Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

To prevent "The best moments of Rebound Rumble" thread from getting any further off topic, I would like to move all of that discussion to this thread. So far, only teams 16, and 4334 have been mentioned as great feeder bots, but I'm sure there are many more (125 comes to mind).

Who do you think is was the best feeder bot of 2012?

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

207 fed 987 and 233 in our elimination matches. We fought with 16 on Einstein, and kept up with them fairly evenly. Their drivetrain and collector were far better adapted to the task, but our shooter allowed us to send them across the field much faster.

As their swerve was so incredibly powerful and maneuverable, my personal favorite for a feeder has to be the bomb squad.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I think the thread title should be changed to second best feeder bot because the best was Bomb Squad.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I think it should be changed from that as well because 1st - 16 and 2nd - 4334. The title should be third best feeder bot.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Although the argument to this question will be between "who is better 16 or 4334" I want to bring more attention to 125. One of the biggest differences between 125 and 16/4334 is size. Both Bomb Squad and ATA were compact compared to the NUtrons. I'm unsure of their dimensions but they were similar to ours which were 26"X34"X50".

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that their feeding strategy didn't come from design but rather by strategy. Where as 4334 designed their robot to be primarily a complimentary bot instead of a main scorer, I see it as once 125 realized how good they were at feeding they stuck with it and honed that ability.

Even though, our teams played together twice this year I never realized, just how good they are at feeding until qualification rounds at IRI.

I wish someone had video of match 46 when 125's alliance pulled off the upset victory against 1114 and 67. That match definitely goes in my list of favorite matches this year.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Oh! lol So they were the team that was throwing the balls we were feeding to 1114 and 67 back across the field. We would throw 3 balls across and then we would see 3 balls get spit back across. The only balls really scored that match were from balls that were gotten almost immediately after getting thrown back in because we(1592) and 125(now that I know who that team was) would almost immediately pick up balls just sitting there.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I disagree that 4334 was the second best feeding bot. Whereas bomb squad flew around the field dropping balls over the bump, 4334 simply drove like any other bot can. The lack of a long range shooter really didn't help either. Their ball pickup was very effective, but from what I saw at the IRI elims, they spent a lot of time holding balls in the alley, not feeding them across the field. It seemed like they may have been guarding 4th, 5th, and other balls they couldn't pick up, but I wouldn't consider that feeding, its just defensive play.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Agreed. 4334 is a good defender of both robots and balls, but it seems to me they don't come close to 207 or 125, etc in throughput (certainly not even approaching 16). Our scouting reflects this, though it's not comprehensive.

That match at IRI that dodar's talking about is a great example. Watching balls constantly shot back and forth across the field was incredible and really only topped by showdowns like the 207 vs 16 on Einstein. I can't think of any matches like that involving 4334? For defense yes, but not really for feeding?

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I guess this sort of makes me realize that I've been thinking about regular defense along with feeding. While looking at all of the youtube videos I could of 16 and 4334, I realized, at least feeding wise, 16 is better. On another note, we played against 125 in the Battlecry Finals, and they unfortunately stopped working part of the time. This got me curious about what they could really do, so I found some videos of them in battlecry and watched them in IRI, and they are a very good feeder bot. I also did see 207 and were impressed by them. Notice how 3 of the 4 teams I have mentioned made it to Einstein, which goes to prove a great feeder can really help an alliance.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

And, as the beneficiary of that feeding in match 46 (along with 359), I noticed that they not only feed well, they have a special way of making feeding look majestic. Our driver once said in that match, "We don't have any balls!" and then three balls instantly fell out of the sky onto the field. I would call their feeding superior to most others, though not quite 16, because they can stick the balls in the open areas of the field. Whereas other teams sometimes spray balls across the field and into the corners, 125 makes it easy to collect the balls. I once saw them land three balls within a second or so just off the key, two touching and one about a foot away, and they froze right there. I think this is an underrated attribute in feeding well.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Is that the match where I commented, "Very nice." to the drive teams as they were coming onto the field to retrieve their robots?

