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So, some of you might know about this, but the MegaBots vs. Suidobashi Heavy Industry fight is finally happening. Or rather, has happened, but its being streamed on twitch tomorrow.

Trailer:



The stream is at 7pm pacific on https://go.twitch.tv/megabotsinc

The vid will go up on youtube later though, apparently.

Just thought Id put this up in case anyone was interested (I seem to recall a thread about it, but I couldnt find it... if a mod feels this post should be merged into an existing thread, or moved to geek media, feel free!)



Now that all that is out of the way, my own take on this: Finally! Its been a long wait, lets hope it was worth it! Really curious about how the japanese mech was upgraded, the left arm certainly looks different... guess well see tomorrow!

ROBOT JOX. remember that old movie? This could be the precursor.

It's fake. I Know because the Americans don't have any gun's, pickup trucks, bleach blonds, or freedom fries.

Burning Gundam vs Gundam Maxter? I swear we had that one back in like... 1994ish?

 Frazzled wrote:
It's fake. I Know because the Americans don't have any gun's, pickup trucks, bleach blonds, or freedom fries.

I thought the robots had a nerf ball launcher or something. Thats more in line with modern American snow flake culture if you ask me

I am so looking forward to this. Honestly I really wish that Suidobashi Heavy Industries had put up more information about their bot. The Megabot development videos have been very interesting and I wish I could have watched some of the same for Kuratas.

 vonjankmon wrote:
I am so looking forward to this. Honestly I really wish that Suidobashi Heavy Industries had put up more information about their bot. The Megabot development videos have been very interesting and I wish I could have watched some of the same for Kuratas.

Yeah it's also great promo stuff to keep up interest in the projects, fight. And also giant robots as a whole that's intresting tech.

Its like Robot Wars on steroids. I approve.

The one punch for first fight and chainsaw for the last were pretty good. Japan wins first with the punch, 2nd they both stall out midway but usa was winning and 3rd usa wins. Paintballs were worthless.

I think the promise of what's next to come of all this and hopefully significantly later will be nice. I mean when these bots get more sleek or rugged and move around better and have better weapons (possibly take out the pilots or else make them really safe).

Yeah, shame the paintball cannons didnt really work as intended. Though I was kind of disppointed in the japanese tactics... when going up against a larger foe, they shouldve tried some more mobile tactics, imo... more strafing, encircling, etc. If they couldve gotten behind the americans, they couldve won. Smash the hydraulic pumps and everything stops.

Still, was pretty cool. Hope it becomes a more regular thing.

The americans only won, because they brought a bot DOUBLE the weight of their competitor. When weight was even it took Japan only one punch to win.

Still I'm not sure if one of this bots would stand a chance vs. a normal excavator.

Well, I lived long enough to see actual, real mechs in a gladiatorial arena. Solaris VII finally arrived.

I say this with no sarcasm: what a time to be alive.

I can't wait until the pilots are death row convicts or mercenaries, and the paintball cannon is replaced with an M134, which I think we all know is coming.

Heres the full fight. Some of the youtube comments are genuinely hilarious.
I think they were expecting a full blown Mech Warrior event.....

The fight was so-so for me. I didn't have huge expectations but at the same time I was a bit disappointed. The initial fight between the MKII and Kuratas was funny and more or less how I expected it to go given how slow the MKII is.

The 2nd and 3rd rounds were interesting but I couldn't really tell how scripted everything was because it was so poorly edited. The drone thing from Kuratas actually worked really well since the thing crash landed right on top of their cockpit disctracitng them and blocking some of their LOS but then it didn't look like Kuratas moved until long after the drone crashed so it wasn't really able to take advantage of the distraction. The Kuratas also seemed to have really bad problems when any kind of force was exerted on it at all. Once the MKIII put any kind of force on the Kuratas's limbs in the 2nd and 3rd round it looks like it burst a hydraulic line or something and stopped functioning. Not sure what was going on there and again back to the poor scripting and editing you couldn't tell what was happening.

I think the paintball guns could have served a purpose if they could be aimed at cameras to block video but it didn't really look like either side was trying to do that and the announcers didn't bring it up. The paintballs aren't going to actually damage the robots unless they hit an hydraulic line or something but they could blind them, especially the Kuratas's gatling gun.

The other big thing I noticed is that they had to *heavily* modify the Kuratas for this fight, which I think badly impacted it's mobility. In the early videos of the Kuratas it is moving around on it's 4 legs and appears agile and very quick. (There is a video of it driving around city streets at a normal car pace) but you can tell from the fight that they had basically replaced the entire lower half with a tractor or some kind and just kept two of the four legs. I have to wonder how much more clumsy this made Kuratas but I imagine it was necessary to generate enough power for it to actually fight another bot.

Overall a good start I think but I would absolutely love (and potentially pay money for) an unedited video or the fight just to see how things really happened.

I didn't appreciate the overblown theatrics, it felt pretty awkward for the actual fight we saw. I think a humbler approach would have been better, we're just seeing if machines this size can even fight. But that could just be a necessary part of show business. I think they also need more than just straight up fighting. Seeing the two machines compare their strengths and weaknesses through different challenges would have been entertaining. Not to mention a longer show time before they tear each other apart. Still, it wasn't terrible as a first impression. Can't wait to see more people pitch in and make this bigger and better.

Eh, the robot combat league series was better, actually, although when the chainsword came into play it was pretty awesome.

I think part of what slows this kind of thing up is the fact that the machines have pilots in them rather than being remotely controlled. With no pilots, you could use far deadlier weapons that would be more exciting to watch than paintballs. Of course, a smaller scale version of that concept already exists (robot combat league).

Although it wasn't really all that amazing to see, we can only hope that it inspires future robot designers to make less clumsy designs and gives us a much faster paced sport that looks more like Real Steel or something.

 von Hohenstein wrote:
The americans only won, because they brought a bot DOUBLE the weight of their competitor. When weight was even it took Japan only one punch to win.

Still I'm not sure if one of this bots would stand a chance vs. a normal excavator.

No way, Ive seen actual excavators do/survive some crazy stuff. That was a bit boring to watch TBH. Id rather watch regular construction equipment Mad maxed out and going balls out. Now THAT would be cool. We could bring that "Killdozer" back. You know the one from several years ago that guy welded steel to and went on a rampage through that town running through buildings and whatnot. Now THAT I would watch

Should have used truckasauras , would have crushed the two of them

 dekinrie wrote:
Should have used truckasauras , would have crushed the two of them

Now that is executive thinking.

 dekinrie wrote:
Should have used truckasauras , would have crushed the two of them

Weaponised Bigfoot vs. Truckasaurus.

Or straight up weaponised monster truck racing/derby.

I like BattleBots myself.

I have to agree, it went a little more pathetic on the actual fight part, but it IS only the first step. We keep improving them, and boom, now we've got us some Sentinels, some Dunecrawlers, Dreadnaughts.

I think some balancing rules mightve been a good idea. Using paintball guns and not having rules in place that actually make them useful is kind of... yeah. A weakpoint system maybe? Hit target A and the left arm actuator loses 25% of its power kind of thing? Wouldve certainly added to the ranged part of the fights... and weight classes should probably also be a thing.

Overall, it was a decent start, but theres definitely room for improvement, imo.

 Chiashi_Zane wrote:
I have to agree, it went a little more pathetic on the actual fight part, but it IS only the first step. We keep improving them, and boom, now we've got us some Sentinels, some Dunecrawlers, Dreadnaughts.

I for one would like to see Metal Wolf Irl. Probably the most american game, and its made by a japanese company.