Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?

[Swampdude]

Originally Posted by Zuelu562

If you've got a guide system that touches your minibot, you're going to have to cut it down so your minibot doesn't lose you a match. We got called on it during our fourth match.

Can you explain your guide system, and the offended rule explanation?

[BJC]

On the practice field while testing our minibot when it hit the top the pole would actually "jump" up a little from its slot. We, without a doubt, had enough force to trigger the top. Despite this, over half the time our minibot hit the top of the tower on the field towers nothing was triggered. I hope this problem is fixed for week two regionals/districts.

[GaryVoshol]

The problem with the tower triggers is two-fold:

1 - False positives: The tower will sometimes trigger because of a hard hit by a hostbot on the pole or base, before the minibot even begins to move.

2 - False negatives: The tower will not trigger even when soundly smacked by the minibot.

At Kettering, the false negatives were associated with the faster minibots. It was noted that in order to eliminate the false positives, the sensitivity was decreased, and it was surmised that the fastest minibots did not provide enough contact time to trigger the tower. It was not a matter of force, but of time of contact.

Hopefully this can be addressed.

[Coach Norm]

We competed at Alamo Regional this past weekend.

We had a great time and were honored to be in the quarterfinals against 418, 16 and Rookies 3841. We were picked as the first choice for 3847 (rookies) at number 8. They were completely taken off guard when they moved into position to be an alliance captain. They then chose Cyberwolves, 647 as our alliance second alliance partner. 3847 had lost their tube manipulator early on Friday. Both of these robots showed Field communications before our second match started but lost communications right after the match started. 3847 regained it and worked extremely hard at pushing tubes in our lane at the Red alliance end. We chose not to throw any tubes into the field as an alliance to try and limit their opportunities to stray tubes. Our plan was to push tubes into our lane as there were entered with two robots and have one robot score tubes at the other end. 148 put up two ubertubes in Auto while 16 attempted but just missed. In both matches, 148 and 16 deployed their minibot resulting in 50 points for them. We were crushed both matches by these this powerhouse alliance of hall of famers, but by limiting the number of tubes on the field, the minibots were 50 points of each match.

Minibots proved to be the difference the later in the tournament it went. Rounds with four successful minibots did occur in the elimination matches a few times.

Many teams had minibots that would climb the pole but deployment proved to be very difficult. 118 has a very impressive minibot that is extremely fast, (if you have not seen it, check out Magic's minibot youtube) but they had difficulty getting it deployed during the matches. 118's early match loss was to an alliance(2158, utilizing a strategy of pushing tubes into the opposing teams lane to starve them from scoring. The opposing alliance also deployed a minibot I believe. The final match score was 30 - 24.

Alamo had 17 rookie teams in attendance. Many of the teams did not understand all the rules, so it was very important to explain the some of the basic rules before the match.

Key points I noticed:
1. You need the Driver Station update (bring it on a USB for others)
2. You need the correct CRio update (bring it on a USB for others)
3. Picking up off the floor is huge importance.
4. Do not just liter the field with tubes if you an underpowered by a strong offensive alliance opponent.
5. GET A MINIBOT that you can DEPLOY.
6. DEPLOYMENT IS KEY. Slow and steady will put you in place for high seeding or selection in the next week tournaments most likely. As the season progresses, the minibot times will improve as well as the consistency of deployment. This will most likely take a larger roll after week 2.
7. Defense can be played by limiting the number of tubes as well as working to limit your opponent alliances' from scoring logos by strategically removing the tubes they need to complete logos. Push them into your lane where they cannot be retrieved without incurring a penalty.
8. If you are opposing a stronger alliance, aggressive driving is a must to make it more difficult for teams to pick up tubes. Robot to robot contact in the bumper zone makes it more difficult for teams to pick up tubes in optimum position for deliver to the pegs.
9. Stay away from the opposing teams tower in the last ten seconds. Red card
10. Many teams received a red card for a possessed tube hitting an opposing teams tower. (G23)
11. Pushing/Herding of tubes resulted in penalties as well.
12. If you have a robot who cannot hang tubes, push tubes forward to your alliance zone but not much closer than the towers since it will cause difficulty to maneuver to pick up tubes.
13. It seemed some aliances who had two/three teams attempting to score in auton could have difficulty if two robots ran into the driver station wall at the same time. The driver station walls would shake and rattle. I believe this might have caused some problems with lining up with cameras via imaging and/or with range finding of some sort.

LOGOmotion is a fun game for not the teams but the fans. The minibots are a huge fan favorite at the end game.

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

We competed at Alamo Regional this past weekend.

We had a great time and were honored to be in the quarterfinals against 418, 16 and Rookies 3841. ....
Minibots proved to be the difference the later in the tournament it went. Rounds with four successful minibots did occur in the elimination matches a few times.

Many teams had minibots that would climb the pole but deployment proved to be very difficult. 118 has a very impressive minibot that is extremely fast, (if you have not seen it, check out Magic's minibot youtube) but they had difficulty getting it deployed during the matches. ....

Alamo had 17 rookie teams in attendance. Many of the teams did not understand all the rules, so it was very important to explain the some of the basic rules before the match.