I agree, 125 was impressive in collecting balls from the inbounding station and quickly firing them across to the other end of the field.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I'm sorry for not mentioning you guys earlier, I didn't want to detract any attention from 125. :D This entire alliance was on fire. Accurate autonomous and superior feeding it wasn't a surprise that they were the third pick of the second round.

Although I'm sure some teams in the top 8 were disappointed when 16 became the 8th alliance captain.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

469

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

That's fine, we benefited enough from it already. Plus 359 was one of the underrated shooters at IRI. We had targeted 125 Friday night as a good second pick, and were very happy to see them available at pick number 11.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

From what I see, there are 3 main feeder bots: 16, 125, and 4334.

16 was very maneuverable, and had a great ball pickup.

125 had a great ball pickup, great strategy, and an excellent shooter.

4334 could pick up balls like no one's business, and fed their alliance to IRI victory.

Here's my opinion:

16, while fast and maneuverable, couldn't send balls over to the other side really quickly. They had to go to the bump/bridge to release the balls, since their catapult, while accurate, was too slow for feeding.

4334 was plagued with the same problems as 16.

125, however, was just amazing. They were quick, agile, and with their amazing drivers and shooter, were able to pick up any ball, and quickly send it over to their alliance side. The reason I choose 125 as the best feeder over 16 and 4334 is because of their consistent and well performed execution of the feeding/starvation strategy. In most every single match 125 was in, you could clearly see the constant stream of balls flying across the field from their shooter to the other side. They were so good at their role, that every match they forced their opponents to venture to the other side of the field to get balls. They even would pick up balls that their opponent's feeders would put on their side and shoot them right back. Because of their excellent execution of feeding, I vote 125 as the best feederbot (so far) of 2012. 256 did pretty good, too...

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I saw literally one match from IRI, but what made 125 so great at IRI? They were good on Galileo but was not selected for eliminations (I do think they were one of the best teams not picked). Did they make any significant robot or strategy changes?

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

16 is perfectly capable of lofting balls quickly to the other side. Delivering them to a certain spot was a much more valuable skill, especially if we were feeding a 3 ball wide intake robot. It was a choice.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I can see arguments for all the teams that are mentioned. 16, 125, 207 (really didn't see them feed as the only matches I saw them in was Einstein), and 4334 were all great feeders.

4334- the little robot that could and showed tremendous improvement as the year went on. The had a wide intake that was able to scoop the balls up quickly and dump over the barrier. They played some of the best defense I have seen all year. I see this team being the next 2056. Maybe not the amount of regional wins, but definitely the knowledge and skills to be a great team.

125- Started the season with a win in NYC because of amazing strategic planning. They moved on to Boston with a better shooter and ended as finalists. Champs didn't turn out as well as the regionals but still performed well. Speaking with members of 125 at IRI, they realized that they weren't going to be noticed as much if they stuck with shooting. They decided to try the feeding technique and it payed off. They were one of the best feeders there. They were able to give their alliance partners balls quickly because of their hopper and were able to load the balls faster than having to pick them off the floor.

16- Had an amazing season. Three regional wins, Division Champions, and World Champions. Took the feeder role at Champs and were the best feeder in the World. IMHO, they are the best feeder because unlike 125, they picked the balls off the opposing alliances side of the field. This makes the opposing alliance have to cross the barrier in order to retrieve scoring elements. Another reason that 16 was the best feeder was because their intake allowed them to feed directly into a robots intake. This is seen in the "High Score" match at IRI when they feed directly into 118 during telop. Another can be seen when they fed into 148s robot. (Wasn't planned)

Just my $0.02

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Hey everybody, we here at 125 are very proud to have brought as much attention to ourselves as we have.

Our feeding strategy was in our back pocket since the design stage, but it was always a back up plan. We were designed as a shooter first. The first time we tried to feed in this method was during the Boston finals, where we lost out to an amazing alliance of 341, 233, and 246. We did manage to put up a pretty good fight, despite being outgunned - we only lost by 4 points in the second final (if we had put up a few more points, they had a triple balance just about lined up and they would have tried it).

We did use the strategy a few times at championships, but our primary strategy was still regular shooting. We had some other bugs there that made us less desirable - we lost most of two matches due to comms issues (which were 100% our fault). We did think that we had an outside shot at getting picked, but when 3322 is on the board as a final pick, you take them 10 times out of 10.

