Now that this is a new Battlebots community, it seems fitting to christen it with a reminder on how the Judges judge matches 🙂

• Defense, Aggression, and Control are judged off a rubric table which assigns the score based on how the two bots did relatively against one another. Furthermore, it’s almost impossible to get a complete shutout 5-0 or 3-0 for any category.

• Defense: You get more points for taking out a robot’s critical system, defined as either the primary weapon or its drive. When both bots critical system are equally damaged, it’s only then that the judges look at damage to the other parts of the robot. In other words, it doesn’t usually matter if a piece of armor hits the ceiling, but it does if a bot can’t drive or attack well.

• Aggression: This is surprisingly complicated but in general, the robot who attacks the other bot more with its functional primary weapon gets the 2 out of 3 points. If both bots don’t have working weapons, it becomes “Well who hit each other more with the non-functional weapon?” or “Well who hit each other more?”

• Control: Simplest one – whoever controlled the fight more gets 2 points.

• Override for not using a weapon: If a robot has a functional weapon and does not use it in a meaningful way, it can NOT be awarded more than 2 control and more than 2 aggression points.

Source: Judge’s Guide https://battlebots.com/rules/ as of the 2022 revision.