Metagame Analysis

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That Kode Guy
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Metagame Analysis

Post by That Kode Guy » Mon Jun 10, 2013 11:33 am

Right. I know we've been getting some comments about the wedge stat again and its usefulness (or lack thereof). Some approve of it, some don't. Alex MW first suggested it and now it seems... redundant to some people.

Personally, I feel that the stat is getting pretty tiresome. People are trying to find it as a cheap way to win. Whether or not this works out in their favour is one thing, but there is always this stigma that a wedge with more points wins out. More personally, I feel assigning points to something like that is really dumb. (i.e.: BlackRose is a cheap-ass steaming pile of shit that should not have won a single match this season :v: )

What do, gentlemen?
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Post by NWOWWE » Mon Jun 10, 2013 11:51 am

I can definetly see both points of the issue.

To be honest the wedge stat was introduced to help remove the ambiguity of bot lowness. Before it was entirely dependant on writers discretion and thus had a tendancy to be rather inconsistant from fight to fight (outside of the golden rule Underall > all :P ). Other than that you had the unoffical guideline of Static < Hinged < Spring-loaded (most of the time anyway).

Well initially the wedge stat did take care of the issue (perhaps aided with the "banning" of spring-loaded wedges and magnets, but I digress). In recent tournaments however I can see where the issues come up. It's basically evolved into the "7 point stat". The vast majority of wedge based bots have 7 points in wedge, seldom more or less. Basically this leaves us right back where we started.

So either we get rid of the stat and more or less just go back to the old way of determining lowness (albeit with a slightly more defined general ruleset), or maybe give some of the responsibilty of lowness to Torque (inb4 "that makes no sense Josh&#33;&#33;&#33;").

Or we keep wedge effectiveness but impose more restrictions on how you're allowed to allocate points for it.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

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Metagame Analysis

Post by NFX » Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:50 pm

It does seem to be an arbitrary 7 stat if you want it to work out at all. Agent X had 8, which was supposed to make his wedge better, and still failed. Likewise, Marauder only had 6 Wedge and failed also. There were probably other factors, but it does seem that if you want your wedge to even remotely be effective, you either need to have it at 7, or absurdly low and up your drivetrain to compensate, like Cutie Honey or Pursuit.

If I remember correctly, though, the Wedge stat was brought in to try and stop bricks from winning everything, as was the Torque stat. Perhaps if the Wedge stat was a determinant of the likelihood of getting under someone, rather than a complete guarantee, that might help balance things out a little.

Say you had a 7 Wedge bot going up against a 5 Wedge bot. We could do some sort of ratio between the two, such as 7/12=0.583, rather than a direct comparison (7>5). But if you had the same 7 Wedge bot going up against a 2 Wedge bot, you'd have 7/9 = 0.778. So the 7 Wedge bot would get under the 2 Wedge bot 77.8% of the time, but it would only get under the 5 Wedge bot 58.3% of the time.
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Post by NWOWWE » Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:02 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>NFX</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 01:50 PM</dd></dl><div> If I remember correctly, though, the Wedge stat was brought in to try and stop bricks from winning everything, as was the Torque stat. Perhaps if the Wedge stat was a determinant of the likelihood of getting under someone, rather than a complete guarantee, that might help balance things out a little.

Say you had a 7 Wedge bot going up against a 5 Wedge bot. We could do some sort of ratio between the two, such as 7/12=0.583, rather than a direct comparison (7>5). But if you had the same 7 Wedge bot going up against a 2 Wedge bot, you'd have 7/9 = 0.778. So the 7 Wedge bot would get under the 2 Wedge bot 77.8% of the time, but it would only get under the 5 Wedge bot 58.3% of the time. [/quote]
Actually that's not half bad. I'm only a little iffy on going hard precentages only because using them literally still leaves a bit of grey area. You could probably suppliment it with some basic design comparison.

If the 7 wedge bot was something like F-bomb while the 5 wedge bot was something like Waterloo Sunset I would suggest that the probablity would weigh closer to the 5 wedge bot a lot of the time (but not all). Converserly, if you make Waterloo the 7 wedge and F-bomb the 5 wedge, then F-bomb would pretty much be fucked.

Ideally then it would be less about just pumping a set number of points into the stat, and focus on acually desinging a good wedge.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

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Metagame Analysis

Post by That Kode Guy » Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:08 pm

Underall-wedges.

Underall-wedges everywhere. :v:
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Post by NWOWWE » Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:17 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 02:08 PM</dd></dl><div> Underall-wedges.

Underall-wedges everywhere. :v: [/quote]
All right wise guy... :P

Well we can't just eliminate the stat entirely without any kind of replacement or else that's what we'd be back to anyway.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

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Metagame Analysis

Post by MadBull » Mon Jun 10, 2013 2:24 pm

I SHALL GIVE MY OPINION&#33;

I have never been a fan of the wedge stat, but not passionately enough to protest and spoil anyone's fun. But now that there is this discussion I'd like to say that I think that with this wedge stat the whole concept of the wedge has moved too far away from what wedges are about in real world robotics.

See, in the real world, I can build a vertical spinner, shape the rear side in a sloped way, and suddenly, 2 weapons&#33; I can even build a robot with no active weapon whatsoever, strong motor, strong armour, give it a wedge shape, and bang, have one hell of a robot.