We had two offseasons between championships and IRI that were also really important in teaching us what bugs we needed to work out. We lost our front intake at Battlecry while playing defense against 78 (their corner went into our front drum, bending the front drive axle pretty badly). At Blitz we realized that we needed a bit more power on the back roller, since we were having motor burnout issues. Between Blitz and IRI we installed a new gearbox that had an extra reduction in it to beef up the back roller.

We knew going into IRI that our shooter was not going to be as consistent as the top teams, and we thought that our feeding ability was going to be the best way to stand out. It worked better than we could have imagined, obviously. We still wish we could have helped take our alliance further, but we're extremely proud of our showing nonetheless.

As for videos: we have some. People at IRI will probably recognize us as the team who had a camera taped to a hockey stick. Videos actually came out fairly well. We will post the match against 1114-67-1592, as well as quarters 3-1 (I reviewed that footage tonight and it came out awesome). There will be a few more that we may put up, and we're putting together a wrap video as well. We'll happily share the links when we're all done. We will also have our CAD up at some point in the future.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Essentially 125 spent the majority of the match in the alliance lane. They would take three balls from the HP into their open hopper, drive forward a bit, and shoot them right around the key area. They would rinse and repeat this strategy, also picking up balls off the floor on occasion, until the field was starved.

It made a lot of sense. Because they were in the lane, they couldn't be defended, and they had free reign to stray balls that landed in it. Even a 75% accurate human player would still be giving too many free points to an alliance, when you could be getting guaranteed feeds via 125. It was a great strategic change for IRI.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I'm sorry if I came off as rude. What I meant was that compared to 16 and 4334, 125 could loft balls at a faster rate to the other side. Your tactical strategy of feeding them to the place you did was smart, and very effective for the partners you had. 125's shooting to a not as specific area was effective for the partners they had.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Oh, no. I didn't take it as rude at all. Just pointing out that we had a strategy, and didn't "have to" feed over the bump.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

(Sorry to keep posting, but I read this and your other post and had a thought in my head I knew I should post)

Every time I see something about 16 (and a few other teams), I have my initial doubts, find some flaws, and in the end learn something I never thought possible, whilst being proven wrong in everything I thought. Thank you, Team 16, for proving me wrong, and helping me learn. :)

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

When you step back, there is no real comparison between the three robots because they are completely different have a different strength that a certain alliance captain can see as more valuable.

16: Probably the most agile of the three and have a top notch pickup.

4334: Smaller than your average joe making them the easiest to triple with (especially with two other long robots).

125: Human fed and can shot balls from anywhere on the other side of the field eliminating going to the barrier.

Any robot can be a great feeder like 33, 1114, 987, 233, 2056, 118, 148, 254, 341.....

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I'm a big fan of team 125 especially their robot last year and really their robot almost every year (including the fender bot they had this year), and I really hope this doesn't come off the wrong way because I have a lot of respect for the Nutrons, but I think their feeding strategy at IRI simply exploited flawed scouting. Most good human players could inbound a ball into the offensive zone at a rate above 90%. At IRI almost every alliance had a human player capable of inbounding the balls into their offensive zones at a rate around 95%. A strategy that takes a robot and removes it from other tasks in order to raise that rate to 100% make little sense in terms of winning a match or controlling the balls on the field. My view is that it makes more sense for a robot to pick up balls and put them into their offensive zone and let the inbounders do their job. Now if a team simply scouts how many balls a team puts into their offensive zone, this idea of how many more balls enter their zone as a result of what they are doing may not, and rarely will, be accounted for.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Every match? I think we had plenty of ammo. ;)

The GoPro version provides an alternate viewpoint, as well as some extended footage.

Even though they were neutralized this match, the video still clearly shows the elegant way in which 125 returned balls across the field.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Even though we had some trouble getting across, we still 1. distracted an excellent scorer, and 2. provided a defense-free environment for our partners. So it wasn't really that terrible of a situation.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

We intended to block you from the beginning. If you weren't effective at defense/feeding in the matches prior and hadn't caught the attention of our robot driver, you'd have been ignored. You should take the intentional attention as a compliment. :)

Three's a crowd in scoring. 3322 and 1676 had no issues using the extra ammo made available while you were engaged. The pre-match strategy was executed exactly as our alliance planned, and the end match result bears that out.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I would never think taking balls from one side of the field and launching them to the other would spark such a healthy conversation about our robot, but apparently I was wrong!

