Image Coming Soon!
It just wants to hug you, and then slowly devour you. basically, it's an low, arch-shaped wedge that your bot can get beached on. It has a reverse firing flipper on the back, that comes down instead of going up, so really, it has a clamp. The flipper is linked to a movable plate at the front and they fire at the same time. When the flipper is up, the plate is down and pressed against the ground. When the flipper comes down that usually means that opponents are trapped and about to be nommed, and the plate comes up. Anomalocaris feeds via a super high RPM diamond-tipped circular saw that pops out from its body. Normally, saws are weaksauce, because they just don't have the same kind of motor power that big spinners and stuff do, so they need longer period of contact with their target to damage it significantly. The design of this robot gives its saw that time, by beaching opponents, and then clamping down on them. The saw then gets to slice and dice through the generally weaker armour on robots' underbellies for as long as it feels like. Yum yum.
Speed: 6 | Weapon: 9 (1 flipper and 8 saw) | Armour: 10 | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1
Lightweight: Wiwaxia
Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight? This murderous little spinner is a combination melty-brain and shell with terrifying power, decent speed, and solid armour (especially as it makes use of the FBS bonus). Mostly, it's a shell spinner, but the melty-brain drive, which is geared more for translational motion, can be viewed as augmenting the weapon, giving it about 50% more power than it would otherwise have and turning a pretty average FBS into something terrifying. Due to the superior traction, it also spins up very quickly.
Wiwaxia can spin in either direction, which helps it to torque self-right with the assistance of its summit pole, which guarantees that it will always land on its side when flipped and not come to rest on any one surface, aided by its bottom-heavy weight distribution. However, this system, though it works, is less than ideal, so for fights where it may be flipped often, Wiwaxia can give up one weapon power for a proper srimech as shown in the last two album pictures. Due to its unique weapons system, Wiwaxia effectively hits opposing machines with a horizontal spinning power of 18 and possesses 9 armour over its chassis.
Speed: 6 | Weapon: 12 | Armour: 7 | Traction: 4 | Torque: 1