What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

"I'm not looking for the best players -- I'm looking for the right ones." -Herb Brooks, Coach US 1980 Olympic Hockey Team

Week 2 gets to play the game that Week 1 gets to figure out. What a week it was! Below is some analysis that I hope will help you as you get ready to rumble this week.

Included is all Week 1 regionals (Israel not included), and events (MAR & FIM). This includes 676 qualifying matches. First up, a boxplot of scores, divided into winning/tying alliances and losing/tying alliances. Winning and losing in this piece always mean winning/tying and losing/tying, as it was mildly easier to do that than throw out all of the ties. (4% of matches ended in a tie)



A couple of key observations. Winning alliances tend to score a lot more points than losing ones -- since alliances are fairly randomly selected, some biasing factor (hint: think endgame!) likely seperates them. Winning alliances scored on average 22 points per match, whereas losing ones scored 8.7. That is, the winning alliance had to only balance one robot to win the average match last week!

Next up are the distributions of winning and losing scores. I find it interesting that while winning alliance scores are fairly normal, losing alliance scores are significantly skewed.


Basically, this drives home the point that teams did not need to score many points to win matches. Less than 5% of losing alliances scored more than 25 points!


Winning alliances tended to do better, but the mean was still 22 as mentioned above.

Adding to the two together, you can see the distribution for total alliance scores, which had a mean of 15.4 as others have mentioned.


A couple of parting thoughs based on these

1) Give yourself plenty of time to balance the bridges! I can't tell you how many points scored this weekend were bridge points because I haven't gotten a parsed copy of the twitter feed yet, but scores are so low that they can't have been an overwhelming proportion. Watching the webcasts lots of teams appeared to shortchange themselves, but I think for most robots time spent balancing the bridge is better spent than time chasing after balls.

2) Teams are not scoring a lot of points. If you miss a ball, it takes a long time to chase after it. Only take shots you are sure of. Again watching webcasts, it seemed like most teams were not playing defense in qualifying matches -- use this to your advantage! coughFENDERcough

3) Don't overreach! Set a simple, robust strategy and follow it. In line with #2, I think a defender going back and forth along the fender will be a big obstacle for a lot of teams.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

From my experience at San Diego being able to balance on a bridge is not usually a matter of time...it's something that is difficult or impossible to do at all for many teams.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

Do you have any guesses as to why they couldn't balance? Was it a lack of specialty hardware to aid in balancing, or was it a driver practice/communication problem.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

My experience was quite the opposite. In KC I could get almost anyone on a bridge. Sometimes their appendage was too weak for them to get on by themselves, but almost every drivetrain could follow me up the bridge for a co-op attempt.

We did have some difficulty with Jags set to coast instead of break. Teams had trouble keeping their drive train from sliding around the bridge as it tipped back to level in coast. Many younger teams did not fully understand the difference.

We saw drive trains with six pneumatic wheels, 2 friction and 2 omni, swerve, mechanum, even 4 mechanum with 2 omni. They could all balance with the right partner and someone to give them some pre-match coaching.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

First you have to get the bridge down. That is a significant challenge for many teams (it took us two days at the regional to get our bridge arm to work reliably). Getting on the bridge is easier if there aren't any balls in the way...which there are about half the time, it seems, since when you first lower the bridge the balls roll right in the way. Then you have to be able to drive the robot slowly enough and with enough control that it can balance. The kit drive train is a bit fast for doing this, and also most robots roll a bit after you let go of the joystick. This is assuming you were able to get on the bridge straight, and didn't fall off the side.

We found a whole bunch of ways to fail at getting on the bridge and balancing. Fortunately our shooting made up for it, but many (most) teams don't have that to fall back on.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

What are your thoughts on balancing the different bridges during qualification matches? Should one focus on balancing your own bridge or the coopertition bridge?

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

That seems to be a big part of it....if you are with a team that is good on the bridge, and both teams work together well, then it's usually doable. That's pretty common in eliminations, but not so much in qualifying. My guess is we'll see a wide variation in regionals.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

To piggyback on this question, what do you think the affect of the coopertition bridge was on the average score?

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

For our team, we usually had the most consistent balancer to go on our own bridge, and the second-best attempt the co-op bridge. Then we attempted to convince the opposing alliance to join us on the coopertition with their strongest balancer.
As teams started to realize that gaining coopertition points meant significant rises in the standings, the attempts became more and more common. By the last day, almost all matches were at least trying the co-op balance.

Also, the rule of thumb for our matches was to "be at the bridge with 45 seconds remaining". If the robots on each side weren't ready to go at the 45 second mark, each team went off to do their own thing.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

In qualification matches, balancing with just 1 robot commonly meant winning the match. In elimination rounds, teams needed to get both a 10-20 point autonomous plus balance 2 to stay competitive.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

This is anecdotal, but I saw several matches where a team failed at a 20-point bridge balance when a 10-point balance would have won them the game.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

And I saw one particular high caliber match where a team failed at a 40 point balance where they would have won with 20.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

Consistency plain and simple.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

Teams tend to have an optimistic view of their own capabilities. We had coopertition agreements in most matches. However, we were alone at/on the coopertition bridge as often as not. At least with the alliance bridge you get points for balancing alone. If you don't need the points to win the match, coopertition makes more sense than alliance (to the team with the lead, at least).