Joe- While I can see your point, and also heard you and others emphasize it in Indiana, I think you are oversimplifying our strategy just a bit. I don't want to go in and start breaking down tape second by second, but just being on that side of the field does a lot. Any balls that would normally find their way into the protected lane, are now in a no fly zone for the other alliance. Ditto for any balls below the key, near the fender. We would often just cruise through that area to be a nuisance. I also disagree that most teams could inbound at 95%, but unless someone took scouting data for that, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Travis- In our qualification match against you guys, I was genuinely surprised to see you playing D on us. We were not expecting a solid scoring robot like yourselves, to not focus completely on scoring. Kudos on a match well played.


Dan explained a bit why we chose the strategy we did in Indiana, but I'll just elaborate a bit more. We went into IRI with a brand new set of drivers, and a well tuned robot. We made several tweaks, and knew we'd have a lot of options for strategy when we got to IRI. We feed a lot because knew it was our best chance at contributing to the WINNING IRI alliance. While we are capable of scoring 10+ balls/match in optimal conditions, we simply are not as fast as many of the other bots that were in Indiana. We knew that the winning alliance in Indiana would feature 2 primo scoring machines and 1 support style robot. Knowing we would most likely not be able to put up the numbers to be one of the 2 scoring machines on the winning alliance, we focused on the support style of play. Extreme backspin on the shooter, smart play, effective balancing and consistent hybrid all helped make a solid feeding machine.



As for who is the best feeder? It is not us. 16 owns that honor by a wide margin. Extremely well driven, extremely agile. Better pickup, ability to become "wide" on the ramp. The Bomb Squad was the best feeder bot this year, hands down.

-Brando

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

But, as I said earlier, where the balls go in the offensive zone is quite unappreciated--at least in my opinion. The tendency of inbounders is to put the balls in the opposite corner of the field, 1) in the corner, and 2) in your opponents' lane. Spending time to chase balls down, dig them out, and avoid the defense is time that could be spent shooting. By keeping the balls near the key (their accuracy in doing so was surprising), they are easier to retrieve and less enticing for opponent feeders to return. I'm not just saying this because we picked them, it actually is easier.

As for picking up off the floor, yes, it could have been more effective there.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

What I think a lot of you are missing about 16 and 4334 is that when they fed balls, though they had to go to the bump to do this but, all the balls the fed were grouped together. Then their alliance partners could quickly get those 3 balls from them. While 125, though was amazing at feeding to the other side, would launch the balls causing them to bounce everywhere around and they would be all scattered around the field.

Also 125 usually (from the matches i saw) would just grab 3 balls from the human player and shoot them to the other side, rather than picking up balls and shooting them over.

In my honest opinion the best feeder was 16, then 4334. But I would take 4334 over 16 because of the bridge balancing and the great "man on man" defense they can play. Great driving from both teams.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I thought so too but in one match in Vegas, we (987) tried to feed and our shooter has so much backspin that the balls would bounce back across the barrier towards us! We couldn't get balls to the other side of the field very well.

One nice thing about 207 was that it could unload balls so fast that 3 balls show up on the same video frame in some cases. They really didn't have to spend any time at all sending the balls across.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

16.

Their intake and driving allows for the best feeding to a specific targeted area.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Please excuse the detour for a stupid question: why didn't they just cross the blue bridge?

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Without a doubt, the truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjFNk-aEvgc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReyI_2NJDsQ

I guess we had a burning desire to address defensive feeder bots at IRI. After 16 was so effective in littering our side of the field with balls when partnered with them (and that whole Galileo thing), we kinda sorta knew they'd have to be dealt with.

By the way, props to 447 for effective feeding at IRI.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Why no penalty for 16's contact with blue alliance bridge at one minute mark of match 62?

