Who was the top "Cycler" for 2013

[FIRST_Parent]

Ok everyone...who in your opinion was the best hard working consistent cycler for 2013, not full court shooter, not 30 point climber, not 30 point hang-4 disk dump, not floor pick up , just your basic work-horse, most consistent, 4-disk shooting cycler for Ultimate Ascent? :cool:

[MrTechCenter]

701 was a great cycler in my opinion (Though I may be a tad biased). They were very consistent at Sacramento and Colorado and were a top scorer.

973 was also a very good, quick cycler. They did have a floor pickup, but didn't use it much. They were amazingly consistent and quick at the Central Valley Regional. I didn't see them at LA but they were still very fast and very accurate at Silicon Valley and on Archimedes.

1662, (again a little biased) was AMAZINGLY quick and accurate and hands-down the best cycler at Sacramento. It's a shame they didn't make it to Championships, I really think they deserved it. An 80-pound bot that was "zippy" as Michael described it.

[Akash Rastogi]

I think 868 would be the most solid contender for that title

I'd also toss in 11 into that hat, but that's a bit biased :rolleyes:

[Gregor]

There are many many good cyclers, but the two that stand out to me are 610 and 973.

610 had a FCS, and a floor pickup at Waterloo, but very rarely did they use either of them.

973 also has a floor pickup that they rarely used. The fact that they were so tall didn't hold them back.

[Chris is me]

Without a doubt it's 610. They were basically immune to defense, loaded quickly, scored quickly, and drove well. A lot of great cyclers this year, but 610 was the best.

[Kernaghan]

610. They were basically immune to defense.
The thing about cycling is that it comes down to driver, 610's driver was literally unreal. I heard from someone who asked one of 610's mentors why they didn't just full court shoot. And he replied saying "we could, but our driver has gotten so used to cycling quickly, that we can drain the disks more consistently cycling". :ahh: Driver credits right there.

[zekeF]

Well ill just throw a couple teams out there I think could qualify. First off there is 862 Lightning Robotics, then my own team (1718) I say this because of our accuracy and how our driver made it through the heavy defense we received, there is 68 Truck town thunder, also I am unsure if 1114 would count since they could climb for 30 also, but ill mention them as well. Some of these are a little biased since Im from Michigan

[Akash Rastogi]

Without a doubt it's 610. They were basically immune to defense, loaded quickly, scored quickly, and drove well. A lot of great cyclers this year, but 610 was the best.

I didn't mention 610 cause they did have the FCS ability. But if we're ignoring that then yeah for sure 610. If OP wanted opinions of best pure cycler with only cycling ability I'd say 868 still, which is what I thought OP meant.

[who716]

In my opinion I would say 228 was the best cycler that I saw in person. They where very fast and agile making defense not really an issue. One time I saw then get 6.5 loads back and forth only missing two frisbee the entire time

[sprocketman92]

Guys wait until we get to IRI 868 is a force their speed is just unreal

[Jorge Ayala]

I'd say that the best cycler this season was 245. See for yourselves http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yurCUSSoyNQ

[Jim Zondag]

Lots of great cyclers, but a few that stood out to me were 245, 868 and 610.

[Nick Lawrence]

868 and 245 were fantastic cyclers. However, if you disregard 1114's 30/50 point climb, they were also just as good at cycling.

-Nick

[mman1506]

1114 at GTRE (before there 30 point was ready) was beating out other robots in pure speed which was cool to watch. There feeder was also really fast.

[LDiDomenico]

At the MN State Championship, 2052 was one of the best cyclers I've seen during the season.

[stundt1]

245 610 1114 and 469 if you count them.

[brennonbrimhall]

One of the best unsung cyclers in Archimedes was 1334. Point for point, second for second, they may have been a better cycler than climber.

[Kevin Leonard]

I'd say of robots that could ONLY cycle- not FCS, not climb past 10, not pick up off the ground- the best would be 868.

Now if the question was what robot is the best at cycling, it becomes a toss-up between a number of great robots (868, 469, 1114, 987, 610, etc.)

[hardcopi]

Well of course I am biased, but our little bot didn't do bad as far as cycling. 98% auto and averaged almost 70 points a match with 86% teleop. No floor pickup, and while we could do full court it was not our forte, cause we were short and easily blocked, but we could do it.

[Kevin Leonard]

Well of course I am biased, but our little bot didn't do bad as far as cycling. 98% auto and averaged almost 70 points a match with 86% teleop. No floor pickup, and while we could do full court it was not our forte, cause we were short and easily blocked, but we could do it.

You guys WERE really good. In our scouting data you were nearly equal to both 868 and 126 in Archimedes.
The three of you, as well as 4265, were the best pure cyclers in Archimedes (and somehow you were the last pick! What a steal!)

