I feel like a design has to evolve to survive at the different levels, but have you thought of a design that you think would stand out in the pros? Weapon design, wheel design, armor, go wild!
Personally I’ve been trying to imagine a hydraulics powered horizontal crusher. Jaws of Death style instead of Kraken style. I feel like it has potential that Jaws of Death didn’t hit. Can’t remember if there were others like that.
In the same vein, I’d be curious to see if a hydraulic compactor could ever be viable. Instead of piercing with a sharp beak, it would flatten whatever area it got hold of.
I wonder if a really nimble robot would work. A waking robot built on something like spot or similar that could jump out of the way of attacks or lift feet to not take a hit. The control would be insane, and the weapon would probably be underpowered, but it’d be interesting to see a gymnastics type bot that’s just able to evade everything.
It would be pretty traumatic to watch Spot’s legs get ripped off by Icewave lol!
No idea if this would work, but I’ve wondered if it could be possible to build a big overhead horizontal like bloodsport but make the blade shaped a bit like an upside down airfoil to push the bot into the floor so it doesn’t fly and flip so much when it hits something?