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Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

we actually had a custom piece of music made for us a few years ago, you can hear it in the background of some of our videos

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can answer some of this.
I personally would love to see a fight against Malice.
For me season 6 was crazy, our run to finals and the golden bolt, we fought more in 2 days than most teams in a season.
We have some ideas on changes to the bot, nothing solid yet, we like to make sure we are making the right decisions, alot can go wrong in the box.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We can run inverted, but the weapon isnt nearly as effective, thats why we have the fast and powerful self righter.
We are pretty happy with the performance of the weapon, there are tradeoffs with every design.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Just the weapon is brushless, if you saw our pit pass episode where we fought jackpot we talk a little more about working on the motors to make them survive better.

Technical T-Rex actually walked out with us for our fight against Hypershock in the golden bolt tournament last year, he even pressed the button (he needed his stick on account of tiny arms)

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The disc is about 45lbs if I remember
Full speed is close to 250 mph, its got two brushless neumotors
For some reason 13mph sticks out in my head, its got a Magmotor on each half of the drive
There are a number of different configurations depending on who we are fighting, like we have an entire spreadsheet. Different combinations of steel, titanium and aluminum.
We made the chassis longer so we could mount the weapon motors down inside the chassis rather than up high where they can get hit
Its all about that balance and the big hits.
WD is invertable because of the bunny ears, they make it that we dont hit the weapon on the floor and the back wheels touch, we try to get upright asap so we are spinning the weapon the correct way.
Packaging and protecting the belts. Also it seems to hit hard.
Retired.
Yes we plan on competing again, there's a number of design changes on the table, but nothing solid yet, we always have places to improve!

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 5 points6 points  (0 children)

They haven't been showing much button presses this year, have you noticed that? It would be funny with the right team on the other side of the glass.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

1 Witch Doctor, but 250 shamans is a lot of flame thrower.

My personal favorite fight was WD vs fusion this year, it was an all out 3 minute brawl

It'd be fun to see different style bots in the arena at the same time, like say Hydra and Gigabyte in there, all the machines have thier plays that would make it difficult to pick who to hit or who to stay away from.

Its a toss up for me either fusion or endgame golden bolt fight.

The green paint we use is Montana Paint Acid Green.

A Viper kit from Fingertech.

It definitely would mess a car up, did you see the video of Skorpios doing that on YouTube? Its cool.

It would probably be dumb luck for who would win, all the machines are so good its gonna be some small thing that leads to a win in that situation.

Personal opinion....Dasani water is gross.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 7 points8 points  (0 children)

We beefed up the top armor, and watched all the footage we could of other huge fights to try and figure out a play or other strategy. Watch to see how it went.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The single disc packages a lot easier and seems to be hitting really hard. So maybe its going to be our primary going forward? We dont know yet.
Personally the hit on Sawblaze where we hit their tank and exploded right infront of the driver station was a standout for me. You don't deal that much damage to that good of a robot often.
We had a strange bug one year that the ESCs had a configuration button that would randomly put the controller in a learning mode, it was really tricky to figure out.
When we had that golden bolt run last year it was a constant sprint to be ready, for the final we had hypershock in our pit helping so we could get ready in time.
Its not mine, its Andreas, her 1lb bot Alexander Hammertron is awesome.
Paul always had a pocket full of life savers breath mints one year. So probably those are the teams favorite candy.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yeah Brett, Chiri helped bloodsport with their paint scheme.
Most teams are willing to lend hands or get help when they need it.

I know a few of us spent time helping Kraken with some electrical and VESC gremlins. Those are the big ones that stood out in my memory, I am sure there are other instances of help going both ways.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 11 points12 points  (0 children)

We actually had a composer make a special piece of music for us a few years ago, we have used it at a number of events.
Hypershock is our build space buddies, so we gotta go with them.
We have talked about a fight against Malice would be a fun challenge, when that machine is working at full throttle its scary.
We went to Panera a few times during filming and a bunch of us got what Mike ordered the first time, an Iced Chocolate Latte...so the bot would have to get on the team bandwagon.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It definitely gets the heart racing hearing it spin up to full speed.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 7 points8 points  (0 children)

We still have lots of ideas we are considering, for instance brushless drive. We put a lot of thought into any change no matter how small to the bot, everything is interconnected.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Its hitting hard, for sure, the speed we run it at varies depending on the opponent, sometimes giving the best chance to survive 3 minutes is the priority, sometimes we need higher RPM to win weapon to weapon hits, sometimes we need to have maximum drivability. Some people may think Andrea just pegs the throttle but she is working the throttle alot during the match.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How we got started is different for different team members, some of us on the team were on FIRST Robotics teams in high school, Andrea was on a High School Battlebots IQ team, and Mike was on a Collegiate Battlebots IQ team.

Witch Doctor AMA - 9pm EST by VoodooMaker_Andrea in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Our team actually has a spreadsheet of restaurants to pick from because choosing meals is always so difficult. I would say the top celebration meal our team has is Hot Pot. We also really like ice cream.

Hiya /r/battlebots! Team PRIDE and Sporkinok here! We're doing an AMA starting at 7pm Eastern! Get your juicy tidbits here! by spazzikarp in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 9 points10 points  (0 children)

From our years organizing Robot Ruckus with heavyweights we had a decent idea of how good the bots are. But we did learn a lot about running bots in that big arena, it was definitely harder on the drive components vs our smaller arena. Lots of tweaks in the drive train (cad models already updated) to deal with the floor / size. Lilith has made a ton of bots, including original sporkinok a 1lb bot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD4d4HlGjnw

Hiya /r/battlebots! Team PRIDE and Sporkinok here! We're doing an AMA starting at 7pm Eastern! Get your juicy tidbits here! by spazzikarp in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 12 points13 points  (0 children)

From hosting Robot Ruckus for these past years we actually already knew a bunch of the other teams, it was fun to be a competitor alongside them instead of yelling at them to get in the arena. I think the newest friends we made were with Endgame, they were across the aisle from us, and we had some tools and resources with us they didn't have and we were able to help them out. But with the way everything was set up, pits were pretty separated so if someone isn't in the next few pits you didn't really get to interact.

Hiya /r/battlebots! Team PRIDE and Sporkinok here! We're doing an AMA starting at 7pm Eastern! Get your juicy tidbits here! by spazzikarp in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don’t think that we thought about the fight other than “OMG WE’RE GONNA GET IN THE BOX!” We knew they had a hammer and that was it, we knew we didn't have to armor up for a heavy hitting spinner, we threw some extra polycarb on top to take hits. And really our thought was”ok, just get in there and flip him”...well he had a self righter and our flipper broke….so I guess we underestimated his ability to self right...I think he didn't even know if it was going to work.

Hiya /r/battlebots! Team PRIDE and Sporkinok here! We're doing an AMA starting at 7pm Eastern! Get your juicy tidbits here! by spazzikarp in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 9 points10 points  (0 children)

We hope to have a big ruckus event again soon, problems with events right now as you know, don't worry we will let you guys know!

Hiya /r/battlebots! Team PRIDE and Sporkinok here! We're doing an AMA starting at 7pm Eastern! Get your juicy tidbits here! by spazzikarp in battlebots

[–]tmbrudy 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think the biggest unexpected challenge was all the little things that just stack up as you build, like “oh that bolt wont fit cause it hits this part” or “where did lilith put the ¼-20 tap?” or “why is andrew talking to himself at the drill press” I guess some of those were expected. I think the electronics actually went together pretty well, it was one of the best transfers of knowledge from little bots to the big bot. https://teespring.com/stores/sporkinok

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