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

From watching webcasts this past weekend, it appeared that widebots either didnt attempt to push another robot up the ramp, or failed to do so.
In our scrimmage right before build season ended, I saw that to be the case.
I also noticed that teams with mechanum and omnis had a hard time getting on the ramp and balancing at a high success rate also.

Our team with our 8 wheel drivetrain has already attempted to push another robot up onto a ramp unassisted by the other team.
Honestly, I want to be the team that does this and not have to count on someone else doing it for us to balance 2 robots, especially during qualification matches where you're randomly with any team.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

This makes perfect sense.
You know what your team can do, but imagine if it was vice versa?
Without mentioning specific teams, I saw it to be just the case in eliminations......where the widebot was waiting at the end of the bridge for their partner to balance with them on the bridge. It failed when they needed it the most, and was the difference between advancing vs. being eliminated.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

From my experience at Hatboro-Horsham (which, granted, now seems to be one of the best events of week 1), it was rare that teams weren't attempting to get on a bridge during a match. Balls under bridges caused many failures, especially if teams didn't leave time to cross the bump or couldn't cross the bump. Many other teams, including 1712, didn't have functioning bridge manipulators and had to follow up other teams.

Because of this, 1712 only once tried to balance on our own alliances' bridge during qualifications (we tipped with 1 second remaining), but had seven attempts at balancing on the co-opertition bridge (three successful, two where the other team never went for the bridge, and twice where we "failed"/ran out of time). Without the ability to manipulate the bridge ourselves, we figured the best way to ensure QPs was the co-op bridge with a balancing machine from the other alliance. The 4 coop points we had at the end of Friday were a big portion of why we were seeded 5th at the time. Some bad luck on Saturday and other teams starting to use the co-op bridge more led to us falling to 13th, but the concept was proven.

Our bridge manipulator should be functioning and durable by Lenape, so we'll see if our strategy changes.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

I guess my comment stems from the title more so than the presented data. A QS of 22 seemed on average to be good enough for 1st or 2nd seed. As I see it during qualification rounds there are 20 opportunities to get 2 points. 11/20 doesn't seem that great to me. The point being that winning is not everything as the tournament structure is different this year.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

KC only had 9 matches, so our average may be a bit higher than it appears from raw numbers. As for the average -- I don't think a lot of teams thought through the scoring system enough, and didn't realize that coopertition points would be so important, win or lose. I don't like having them so important, but they are what they are. I think this will change dramatically in the coming weeks, and 22 will soon not be enough to get you in the top 10.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

I only looked at SMR data, but 45 of the 81 qualifying matches were decided by 10 points or less, so without a lot of detailed review that would imply the ability to balance at least one robot would be very beneficial. Many matches the winning score was <10, so either alliance balancing just one robot could have won that match. In 28 of the 45, at least one alliance had less than 10 points, so a single balance could have changed the outcome.

From the matches I watched, I think a key was to be flexible. Many matches just needed one robot to balance to win, but alliances were trying for 2 and then ended with o.


It would be interesting to look at all the match data from week 1 and see the "margin" trend.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

i feel the best way to win was getting out onto the field as many times as possible during practice as the more practice you get the better you get, we got out a dozen times during practice and it helped us alot expecially balancing on the bridge and learning how we want to play the game.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

Another "Heads-up" to teams going in to competitions in the coming weeks regarding teams trying to get 2 or 3 robots onto a bridge when 1 fewer would decide a match...

We witnessed the other end of that situation in a critical elim match where a single robot balanced a bridge with some time to spare instead of going over to allow an alliance partner to join them. The match was decided by fewer than 10 points, meaning that additional robot would have been decisive.

Part of the problem...and the "Heads Up"...at the GKC regional, only the Blue Alliance Drive Teams were facing the projected score board and it took more of a concerted effort on the part of the Red Alliance to continue monitoring the scoreboard during the final seconds of the match. We had coaches monitoring the board but in the heat of battle, they weren't successful in conveying the message to the involved drivers that the additional robot was the only way of winning the match.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

Ask and you shall recieve. I'm still waiting on someone to parse the FRCFMS twitter feed for me, as the margins we care most about are the ones where the alliance had the opportunity to make up the difference. That is, if you lose by 10 points but already balanced two robots you couldn't have done more.

25% of matches were decided by less than 5 points, 50% by less than 10, 75% by less than 19, and 90% by 30.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

Ask and I shall receive eh.. well it would be nice if data was separated by elims and quals. I imagine this request may be too difficult though.

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

I would be interested to know what the winning score data without bridges is. Ie, how many baskets do you need to make to get a chance of winning?

Re: What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?
 

All of the data he has posted so far was just qualification matches.