Key points I noticed:
....
3. Picking up off the floor is huge importance.
....
12. If you have a robot who cannot hang tubes, push tubes forward to your alliance zone but not much closer than the towers since it will cause difficulty to maneuver to pick up tubes.
13. It seemed some aliances who had two/three teams attempting to score in auton could have difficulty if two robots ran into the driver station wall at the same time. The driver station walls would shake and rattle. I believe this might have caused some problems with lining up with cameras via imaging and/or with range finding of some sort.

LOGOmotion is a fun game for not the teams but the fans. The minibots are a huge fan favorite at the end game.

3. I agree after seeing all those tubes on the ground at Traverse City.
12. If you cannot hang I would prefer defense unless your alliance is a scoring machine.
13. Encoders work fine for driving the robot in autonomous. I find it the simplest solution. I think it was the Killer Bees that had an autonomous that hung 2 uber-tubes with only encoders.

[apalrd]

Originally Posted by MagiChau

I think it was the Killer Bees that had an autonomous that hung 2 uber-tubes with only encoders.

Two encoders and a gyro.

(that does not include sensors in the elevator).

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

... 3. Make sure the firmware on your driver's station is the latest version. The inspectors were sloppy at FLR, and lots of teams had the wrong version. The FTA will disable your robot for the match if this is the case, and this will be a sad thing for you!

A rebuttal is in order... The inspectors were not sloppy. They were given information to use on Thursday for inspections that proved to not be valid on Friday. They were fastidious in writing down the version each team used on the inspection forms and were able to identify which teams had which versions.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Cynette

A rebuttal is in order... The inspectors were not sloppy. They were given information to use on Thursday for inspections that proved to not be valid on Friday. They were fastidious in writing down the version each team used on the inspection forms and were able to identify which teams had which versions.

Fair enough. I was told that the inspectors were sloppy by Rob (the lead inspector), so I thought that was a reasonable statement.

It wasn't meant as an accusation -- Thursday was difficult for everyone!

[Kims Robot]

Average Qualification Scores were a LOT lower than most predicted. While there were some great matches, there were plenty of penalties, minibots falling off robots, and robots that just couldn't hang that tube...

They were higher than my original prediction, but not by a lot!

FLR: 33.19
BAE: 30.36
NJ: 26.30
ALAMO: 18.13

Overall Average: 26.52
Red Alliance Ave: 25.59
Blue Alliance Ave: 27.46
Winning Score Ave: 40.63
Losing Score Ave: 12.42

My observations:
1. Picking up the Floor was VERY valuable, essential for Eliminations teams.
2. Minibots were overpowered in Qualifications, as 75% of teams struggled to put up more than 1 or 2 tubes, minibots became very valuable. In Elims it was a bit more balanced. This may even out as teams get more practice.
3. Reliable auto mode will be very helpful.
4. More teams went for top rack scoring than I expected by the math of the point values (and many struggled).
5. Defense was rarely played effectively, it will hopefully get better as the weeks go on.
6. Line incursion penalties were flying EVERYWHERE. I really wish the rule was only active when a team was in the lane...

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

...
6. Line incursion penalties were flying EVERYWHERE. I really wish the rule was only active when a team was in the lane...

That would be a great rule change.

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by 340x4xLife

That would be a great rule change.

I think changing the rule to only be in effect when another robot is in the lane then will allow it to be abused easily. This is week one, I believe in Week 2+ drive-teams will have learned from Week 1 to avoid enroachment of the zones if they can help it.

[pfreivald]

There were a lot of lane-incursion penalties, but there were a lot of teams that didn't incur any, either.

[Schnabel]

Call me crazy, but it seams that human players have amazing aim this year. I would say that at least half of the tubes thrown hit the little pole in the middle of the 27ft wide field.

[MathFreak]

I didn't go to see the matches, I watched them from youtube but what I noticed was that most of robots couldn't get to the tower during the minibot race because of the other robots.

I think defending the opposite alliance's towers is a great idea because they won't get high points for it.

Originally Posted by thefro526

Minibots are more important than tubes. If you don't have a minibot, go make one. If you don't have a deployment system, go make one of those too. Seriously.

Even though the game is called "Logomotion" in most Qualification matches I played in and saw, Tubes could not, and did not offset the points scored by a single minibot.

The tubes aren't a constant size. Make sure your gripper can grab anything between 6" and 9".

(Seriously though, I really hope that Team update 17 comes out and devalues the minibot race by at least 1/3rd. 30 points is way too much for first place, especially considering that you need to make two complete logos on the top row to offset ONE minibot going up the pole and getting first place. Why call the game Logomotion if it's not about making the FIRST logo? If we wanted to play with mini robots then we'd go play in FTC or VRC.)

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Schnabel

Call me crazy, but it seams that human players have amazing aim this year. I would say that at least half of the tubes thrown hit the little pole in the middle of the 27ft wide field.

I saw human players chucking alot of tubes that went flying towards the scorers table.
Teams should be discouraged from just throwing tubes wildly that could take out the scoring equipment. A yellow card might do the trick.