Feeding VS. Throwing tubes into Play?

[dvader109]

I was wondering what people thought the best way to put the tubes into play and what the advantages and disadvantages would be. Post Back

[JamesCH95]

I know you're on a rookie team, but what do YOU think the advantages and disadvantages are? It will be helpful if you come up with your own answers and reasoning to discuss with users on CD instead of soliciting answers for such a general question.

[Nick Lawrence]

Personally, I think it's almost silly to throw a tube over the wall because you risk losing that tube, unless you throw it right in front of your robot (in the lane in front of you, par example.)

It really depends on where your robot is, in relation to the other robots on the field.

Summary: Only throw if you're guaranteed to retrieve it with your robot.

Just my $0.02 CDN.

-Nick

[E.K PREADTOR]

it would be best to feed the tubes. throwing them would result in them landing in a unwanted place and make it hard to drive the feild

[BrendanB]

Neither. Feeding the robot to your tube means that your gripper/manipulator needs to be at a required height. Throwing the tubes onto the field increases your chance it will fall out out of the lane where an opponent can grab it, or fall into an odd position up against the field elements.

I would highly recommend dropping the tubes through the feeder on the ground. I did some testing at the field in Manchester and found that lightly dropping them onto the ground puts them in the same place in the lane each and every time nice and flat.

Those are my thoughts.

[Gdkoopa]

I think throwing the game pieces into play could have a major advantage in saving time by not having the robot come all the way back across the field to the feeder slot to retrieve a game piece. Of course their are issues such as picking it up, throwing it accurately and such. But if one were to really practice this tactic it could prove to be a definite time saving advantage.

[dvader109]

Thanks Everyone.

[ttldomination]

Personally, I think it's almost silly to throw a tube over the wall because you risk losing that tube, unless you throw it right in front of your robot (in the lane in front of you, par example.)

What about throwing the tube across the field? In '07, human players could easily hit the rack with a strong throw, likewise, I don't think it'll take too much to get the tube to the tubes a way past the half way mark.

- Sunny

[JamesCH95]

What about throwing the tube across the field? In '07, human players could easily hit the rack with a strong throw, likewise, I don't think it'll take too much to get the tube to the tubes a way past the half way mark.

- Sunny

In 2007 there were red tubes for the red alliance, and blue tubes for the blue alliance. In this game either alliance can use pieces that are thrown onto the field. This is a big argument against throwing them.

[Borntolose]

We haven't really done any tests with the logo pieces yet, but it seems to me that it would be very hard to throw them to your end of the field. By throwing the tubes you would probably end up helping the other alliance more unless you manage to throw the tube right to where your robot is.

[ThirteenOfTwo]

Punching a tube through the slot can reliably get tubes all the way to the end of the lane without leaving them open for getting stolen. Shaves off a couple seconds.

[Jon Stratis]

Throwing tubes will likely end up being situational... If you know the other alliance can't pick up tubes from the ground, go ahead and throw. If you know you can get it near your robot while no one from the other alliance is near by, go ahead and throw. if you're amazing enough to get it into the 7' protection zone on the other end of the field, go ahead and throw. Otherwise, punching it out the hole to get it to the end of the lane is going to be your best bet - it's closer to your robot, and the other team can't touch it.

[Molten]

I'm not really affiliated with any teams at the moment, so I can't say that this is or is not used by any teams I've worked with prior. I will say that an idea I had was to have a pole of sorts on the robot for the human player to toss a ring onto that then has a claw take it off in order to score while your driving to the other side of the field could save enough time for an extra tube every match if you had a reliable human player. Also, you wouldn't even have to take it off of the pole, if the pole was a part of your manipulator(say one part of the claw). I'm just kind of throwing the idea out there to see what others think of the feasibility of it.

[JamesCH95]

That would require one heck of a human player. If memory serves they'd have to hit the pole on the robot after throwing it OVER the player station wall.

[jblay]

also handing it to your bot over the wall like 111 did in 07 could prove to be a solid strategy. I think we will rarely see tubes be thrown to bots unless one alliance cant ground load

[cbeavers6790]

it depends on how your robot recieves the game pieces. If your robot grabs better from the slot then use that idea, but if you can throw the piece over with accuracy than use that option

[davidcone315]

Remember, the alliance wall is 6.5' high, you would need a really tall human player to throw the tubes over the wall efficiently. It would be better if you fed the tubes to the robot instead

[Chris is me]

Outright tube throwing is beneficial in only a few situations:

First, a blowout match. You've got 67 and 1114, they have 3XXX, 3XXX, and that one team that hasn't moved all regional. Throwing tubes will allow them to score more, but you'll almost certainly still beat them, so you'll get more ranking points. I expect this to rarely be the case for my team but something to consider.