I KNOW that ARC is not the real world, and I find it admirable that within its rules ARC actually tries to improve upon the real world. That is exactly what I observe within ARC's wedge stat. The wedge is too cheap, fix it. Fine. But the current rules put a wedge nearly on par with an active weapon.

I liked the whole "hinged/static" thing, this forces people to think about wedges and not bluntly slam them on designs. A hinged wedge scrapes along the ground, yet the face there ARE hinges makes them a liability armourwise, whereas the static wedge has a more solid structure yet doesnt get as low.... and maybe there are other solutions that can be explored?

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Post by playzooki » Mon Jun 10, 2013 2:36 pm

Wedges need changing as its really kind of a 7 or nothing stat

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Metagame Analysis

Post by Siphai » Mon Jun 10, 2013 2:51 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>MadBull</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 02:24 PM</dd></dl><div> I liked the whole "hinged/static" thing, this forces people to think about wedges and not bluntly slam them on designs. A hinged wedge scrapes along the ground, yet the face there ARE hinges makes them a liability armourwise, whereas the static wedge has a more solid structure yet doesnt get as low.... and maybe there are other solutions that can be explored? [/quote]
This is pretty much the thing that's bugged me for as long as I was on ARC. How do you judge the hinge part of the wedge? After all the armor is only as strong as the weakest link, and you could certainly define that as the hinge.

It's pretty much why I felt like the +2 to attached parts had to go. If anything, add-ons would actually have weaker armor simply based on the fact that it's something that is made to come off easily between battles.

I think I wrote one of Amoeba's fights, and I'm 90% sure other writers had this problem as well. Amoeba was a robot that Philip entered way back in (I think) Reckoning. It had 12 armor, but it was surrounded by these thin hinged spikes on all sides. Now they can surely be sturdy rods in and of themselves, but by making them thin and making them hinged you're kinda asking them to be bent and warped and ripped off. The problem is that Amoebas armor was so high that it's almost unfair to Philip to have them act like pretzel rods.

Realistically hinged wedges are fairly flimsy, and can be as much a hinderance to the robot as it is a help. Remember Dr. Inferno Jr constantly hitting into bumps and shit on the arena floor? Half way through one of the seasons he actually had to shorten the skirt such that Dr Inferno Jr could actually drive around the arena.

So this is all well and good, it puts rammers on a slightly fairer plane, but they still get that extra 5.5 points (under the old stat system) over every other robot.

Robot Attack used a pretty neat stat system (imo) in which weapon'd robots get an extra couple of points for how many you have invested in your weapon stat. I think it was something like 0-5 gets no points, 6-8 gets 1 point, 9-12 gets 2, and 13+ gets 3. It was neat in the way that it prevented people from putting a dinky little lifter on their rambot for extra points, while giving a little more lee-way to people that wanted to invest in their weapon.

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Post by Badnik96 » Mon Jun 10, 2013 2:59 pm

Of course there's also the new speed bots like Angered Mystery and Haphazard that are using a less wedgy design in order to get more speed, and AM3 was one win away from making the playoffs.

IMO wedges will always come down to writer's discretion. There's no real way to decide it otherwise.

I do think we should bring back the bonus points thing from Robot Attack though.
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Post by NWOWWE » Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:02 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Badnik96</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 03:59 PM</dd></dl><div> I do think we should bring back the bonus points thing from Robot Attack though. [/quote]
You're certainly more than welcome to do so. I mean anyone that wants to run a tournament can set up the stats as they see fit. If we wanted to try that Robot Attack system on a larger scale, that would be fine.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

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Post by GF93 » Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:09 pm

Shame there's no real way allowed to move around a 7 wedge stat, these days. I did try to work around being able to get both over and under wedges when I needed to with Conqueror's suspension, which worked well until it had to affect the power of the weaponry as well.
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Post by That Kode Guy » Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:11 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>GF93</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 04:09 PM</dd></dl><div> until it had to affect the power of the weaponry as well. [/quote]
technically speaking, it should have been affected by that at the start :v: when these things don't get noticed until mid-way through, then of course we get huge bitch-fests
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Post by GF93 » Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:21 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 03:11 PM</dd></dl><div> <blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>GF93</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 04:09 PM</dd></dl><div> until it had to affect the power of the weaponry as well. [/quote]
technically speaking, it should have been affected by that at the start :v: when these things don't get noticed until mid-way through, then of course we get huge bitch-fests [/quote]
Hmm. At the time though, (And not to say I think this for a moment, now) I did find it a bit suspicious that you just so happened to notice it before we were due to fight. :v:


Shouldn't matter, though. I think if we do meet again in the Finals, I might have some ideas on what I can do without having to rely on it. :P
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Post by NWOWWE » Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:28 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>GF93</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 04:21 PM</dd></dl><div> <blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 03:11 PM</dd></dl><div> <blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>GF93</dt><dd>Jun 10 2013&#44; 04:09 PM</dd></dl><div> until it had to affect the power of the weaponry as well. [/quote]
technically speaking, it should have been affected by that at the start :v: when these things don't get noticed until mid-way through, then of course we get huge bitch-fests [/quote]
Hmm. At the time though, (And not to say I think this for a moment, now) I did find it a bit suspicious that you just so happened to notice it before we were due to fight. :v:


Shouldn't matter, though. I think if we do meet again in the Finals, I might have some ideas on what I can do without having to rely on it. :P [/quote]
What does any of that have to do with the stat system? Get out of this thread with that crap mofo. :P
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

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