[JB987]

Well of course I am biased, but our little bot didn't do bad as far as cycling. 98% auto and averaged almost 70 points a match with 86% teleop. No floor pickup, and while we could do full court it was not our forte, cause we were short and easily blocked, but we could do it.

And were we happy to see that you were still available to join forces with us and 2415 on Archimedes:D

[Littleboy]

Well of course I am biased, but our little bot didn't do bad as far as cycling. 98% auto and averaged almost 70 points a match with 86% teleop. No floor pickup, and while we could do full court it was not our forte, cause we were short and easily blocked, but we could do it.

I am still confused as to how you guys were not picked at MSC.
When did you guys use your FCS ability? I do not remember ever seeing it.

[Anomnominousbob]

Just out of curiosity...

Which team ran the most cycles(including floor pickup) in a match?

Which team ran the most cycles with a 10pt climb?

Which team ran the most cycles with a 30pt climb?

[Dragonking]

remember, the best cycler is not always the robot with the most cycles. It is the robot with the most discs scored consistently.

This may be biased but team 862 got 4 cycles consistently with one defender on the us. But we were at 95% accuracy, about the same as our auto accuracy.

[themccannman]

Just out of curiosity...

Which team ran the most cycles(including floor pickup) in a match?

Which team ran the most cycles with a 10pt climb?

Which team ran the most cycles with a 30pt climb?

It seems like your first question is "who shot the most frisbees in one match without an FCS" which is really hard to answer because if you include ground pick up then that number is completely reliant on whether the other alliance had a ground pick up or not, if not you could pick up every disc on the floor uncontested where as if you were against another ground pick up you had to fight for frisbees. I'm not sure about the other divisions, but in Curie 2056 picked up 26 discs in one match which would be 8.5 cycles for a non-ground pick up, I don't think any pure cycler has done more than 7 cycles in a match.

In terms of most shots made in a match, these were the numbers for Curie:
148 - 39(FCS)
1310 - 31(FCS)
1717 - 24(ground pick up and cycler)
2056 - 22(ground pick up only)
a whole lot of other bots made between 21 and 19

I don't have the numbers from the other divisions but I think the answer to your second two questions are probably 610 and 1114 respectively.

[XaulZan11]

I didn't mention 610 cause they did have the FCS ability. But if we're ignoring that then yeah for sure 610. If OP wanted opinions of best pure cycler with only cycling ability I'd say 868 still, which is what I thought OP meant.

I bet 868 regrets taking these (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBecAP1zu8w&feature=youtu.be&t=1m39s) couple full court shots, losing your nomination. ;)

In terms of best pure cyclers, I give the slight edge to 868 over 610.

[April_robo]

I would have to say either 245, 33, 469, 67. if somebody wasn't playing defense on these guys it was game over

[Jay O'Donnell]

I would have to say either 245, 33, 469, 67. if somebody wasn't playing defense on these guys it was game over

I don't believe 33 or 67 fits into the catagory of a pure cycler considering 33 used a ground intake and 67 was an FCS. 469 was mostly a cycler, but they ground fed and FCS as well.

[Dragonking]

I would have to say either 245, 33, 469, 67. if somebody wasn't playing defense on these guys it was game over


33 and 67 are amazing robots but they are not good cyclers. 33 is only dangerous when the ground pick up their discs. They are not good at the feeder station. 67 is the best full court shooter (when not blocked) in the world but when forced to cycle their points go down considerably.

Edit: Jay Money 1058 beat me to this post

[Akash Rastogi]

I bet 868 regrets taking these (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBecAP1zu8w&feature=youtu.be&t=1m39s) couple full court shots, losing your nomination. ;)

In terms of best pure cyclers, I give the slight edge to 868 over 610.

Ha! Never seen them do that before. My nomination still stands though :)

[the.miler]

Team 118 with their motor assisted human feeder has my vote as the finest cycler. Even though they didn't go all the way in Galileo, they played exceptionally well during their final matches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP_SO3-MsYw

Of course, they weren't just a pure cycler, as they had a ground intake, but the same can be said of many of the best cyclers. Asking for robots that could only cycle involves, ironically, taking out so many of the very best cyclers . . . this question is too hard!

Team 126 has my vote, they are blazing quick and use mecanums to great effect. Team 868 is also stunning, but somebody seems to have revealed their hidden FCS tendencies :P

[KrazyCarl92]

A team that I am surprised hasn't been mentioned yet is 11. MORT had above 80% accuracy, could perform 4+ cycles under most defense, featured a #solid drive train, and had one of the niftiest passive hangers in the world. If I were to make a passive hanger for this year, theirs would be the inspiration.

