A group of friends and I thought the construction methods for
Battlebots would be similar to the construction of characters for the
Role Playing game
Claydonians. At first a claydonian seemed most survivable if the clay was solid and not to viscous but had ehough adhesion. It seemes like these qualities would be comparable to dansity/mass and shock absorbing or resiliency for the "robots" (which is a pet peve - they are radio controlled not rfeally robots...).
In claydonians there were a few good types of forms: the big "one limb" creature, the flat manylegged creature, and the smaller ammo using creature...variations on these themes with rules variations and clay consistance forced the game to be variable in outcome.
In Battlebots, the design specifications had to be altered because the rules were different. Projectiles weren't allowed, unless tethered... Movement wasn't an issue in claydonians, but in Battlebots, speed, manuverability, and other movement issued had to be addressed.
Other concepts which were similar were damage and survivability, these were abstract for the clay creatures, but they mattered too.
Anyway, after lots of thought on the topic, the clay characters were only a jumping point to allow for weird abstract idea generation, but no ultimate killer robots...
However:
We did learn other facinating thoughts...
Walkers die because they are too slow.
Spinners do well when they have a good drive mechanism and driver.
Wedges need another attack mechanism to attack things that turn over.
Drive traction with power is needed for anything to push/pull, as well as methods to disable counter pushing/pulling.
Lastly art-bots usually suck...unless they have principals from above...
Anyway, they're all cooler than I, for they've made their bot and put it in competition...