Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Honestly, I wouldnt expect them to score.
The other alliance would have to outscore your alliance by, in one example, seven 3 point shots.
I'd place a friendly wager that the majority of teams will NOT be able to score 7 3 pointers in a match at all this season.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

2 high goal auton shots + 3 high goal teleop shots. Dead reckon autonomous and have a preset delay so the shots don't interfere with partners. It's very doable.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Jared you trying to tell us something...What will Ms. Daisy come up with year.....That has been my montra all year....You wanna be the best you got to play like the best....

A 341/272 deep run together is way way way overdue

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

All this talk of how to circumvent the rules makes me wonder if people are missing the objective here. I've heard and read repeatedly from the folks at FIRST that the rules are there to provide guidelines on how to play the game and should not be interpreted as an invitation to find ways to circumvent them. While the ideas proposed are all good and sound and would probably result in three bots 'on a balanced bridge' it is clearly not the intent of the game.

I hate to be Negative Nellie here but I strongly believe in letting the intended game decide the results and not a supposed loophole in a set of rules. We are not a bunch of laywers looking for a loophole to get an advantage over others. We are engineers who are supposed to come up with elegant solutions to a problem.

Just my opinion - for what it's worth...

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Yes, but the problem we are trying to solve is outlined in the game rules. The GDC never tells us to play "Rebound Rumble", they tell us to get the most Coopertition Points by wining the most matches by scoring according to the rules in the manual. I wouldn't even say there is a "Spirit of the Game" before the game is actually played- it never goes as the GDC imagines. Otherwise they would out and out tell us "Play a game like Basketball except like this..." and would make the rules supplementary. No, in FRC we play the game as handed to us in the rulebook, and evidently they completely support the emergent gameplay that results. I highly doubt they intended a 469-style bot to be created and dominate as happened in 2010, but the GDC did nothing about it. This "lawyering" of the rules nearly got 469 the Championship. In comparison, the designs and strategies suggested here seem distinctly mediocre.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Yes, very doable......but by the majority?

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

What is the intended game?

Allow me to clarify that question a bit. I'm currently in a class where the topic du jour, every class, is effectively, "what did the designer intend by X tolerance callout?" Or, as a designer, "Justify why you did this this way." As an engineer, if I don't convey my intent clearly to whoever is making the widget I designed, it can either make their job and mine much harder, or the part could be produced poorly, or both, or, or.... If I do convey my intent clearly, then whoever is making the part has a much easier time, and may in fact have extra tolerance in where a given feature of a part goes. (The class is studying ASME Y14.5-2009, a dimensioning and tolerancing standard.)

So, the question, what is the intended game, is a bit of a tricky one to answer. You can ONLY use what the GDC gave you to do it, or the Q&A--anything more must only be used to fill in gaps, and that is where you can easily make a wrong assumption.

Is it a loophole? Or did the GDC forget something in saying their intent? If they forgot something, we have to make an assumption--the next team over may assume differently. Unless and until something comes from the GDC to clarify intent, your assumption on a gap is as good as mine--once that clarification comes, we know intent, and can no longer assume anything.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

This is a professionally-produced competition we're participating in. Our rules should reflect this in internal consistency, clarity of meaning, and freedom from misinterpretation.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

/sarcasm/

Guys, I don't think its in the spirit of the game to shoot balls, they should outlaw that by saying you can't pick up balls, then that means you can't shoot.

G12:Robots may not damage any part of the Arena, including Basketballs.
this means you could damage the balls whenever they're shot, so you shouldn't
/sarcasm

(this is what some of you sound like)

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Who says you need to pick up balls to shoot?

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Seems pretty obvious to me.

The GDC didn't intend for the lexan to be considered part of the bridge for scoring purposes. They're human, they do a good job trying to communicate their intent through the rules but they're not perfect. They'll fix it with a rules update (commonly known in the engineering world as a "change order", happens all the time, get used to it if you really want to be an engineer!).

Anyone who risked building a robot to take advantage of the GDC's oversite without clarifying the GDC's intent first will most likely whine and cry and suffer the consequences.

However, they may get lucky and the GDC will let the current definition stand!

To paraphrase a famous quote, those who live by lawyering the rules sometimes die by lawyering the rules! ;)

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

From the Q&A, it seems that the GDC has repeatedly addressed the definition of "the bridge" and has had multiple opportunities to define it so as to exclude the Lexan sheet, but they haven't. I think the fact that the robot wouldn't really be able to have an effective shooter would mean that a "trollbot" wouldn't be a really competitive strategy, and the GDC recognizes it. Personally, I have a hard time envisioning how a trollbot would be able to score balls effectively.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

Team 308 from Walled Lake Michigan used the same strategy and it almost worked to win the Championship. They lost 2 out of 3 in the finals.

How do I know, our team (311) was #1 seed and they were our 1st pick................

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

I don't see anything stopping a team from building a troll-bot, other than common sense.

Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition
 

You had to bring that up :(

I was the drive coach for 308 back then. We shredded the gearbox on the left side of our drivetrain during the first match of the finals. It still haunts me.

311 was a great partner (as was SPAM). That was a great time.