That being said, I do think 868 was the best cycler without other demonstrated abilities. 11 is a darn close runner up and 2959 is up there too. Wow Archimedes was a crazy division...
610, 1114, 1986 and 1334 join the conversation if you consider just the robot's cycling ability.

[Jonathan Norris]

Team 118 with their motor assisted human feeder has my vote as the finest cycler. Even though they didn't go all the way in Galileo, they played exceptionally well during their final matches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP_SO3-MsYw

118 was Incredible on Galileo, they kept on refining that machine all year, and turned it into the most effective disc scoring robot in the division. 245 and 118's motor assisted human loading system is one thing that I wished we had prototyped...

Also I love that 1334 is getting some respect for how good they were this year, amazing cycler and just the smoothest 30 point climber. They are a team that continues to impress me, they should be racking up blue banners in no time.

[BrendanB]

Which team ran the most cycles with a 30pt climb?

Our team has run 5 cycles and a 30 point climb. It was our best match of the season. We scored a total of 18 of 19 discs in teleop missing one shot and on the last cycle our driver left the feeder slot early so he could make the climb. Whenever we have gotten close to making the 5th cycle someone gets in our way so we typically stick to 4 cycles before climbing. Every event we have gone to our climb has gotten faster allowing more time for shooting. For IRI we are working to get our climber under 10 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwKl-YTb1RU&list=PLBjap5sKdr4UNm0rHVsz8HwioXGM4xh1T&index=4

[MichaelBick]

Another vote for 973 and 610. Even though 973 was tall it din't hold them back very much, and they even installed a drop down ball bearing for CMP to get around t bones

[Gronich2630]

After 4 (!) matches against them at the Champs, I can say that 610 has the best cycler robot in the world. Great drivers, realy good drive-train and an accurate shooter. The only way we managed to stop them was when they hav'nt worked at all (Galileo QF 2-1).
Also, 1662 had a realy awsome cycler, maybe the best that didn't make it to the Championship. Wanted to watch them on IRI, too bad they didn't applied.

[IKE]

Lots of great cyclers, but a few that stood out to me were 245, 868 and 610.

I agree with Jim. I got a good chance to watch a lot of the "cyclers" mentioned in this thread, and those would be my top 3 pure cyclers. I think without defense, the edge would go to 868 then 245. With defense, I would give the edge to 610 (I thought they drove aroudn defense better).

************************************
Some comments about cyclers:
Most teams that were effective at cycling could do 4 or 5 cycles on a pretty regualr basis.
Teams that could get 5+ on a regular basis often were able to do this with limited defense.


Defense was usually not very effective against cyclers, and here is why (IMO):

If a teams was a good cycler and could frequently get 5 cycles plus a 10 pt. hang at the end, then they are essentially requireing on averge about 22 Seconds per cycle (120 seconds of teleop - 10 seconds of hang time = 110 seconds / 5 cycles = 22 seconds). If this is their average, you only need to hold them up about 10 seconds to get them down to 4 cycles from 5. To get them down to just 3 cycles though would require an additional 22+ seconds of defense or 32+ total seconds... This is a lot to try to hold up a team. It would happen sometimes, but this is a very long time. More often I would see a defender spend the entire match trying to slow down a cycler only slowing them down 3-5 seconds per pass for a total of about 20-25 seconds which was just enough to stop 1 cycle...

Teams that could 6 or 7 cycles were better to defend because their average cycle is faster which means less total time would shave off 2 cycles. End of the day though, they are still going to do at least 4 cycles...

****************************************
Michigan honorable mentions for cycling:
862: very fast, very accurrate
1718: very accurrate
2000:
2959: often flew unde rthe radar
3641: Way under the radar for how awesome they were.

and lastly:
573 who did an incredible number of 2 pt. cycles this year. I beleive they went 32/32 one match at Grand Blanc which is just phenomonal. Their team (driver, shooter, and HP were crazy fast). They did have a couple of jams that worried some of the alliance captains. Ultimately though, the 2 pt. cycler had a similar fate as the 2 pt. FCS. Good enough to win most matches but it puts a severe limit on total points. It is very difficult to get to 150 points with 20 discs in the 2 poit goal. I know they had a lot of debate on switching to the 3 pt. but it is hard to argue that 95% of 2 pt. is better then 50% of 3 pt. shots... They were one of my favorite teams to watch this year due to the speed and teamwork.

[pntbll1313]

Has anyone posted a video of a robot doing better than 27/27 discs by “Pure Cycling?”

Team 2052 KnightKrawler greatly improved our shooter before our State Tournament and were able to get off 5+ cycles in every match with defense when we cycled in the Minnesota State Champs. Here is a match we hit 7 cycles and a hang with no defense. That was 3/3 in auto, 27/27 in teleop, and a hang for 10. If anyone else has a robot that made more than 27 disks by “pure cycling” I’d like to see a video of that :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiO4c9K7TfI

[Joe Ross]

I looked at the world rankings as calculated by Ed Law and pulled out the list of the top Teleop OPRS. From there, I did not count anyone who FCS or ground pickup.