Second, when your alliance has at least two more ground loaders than the other alliance. Throwing tubes becomes strategically advantageous if 2 of your robots both score better than the sole ground loader.

I do think if HPs are good enough to throw tubes in a dead straight line that throwing them to the end of the lane is beneficial.

Other than that, loader all the way, and never ever drop a tube.

[thefro526]

My personal opinion is that Handing the Tube to the Robot, either via the Feeding Slot or over the Wall, is the best method. You can control the orientation of the tube with the Human Player, and you effectively negate the possibility of losing the tube to the other alliance.

If your robot can pick up the floor, and that is your preferred method, then dropping the tubes on the floor, or lightly tossing them into the protected lane is probably also a decent idea.

There will be cases where throwing tubes out of the lane would be worth the risk, either as a Buzzer Beater sort of play, or during a blowout match where every tube will not matter. But more often than not, I'd say don't throw tubes.

[robotic321]

Id personally make it depend on the type of robot. What if (if your "feeding") you had a system that allows some tolerance of where its put into play? I.e. make an area designed for the tup to fall into, like a laundry chute? if your throwing, Make a wide area on top for the tube to fall into kinda like in lunacy. These are just my opinions. Whatever your doing, hope it works great.

[Mustangs]

One thing i dont think anyone has mentioned
or at least i havent seen them mention,
is that these tubes do not throw very far unless somehow you can frisbee-throw it through the gap i doubt you would wanna throw because it would be unreliable in hitting the same place everytime and if u were off with ur aim someone else from the opposite alliance could easily pick it up
now i do like the sound of punching the tubes through the wall if the person passing them could get used to hitting it the same amount everytime so it goes just to the end of the lane
i would have a lot more to give but our area didnt have a field at our opening so im going on just what i saw in the stream and from the measurments of the field
hope this helps someone

[arkangle]

Feeding because if u throw it and miss it is fair game.:cool:

Team 639

[awesomeguy1235]

we decided to feed it into play :D

[Saqtown]

Each team gets 18 inflatables and if an alliance decides to ignore the bottom row, than that leaves an extra 6 inflatables. That would mean that there would only be a 2/3 recovery rate required to score 86.6% of the max points from the pegs. That doesn't seem to unreasonable to me....

if you throw the game piece out of bounds does anyone know what happens?

[zfadness]

Each team gets 18 inflatables and if an alliance decides to ignore the bottom row, than that leaves an extra 6 inflatables. That would mean that there would only be a 2/3 recovery rate required to score 86.6% of the max points from the pegs. That doesn't seem to unreasonable to me....

if you throw the game piece out of bounds does anyone know what happens?

It is put back into play nearest where it went out.

I'd say if you had a fetcher of any kind on your alliance, it would be a good idea to consider throwing.

[Saqtown]

If your actually thowing it would mean that you would need to refocus the design of a fetcher. Since their total travel would be in the environs of 20ft rather than 50ft the focus would have to shift a lot towards picking up the game peice and on turning around.

IMO if they have no defensive player a fetcher becomes useless in such a scenario since 20 ft is such a short distance the "scorer" robots would come out and pick up the game peices themselves.

just my rookie opinion...

[GaryVoshol]

if you throw the game piece out of bounds does anyone know what happens?

I know, because I read the rules:
<G36> GAME PIECES may not be intentionally placed out of bounds. Violation: PENALTY and YELLOW CARD

Don't wildly throw GAME PIECES about, lest your strategy be deemed "intentionally placing" them out.

Accidents are accidents. But too many accidents, and it looks like it was planned. Or at least not enough care being taken to avoid tossing GAME PIECES out.

[JamesCH95]

If a fetcher team wanted to be slick they'd have their robot able to carry and "hand off" tubes at the same height as the player station. It'd be a shame to not be able to get the tube to a great scorer because the tube was on the ground.

[thefro526]

If a fetcher team wanted to be slick they'd have their robot able to carry and "hand off" tubes at the same height as the player station. It'd be a shame to not be able to get the tube to a great scorer because the tube was on the ground.

