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ABC's 'BattleBots' Reboot Will Come Back For a Second Season (thewrap.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the punch-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Good news if you're a fan of watching robots fight or just flail around in a corner. ABC has renewed BattleBots for a second season. According to The Wrap: "Following the summer ratings hit "Celebrity Family Feud," the six-episode first season of "BattleBots" earned an average of 5.4 million total viewers and a 1.7 rating among adults 18-49. Season 2 will keep the single-elimination tournament format of the first, but will double the size of the field to include expert roboticists, garage builders, families on a mission and past winners returning to defend their turf."

10 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. The reboot aint bad by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I just wanted to say I watched Battle Bots over the summer and was pleasantly surprised at how much more energy has gone into it. Finally we get some robot gore!

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    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  2. Too bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone needs to steer the production in favor of greater emphasis on the engineering side. A format with an in-depth design & build episode per battlebot followed by the competition and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of competitors would be an improvement and an opporytunity to promote STEM education.

  3. Re:Too bad... by spiritplumber · · Score: 4, Informative

    They did do a bit of this... for example, they talked about the building of Plan X, the design and aesthetic choices, the expertise of the team and so on. Then they showed Plan X get defeated by Bronco (which got no intro whatsoever) in approximately ten seconds.

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  4. Flagrantly Dull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1. They aren't actually even robots. They are remote-controlled.

    2. Any weapon that could possibly damage a metal-armored bot is banned as it could also kill a cameraman or spectator/audiencemember.

    So instead of say, a 30mm tank cannon, they carry, uh, a wedge, that might, uh, lift the enemy bot up an inch or too and then, well, it won't actually damage anything, but you might get some "points" for "aggression."

    1. Re:Flagrantly Dull by spiritplumber · · Score: 4, Informative

      Did you even see the last season? A minibot got thrown into the ceiling, a full size bot was tossed 8 feet in the air and smashed against the armors, and the fire marshalls had to be called twice.

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  5. Erm by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 2

    We've had this shit in the UK for over a decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or is this some other kind of battery operated carnage?

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    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    1. Re:Erm by f3rret · · Score: 4, Informative

      We've had this shit in the UK for over a decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or is this some other kind of battery operated carnage?

      The show in the UK (RobotWars) was based off the original US BattleBots.

      What I find interesting is that since RobotWars ran for longer and had several of the same teams competing every year you got to see them basically find some of the best ways to win (HypnoDisc, Chaos II and Razor), interestingly enough looking at the new BattleBots it seems that almost all of the bots there either try to reinvent the wheel and come up with some stupid new gimmick like minibots, flamethrowers or other useless, stupid things; or try to mimic the big three from Robot Wars.

      Still weirds me out how many people want to make a flipper bot and go the electric route, when clearly a pneumatic flipper is far superior - admittedly far less controllable, but it will actually flip or throw robots. Like, look at this season of BattleBots, there are several flipper bots - but most are electrical flippers, so those bots tend to get into wrestling matches where they sort of lift another robot and push them around, then you have something like Bronco that basically just drives at the other robots, tackles them to the wall and fires the pneumatic flipper, sending the other bots out over the edge - I know which one I prefer.
      Kinetic spinners are as effective and fun to watch as ever, even though the BattleBots guys kinda sucked at designing them, the disc design pioneered by HypnoDisc is obviously superior to the "two hammers" design showed in this season on BattleBots, as it is less likely to get slammed to a halt, burning out the engine or basically break itself at the joints.

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    2. Re:Erm by oneiros27 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Robot Wars (1998) was based on BattleBots (2000)?

      If Craig Charles had a way to go back into the past, why didn't he tell his younger self to invent the Tension Sheet? (or warn him not to do drugs or what got him thrown into jail)

      If you want the obvious sign, look at how many Brits were competing on BattleBots, and how few Americans were on the early seasons of Robot Wars.

      Oh ... and 'minibots' were allowed in the original BattleBots -- you were allowed extra weight, but the bots had to be able to start out joined, and have some way to re-join, if I remember correctly. (I considered entering years ago, but it'd been a decade since I read all of the rules about gas engines vs. electric drive, wheeled vs. walking, etc.)

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    3. Re:Erm by Not-a-Neg · · Score: 2

      The UK Robot Wars (1998) is based off the US Robot Wars which started in 1994:

      "A forerunner to the UK Series, The 1994 Robot Wars in San Francisco, California featured three different 'games' for each of three robot weight classes"

      Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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  6. Re:Too bad... by Chelloveck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And get rid of the whole pro wrestling everything's-a-grudge-match coverage. In fact, get rid of the sports commentators in the green-screen studio altogether. I know they're trying to pretend it's a real sporting event but I feel that they're losing their core audience by playing up all the tropes that engineers tend to hate.

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    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.