Shell Spinner

Real life examples: Typhoon 2, Super Megabyte, Ziggo

In game examples: None (DSL: Grog, The Vengeful)

Offspring of the classic horizontal spinner.

Shell spinners feature one spinning shell (a cylinder generally closed at the top) surrounding the chassis. Several weapons are then attached to the shell. This protects the bot, as well as creating a powerful weapon to defeat other robots. Usually in these bots, chassis armor is weak, because most enemies will only be able to hit you when your shell has been knocked off, at which time your very likely to lose anyway.

The DSL pack is the best way to create shell spinners.

Examples include Scrap Daddy's BBEANS 4 entry, Iron Spaghetti.

Pros:

• All sides of the robot are protected meaning the opponent will not be capable of manuvering out of your damage zone.
• Known for devastating damage.
• The shell spinner parts usually mean a very well protected chassis.

Cons:

• Very difficult to drive and assess the orientation.
• The emphasis on power leads to a slow drive train which leaves you a sitting duck.
• Srimechs are a challenge to apply to these bots, meaning ground clearance is the hardest part of building and a vulnerability to a flipper that can manage to get close.
• If the robot uses heavy weapons then the loss of one will lead to a catastrophic Mauler Dance.

Building a Good Shell Spinner

A good Shell Spinner needs to have a powerful weapon motor and many weapons. Esentially, Shell Spinners emphasize in weaponry, as this provides both offense and defense to your bot. Once your weapons are gone, your core shell is vulnerable. Once your core shell is gone, you're as good as dead. So the more weapons you have, the longer it takes for the opponent to reach your chassis.

The very first step you should take in building your Shell Spinner is your chassis design. As a general rule of thumb, a cylindrical chassis preforms best. Unless you have a specific need for such a chassis, you should avoid an extremly small chassis and an externally mounted weapon motor, This drasticly decreases your stablility and hitpoints should a gut-ripper get under you. Try to keep your chassis height to a minimum, as this will decrease the height of your subsequent shell panels.

A Shell Spinners drive is often neglected, and this is in some cases unavoidable. In general, try to use the grippiest wheels possible, attached to adequate motors. If you find your Shell Spinner is very difficult to turn, you likely have too weak drive motors. Their purpose essentially, is to overcome the torque of the weapon motor and keep the spinner from being counted out.

A Shell Spinner's powerhouse is its weapon motor. Without it, your bot is doomed to fail. You must make sure it is powerful enough to spin the shell at high speeds. For LW Shell Spinners, (These are difficult to build effectively.) you tend to need at the very least a piglet. If you want to give your spinner a lot of power, give it a dual mag. Beware though, you will most likely need to sacrifice your drive train. For MWs, an E-tek is often a good choice, though it is possible to use a Perm 132. For an HW, the only two motors you should likely consider are the 6-mag and Dual Perm.

The final step before you can start packing on weapons is the core shell. You have several sizes of shells, each size containing three different strengths. Always try to keep your shell as small as possible, as this will reduce the number of panels needed, and thus give your more weight to work with. As far as the strength of your disk, it depends on your personal preference and whether the bot is more defensively or offensively minded. When attaching panels to your shell spinner, try to generally get them as low to the ground as possible. This will allow you to better deal with wedges when you attach weapons.

And now finally, the offensive aspect of your bot. When choosing weapons for your Shell Spinner, always try to stick with the shortest weapons. Thus, if you are planning to attach a sledgehammer to your shell, attach it so the hammer is parallel (||), not perpendicular (--|) to the shell. The reason behind this is that when your weapons strike the opponent, the longer weapons reduce the shells momentum greater than a weapon that grinds against the opponent, and then increases the time it takes for the shell to spin up to speed. The best weapon choices for Shell Spinner tend to be: Iron Spikes, Razor Tips, Small DSL Teeth, Spike Clubs, and finally Sledgehammers when used in combination with other weapons. Do not be afraid however to use other weapons, as they may prove more effective in your situation. If you don't already have a detailed idea of your weapon setup, try to put two weapons on each panel. Mount one at the bottom attachment point, and one at the top. This will provide adequate defense for the panel, yet allow you to better handle wedged bots. If you can only attach one weapon to a given panel, put it in the middle. Thi allows you to strike lower bots while again providing defense to the panel.

As a last note, if you have weight left over, put bottom protection to resist gut-ripping, and/or increase chassis armor. As far as self-righting goes, there are different strategies, all of course depending on the Shell Spinner in question. Always try to put a skirt of some sort mounted on the top of your disk. This will prevent the bottom from laying flat on the disk when flipped, and make it easier to be tipped back over.

Flail Shell Spinner

Flail Shell Spinner are like regular Shell Spinners except their weapons are attached to axle mounts. This allows the weapons to scrape against the opponent instead of smacking them, giving them greater, faster damage, but leaves the bot more vulnerable to fast wedged bots, which they can't push away as easy as fixed weapon Shell Spinners. Flails also allow for the Shell Spinner to maintain its spinning momentum due to the impact being absorbed by the weapon and axle. Aside from the normal Shell Spinner weaknesses, Flail versions are generally very hard to drive straight. Also a havok mine, flail shell spinners do a minor havok (generally just pushing away the other bot) each time an axle is ripped off and when the entire shell comes out, the robot flies (and anything around it, for that matter).

Flail shell spinner specialists includes Urjak and Scrap Daddy.

Two of the most famous Flail Shell Spinners are Iron Spaghetti and Steel Meatball, both built by Scrap Daddy. The first did pretty well in BBEANS 4 and the second won RAW.