Cycler Telop Total
Rank Rank OPR Teleop
Rank Team OPR
1 6 2169 52.77 FCS
2 1 2056 51.48 Ground Pickup
3 16 948 50.88 FCS
1 4 3 987 50.83
2 5 2 1114 49.56
6 4 469 48.88 FCS
3 7 5 118 44.73
4 8 7 868 44.67
9 15 1806 42.74 FCS
10 14 20 41.05 Ground Pickup
11 13 67 40.84 FCS
12 33 2512 40.10 FCS
13 21 225 39.59 FCS
5 14 20 359 39.42
15 45 195 38.72 FCS
16 52 2630 38.51 FCS
6 17 24 128 38.13
18 78 3173 37.77 FCS
7 18 19 4265 37.73
20 74 1425 37.58 FCS
21 9 1538 37.29 Ground Pickup
22 30 180 35.97 FCS
8 23 27 245 35.81
9 24 57 126 35.79
25 101 3663 35.56 FCS
26 26 2485 35.46 FCS
10 27 32 4039 35.38



1114 is interesting. Although they score the pyramid discs, if you discount 20 points, they still are one of the top 10 cyclers (either 5th or 6th). 987 can both FCS and has a ground pickup, but neither were a main strategy of theirs.

I may have made some mistakes in classification, so I'd appreciate review.

[akoscielski3]

610 with out defense (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvjdNey2IlM&safe=active)

610 with defense (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z_Z5WkeV6g&safe=active)

tell me how anyone can be better then them at cycling again. With or without defense 610 was the best.

Edit: avoiding double post



1114 is interesting. Although they score the pyramid discs, if you discount 20 points, they still are one of the top 10 cyclers (either 5th or 6th). 987 can both FCS and has a ground pickup, but neither were a main strategy of theirs.

I may have made some mistakes in classification, so I'd appreciate review.

987 did SO much ground pick up. Them and 2056 did a lot.

118 did ground pick up a lot.

[Kevin Leonard]

5 14 20 359 39.42




I don't think anyone has mentioned 359 yet- which is weird, because they're freaking 359. They were phenomenal!

[AmoryG]

Take away their 30 point climber and 1114 was the best cycler, I think. Their speed and consistency was amazing. I honestly believe that if they had abandoned trying to climb for 30 once their arm broke they would have had a decent shot at winning Galileo.

[waialua359]

I don't think anyone has mentioned 359 yet- which is weird, because they're freaking 359. They were phenomenal!

Thanks for the nod.
On a side note, when we did Utah during week 3, our shooter had issues from the playoffs the week before in Indiana.
Since we were away from home, we couldnt fabricate the custom pieces we had to fix it.
We did the entire Utah regional shooting only 3 at a time, yet had the highest OPR, ranked #1, and only loss the 1st match that weekend. Our OPR was high relative to other regionals that week. We had the occasional 7 runs with no defense. But given that teams knew what we could do, we always had a defender or 2 most times.

I agree that 868 is the best cycler this year with many others who have posted. During our run together at Boilermaker, no one could stop the 2 of us. We cycled a little slower than them, but made almost every shot we took and in 1.xx seconds each time. We made more shots overall during the playoff run.

At IRI, we plan to reduce the cycle time by widening our intake, loading from both front and rear (to prevent 180ing the robot), and hopefully get our FCS going. We could always FCS and quickly, but it does no good if you have to do the 180 degrees.

[beurwonderwall]

I am still confused as to how you guys were not picked at MSC.
When did you guys use your FCS ability? I do not remember ever seeing it.

I'm a student from 2959, and I don't remember using it at Worlds, though I could be wrong. I do remember using it at St. Joe, as a tool to try to be "unpredictable", and it worked well for us. We used it in the second Finals match in St. Joe, if that helps :] We used it at MSC as well in a qualifier against 2337. (Awesome defense, by the way, Enginerds!)

[OWilliamson]

Thanks for the nod.
On a side note, when we did Utah during week 3, our shooter had issues from the playoffs the week before in Indiana.
Since we were away from home, we couldnt fabricate the custom pieces we had to fix it.
We did the entire Utah regional shooting only 3 at a time, yet had the highest OPR, ranked #1, and only loss the 1st match that weekend. Our OPR was high relative to other regionals that week. We had the occasional 7 runs with no defense. But given that teams knew what we could do, we always had a defender or 2 most times.

I would also like to throw one of my votes in for 359. They did awesome at the Utah regional, and its even more impressive now that I know that their shooter wasn't 100%. So good job guys :D