According to the rule G49, this would be illegal - assuming that this would be some sort of direct hand off. (Fetcher Holds Tube, Scorer Grabs Tube, Fetcher Releases Tube).


<G49> ROBOTS may not attempt to POSSESS a GAME PIECE that is being POSSESSED by
another ROBOT.
Violation: PENALTY

I was hoping that this would be amended to allow the passing of game pieces between Alliance Partners, but it hasn't happened yet, so I wouldn't count on it.

[JamesCH95]

You're right, I was assuming the spirit of the rule was to prevent malicious stealing of tubes, but the letter of the rule forbids this obvious cooperative strategy.

[Nathan Streeter]

Whether to throw or feed a tube is entirely dependent on the situation, and not on some general rules... yet for some reason, I try to make general rules... :-)

Please understand that I talk about averages and approximations... an average implies that within that group there are deviations above and below in approximately equal frequency! Approximations are non-exact and based off of educated guess, not omniscient fore-knowledge.

Comparison to Other Games
This year will not be like '06 or '07 or '09 when the majority of teams simply threw game pieces out in the hopes of scoring them, or at least flooding the field with game pieces to allow easy pick-up. The scoring grid is simply too far away to score pieces (with more than 5% likelihood), the robot can possess only one game piece (same in '07), and alliances are going to compete over a relatively limited game piece supply.

Scoring Assumptions
The game piece supply is exactly the same as the number of tubes on the rack... Your alliance has 18 tubes to score on 18 pegs. By referencing our scouting data from '07 and assuming that scoring will of similar or lesser difficulty, I think that during teleop the bottom 50% of teams will, on average, score <1.5 tubes per match, the top 25% will score ~3 tubes per match, the top 10% ~4, and the top 2% ~5. I think these numbers may be a little high at early regionals, and may be a little low at late regionals.

Impact of These Scoring Assumptions on Game
Based on these scoring approximations, the average match will probably include about 5-7 scored tubes per alliance, during teleop. An exceptionally strong alliance could put up an average of 15 tubes. (That assumes three top 2% teams... who are unlikely to be at the same regional, let alone on the same alliance!). Essentially, these 18 scoring pegs will probably be less than 2/3 full for 98% of the matches.

The fact that there will be plenty of empty pegs means that you can lose about 1/3 of your tube supply to your opponents, without running out of tubes to score!

When to Throw, When Not to Throw!
It's easier to come up with a list of don't's, so I'll start with that. :-) *Note, "you" can apply to you or your alliance partners!
- Don't throw a tube toward midfield if you are currently scoring or otherwise occupied!
- Don't throw a tube toward midfield if you can't pick-up from the floor.
- Don't throw a tube toward midfield if your opponents are waiting for you to do so.

Alright, lets see some "Do's" that are converse (on inverse or contra-positive... I can't remember!) to our list of "Don'ts"
- Throw the tube toward midfield if your opponents are otherwise occupied.
- Throw the tube toward midfield if you are ready to pick it up from the floor.
- Throw the tube toward midfield if you can handle losing that tube to your opponents.
- Throw the tube toward midfield if you can pick-up and score that tube faster than your opponents.

Conclusion (Finally!)
So, judging this list of Do's and Don't's, it'll be more common for the stronger teams to throw the tubes out, as they will almost always be better able to get the tube than an opponent that will be lurking nearby, but it will benefit those who can afford to do it, because they can avoid driving down most of the field! Yes, it is risky, but life is not normally lived risk-free... the way to come out on top despite such risks is to take the risks that can provide large gains at low likelihood.

Looks like the HP will need good judgment... maybe even some assistance from the Analyst! :-)

[MCahoon]

So I will ask the question that I have not seen discussed on any other thread.

How does the analyst communicate to the HP when they are on opposite ends of the field, looking through two sheets of polycarb with various field elements and robots blocking parts of the field of view?

[Jimmy K]

The role of the Analyst is being discussed here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=89475

And was being discussed here temporarily:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89493

My guess is that the Analyst will communicate to the HP on the other end of the field in the same way(s) that they did in 2009: Wave frantically and hope that the HP can see him and is paying attention ;). That is definitely something you need to work out with your alliance partners before the match.

Of course, I think that the idea of having lights on the robot to communicate with the HP is better, but that's just my opinion.