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

You cannot be pushed into a penalty by another bot [G44], the only exceptions is if the penalty involves an opposing robot in contact with the key, alley or bridge [G28]

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

One feeding strategy that I would suppose 4334's design allows would be picking up balls on the opposing side, then placing them on their alliance's bridge 3 at a time. Sure the partners would have to go to the bridge to get them, but the opponents would have to draw a penalty to either get in 4334's way while doing this or to get the balls off the bridge. Did they ever use this method of feeding? This would seem like a rather unique way they are capable of feeding that many other robots simply cannot.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Wouldn't have mattered anyway, due to the inevitable triple at the end by the one alliance in the match capable of doing it.

Regarding the can't be forced into a penalty thing....I seem to recall a qualifying match in which 2168 was given the death penalty for blocking a triple in which they were pushed into a bridge, and I do not believe any bot on the bridge ever touched them. I might be wrong about the details, though. I'd love to watch vid of that specific match again.

This match ultimately made me laugh in hindsight, as the win was the reason 16 was #8 seed instead of a very valuable 2nd pick of the top-seeded alliances. As it is, 16 picked a tough alliance and gave people a run for their money.

Getting a bit off topic from the feeder bot discussion. I wish 269 had attended IRI. I bet they would have made elims as a widebot feeder. They did an excellent job at Wisconsin for the winning 48/2826/269 alliance.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Thanks Travis! Definitely a new strategy for us at IRI. We felt that it was best way to find ourselves on an alliance of IRI caliber.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I'm sure a lot of teams had expected to take 16 early with the 2nd pick.
If we had stayed an alliance captain, we would have taken them 1st. We actually discussed this with their coach who approached us 1st, not knowing that we would have done it anyways.
Its ironic that they chose us 1st anyways and couldnt believe Pink was available with the last pick.
I agree with the whole #1-8 being all excellent. As an alliance, we may have not been triple balance compatible (other than our backup 2834), but felt that we could score just as effectively as #1-7.
A lot of teams could be excellent feeder bots, if given the chance and opportunity. 16 chose that role, and did it the best.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

No offense Karthik, Mike and Adam.:)
But when I saw this match when we got the schedule, I knew it would be tough. There was no other strategy to employ other than ball starvation and feeding. We knew at the get go that no triple balance was going to happen.
The key to us winning this particular match however was during hybrid.
At one point before the other alliance made a single hybrid shot, I saw us winning 36-0 at one point.
We shot lights out during that match with 68. Every time we needed to load up balls, they were right there.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

^reported

(direct quote off Meredith)

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I'm not sure if this is the match you're speaking of, but at least twice we called the death penalty for a robot that set up "too close" to the bridge for the sole purpose of interfering with the robot being able to get on the bridge and balance. This was the interpretation that was used at CMP, to counter the so-called "Cincinnati defense". And since only 2 of the ref crew were at CMP, maybe we didn't get the interpretation completely correct. Stu attempted to explain it at the driver meeting Friday. The interpretation derived from the "otherwise interfere" wording in [G25].

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

I don't know the specific match, but the rule at Worlds (the interpretation reaffirmed at the IRI meeting) was that if BlueBot1 purposefully puts themselves in the area around RedBridge*, they are liable for any penalties incurred from being pushed into RedBridge. This is in contrast say, BlueBot2 being by RedFender and getting pushed all the way into RedBridge, which wouldn't inherently result in any penalties.** However, if BlueBot1 can stay in front of RedBridge and never contact either RedBridge or RedBot-in-contact-with-RedBridge, Blue is not penalized (yay, high traction!)


*"the area around the bridge" was deliberately not fully clarified, but it was indicated as something in the vicinity of one robot/half a bridge distance.

**Of course, if BlueBot1 were pushed into RedBot2 who was in contact with RedBridge, there's potential for both Blue G28 and Red G45, depending on exact circumstances.

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

This was clearly confirmed at the driver's meeting. I believe the wording was "if red robot is putting themselves in a position to interfere with a blue balance, they are also putting themselves in a position to receive 'interfering with the balance' penalties."

Re: Best Feeder Bot of 2012
 

Can we please stop discussing the "Cincinnati defense," it still hurts to much....