Complete Control Middleweight Battlebot

Complete Control's Season 4.0 Fights

Fight 1, Round of 32: Complete Control VS Village Idiot, Saturday Morning.

I was worried about going up against Village Idiot, as Complete Control showed how it was vulnerable to wedges in the STCWR match. Jon Autry is also a big fan of my work, so it was kinda strange fighting a fan's robot. VI is also a fast, tough robot with an effective weapon. Before the match while checking out Village Idiot, I noticed that his front wedge didn't come all the way to the ground, which was good news for Complete Control, as it meant that I could get underneath him more easily.

(this part is foggy, but I'll try my best)

The match started with us tussling in the box or something. I eventually got my forks underneath Village Idiot, and laid in the grabber, which was fine. Then I tried to lift him up -- nothing. The robot strained, but couldn't get him up in the air. DOH! So I backed off and tried to just grab him and tow him around. But this time, in the process of grabbing him, he bent my new Ti outriggers inwards, making it so that I couldn't get my forks flat on the floor. Oh no!

Some short time after this, the two of us managed to get stuck together. I think the match was about half over at this point. I was sure I was losing, as I wasn't doing much in the way of beating up Village Idiot. Match restarts, and I change my strategy. I decide to go in backwards and use my Ti wedge to shove Village Idiot around. This seemed to be working pretty well but it was still close -- I ended up taking a pulverizer hit at one point. However the pushing match eventually caused VI to start pouring smoke. Something inside Jon's robot had let go in the heat of battle.

All in all a close match, but a KO was awarded. Not what I had intended, but I got the job done in the end. Jon told me that he'd be wearing his Complete Control shirt the next day to cheer me on. Jon's an awesome competitor and a great guy.

Fight 2, Round of 16: Complete Control VS Psychotron, Sunday Morning.

To prepare for this match, I had to get the arm so that it could lift my opponents' robots, and fix the front out riggers. I spent all the rest of Saturday after the Village Idiot match trying to get this done. I swapped the 24 tooth final sprocket on the fork axle to a larger 36 tooth sprocket, to increase the torque at the fork axle. Big thanks to Mark Setrakian who helped me out with his laptop that had a chain length calculator. The 36 tooth would be a direct replacement. The only problem was that they can't be bought at a Home Depot and no industrial suppliers were open on Saturdays. After calling around, I found that some places could do an emergency opening for you for $50. I eventually located a place in the south-Eastbay area that had what I wanted and I went down there, ponied up the fifty bucks and got my sprocket. After spending a couple hours in bay area traffic getting this part, I got to the pits to find out that I had bought the wrong bushing for the sprocket - OH NO! Another $50 later I was in the game. We got back to the pits with all the parts at around 6-7pm [To add later insult to injury, I ran up $200 in cell phone charges on my friend Doug's phone while trying to locate the parts in SF from Treasure Island].

The sprocket was installed and the Astroflight motors were timed properly (I had them timed backwards, which was undoubtedly contributing to the problem). As for the front out riggers, I decided to ditch them entirely, as the front armour panels provided enough forward support to keep the robot from tipping over forwards in most cases. The robot was put back together and aside from a major incident where I crushed my hand, we were set for Sunday by 3:00am Saturday night.

Up at 6:30 to get back to the event to get ready for my 10:30 fight. My opponent, Psychotron was another wedge robot, who earlier had a lifting arm, but by this point it was broken. Recon let me know that like Village Idiot, its front wedge didn't ride on the ground either this was a good thing.

The match started and aside from Jockeying for position for a few moments, Complete Control managed to take over. This time Complete Control was able to lift up the other robot, and I took him on a tour of the area hazards. When I was told to let him go (after the 30 second count was up), I liked to sort of suplex him over the back end of the robot. The match progressed this way until the 3 minutes were up. He got in a couple of shots and I went over the killsaws I think, but it was pretty one sided, and the judges' decision reflected this. Another win for Complete Control!

Fight 3. Quarterfinals: Complete Control VS Bad Attitude, Early Sunday Afternoon.

Bad Attitude has been around for a while, and I was worried about his speed and driving ability, adn that he could probably get under the side of Complete Control and push me into whatever he wanted. On the plus side, like VI and Psychotron before him, his wedge was also not flush with the ground, which meant that again, I should have no problem getting my forks underneath him.

This match was very similar to the Psychotron match. I scooped him up and showed him the saws, and then the pulverizers. Then flipped him over. Rinse, repeat. This time, when I was having one of the pulverizers pound on him, I got too close and the big hammer flattened my new Ti grabbing arm, so it was twisted 90 degrees out of whack. Oh well, I could still grab him with the gimpy arm, and that's all that mattered [After watching the match on TV the flattened arm seemed to have a better grip on him than the single point -- look for this feature in the upcoming Complete Control revision for Season 5]. To end the match I took him to the far killsaws and pushed him into them like a cross-slide on a table saw -- lots of noise. This match again came down to a Judges decision, and again, it was a one sided affair in favour of Complete Control. On to the semis!