Shooting full court?
 

With all these prototype videos I've seen, there are some impressive ranges going on. Will teams start to "camp" the loading zone and just shoot full court? Is this even a plausible idea?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

i definately think it's plausable... but i do worry about tall opposing robots just parking in front of you and blocking shots... not to mention pyramids could be in the way.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Basic calculations show that an 84" robot could block fairly effectively even from several feet away from the feeding zone, even if you are shooting from the maximum height of 60". However, it is difficult to speculate how many robots will actually deploy to 84" while playing defense.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

People thought of doing that last year with the basketballs and outside of midcourt shots I can't recall any teams firing from the other side of the field. Better to move in for a closer more accurate shot than waste it blindly shooting from a greater distance.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

People think this every year, and every year they fail to show up. I have yet to see any full court shooters that I would call successful. Remember, even the 971's and 548's of FRC have had huge successes with machines that require shots from under (or usually under) the goals. It's often beter to get up close and personal with the goals in return for a higher percentage.

I will give you a cookie if you can show me an actual FRC team that fields a full court shooter with a percentage higher than 30%.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Frisbees are a different animal than any previous gamepiece - but full-court is still full-court.

If anyone makes a robot that parks in the feeder station and fires off 45 rounds at high accuracy while overcoming the tough angle, pyramids, and potential defense, it will be a sight to behold.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I am sure that at least one team will try this and have reasonable success.....until the frisbeeswarp. We all know that this will happen, but no one seems to consider it as a factor.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

After some time playing with the simulator, I've concluded that the ideal alliance this year is a dedicated climber and two shooters, one of which can feed directly from the station and the other with great floor pickup.

For the first part of the match, the station feeder just shoots disks downfield. If some of those happen to score, great, but more important is reducing the number of trips to the feeder station to retrieve disks. Last year, good inbounders were able to keep their robots supplied with basketballs, but this year a robot will have to provide that function, at least until the inbounders can throw disks to their robots.

From the simulator, we learned that the real bottleneck to scoring is disk supply. Good scoring robots quickly exhaust the available disks on the floor. Driving to the drivers station to get more is a real time killer, especially if slowed down by any halfhearted attempts at defense.

Think about the problem this way: After teleop, a single robot has 6 disks easily reachable on the floor available for scoring. If limited to getting disks from the feeder station, and generously assuming 5 trips to refill, that is 20 disks more. Any defense that slows down round trips from the feeder station could easily reduce the number of trips to 2 or 3.

For every disk available for scoring, you pay a price for that disk measured in seconds to retrieve it. The highest price you can pay is driving back and forth to get them, and the other alliance can drive the price higher by playing defense. The lowest price you can pay is parking at the feeder station and shooting them downfield. There is an optimum number of disks the inbounding robot would want to shoot downfield. Too many and they will lay on the field un-scored at the end of the match. Too few and the scoring robot(s) will run out and have to go hunting for more.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Was the limited supply of disks (45 per alliance station) ever a factor? I know the simulator may be an overestimate for a typical team's ability but I'm curious if the disk supply matters even for an elite level group.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I'll just leave this here.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

This year the game piece supply is comparatively larger. Each alliance is given 51 probably unshared discs (assuming discs are not stolen off the ground) Last year there was 18 shared balls for both aliances. At least until MSC I will find it hard to believe on average each robot on an alliance can score 17 discs and deplete the supply.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

You will only be at 60" when down field. 84" in your autozone. Compare those heights to the bottoms of the two far-wall holes.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

My Autozone is your feeder zone... I will be 84" in my autozone... just to protect you from making shots from there. You will probably still feed your zone by missing me, but you are not scoring from the feed zone. If you try to score from there, the Frisbee at best in my autozone, and worst ends up in my low score bin. . . think about it.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

There is danger in attempting to block the feeder slots, if you get too close, the robot at the feeder can rack up penalties against you.

A good allied defender bot can also mitigate blocking if it's key to the teams strategy. It's not difficult to park in front of your ally against the wall.

I would not be surprised if we see some teams making full court shots with some degree of success. Even 50% accuracy is deadly if you've got an allied bot that can pickup the other half.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Seems a lot more doable for mediocre teams than last year, and I kinda have a reckless prediction that many teams out there would give up on trying to make an extraordinarily good climbing mechanism, at least in my regional...so a great shooter would be the next great thing to put some effort into for those teams.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Took some time in Sketchup to draw out the field. Added in a few boxes to represent robots of varying heights and used the walkthrough features. The pyramid is only in the way of the left (2 pointer) goal. You've got pretty good line of sight from loading station to the center goal.

Still have to contend with blocking robots but with your wheel in the safe zone, that, warping disks, off side shots and building a shooter than can launch them. Other than that, easy peasy.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Have you actually warped your disks to an extent that seriously affects your shooting? How?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I doubt an Average robot will be able to at all. I would guess, however, that probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the fields at MSC and MARs champs will be able to do that relatively undefended.

However, a heavily defended robot this year will have trouble traversing the field while keeping away from the pyramid and the other team. In past years with relatively open fields, it still takes 30-40 seconds to traverse the field again a well-playing defender.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Could you share this Sketchup file?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I thought about this until I fooled around with the frisbees. They're made from a different plastic than an "ultimate" frisbee and are much more rigid. When flexed, they quickly return to their original shape. I doubt we'll see many problems with warped discs at competition.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I could definitely see shooting for the highest goal being pretty darn difficult to dial in after extensive testing but because of the obvious height differences and dimensions, I could totally see it occurring in the middle goals. Also, the window to shoot in this year is varied dimensions per height and not an exact circle just placed at different heights.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

The high goal is only a few inches higher than the 2 pointers, but it's only 12 inches high as opposed to 21 for the middle goals -- so if you shoot at the high goal from the feeder station, you need to have at most a 5-6 inch height variation at a range of 50 feet -- and height of 114 inches -- to be able to score every disc from the feeder station.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

We would love a full court shooter on our alliance, if they miss a bunch of shots, we could pick them up in the auto zone and score them in the high goal! Saves us time going back to the feeder station.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

That's what I meant - when shooting from your feeder station, you can only be 60" - any opponents attempting to block you can be 84"

Re: Shooting full court?
 

On the feeder end of the field, opponent robots can be 84 inches tall and you can only be 60 inches tall. Easy to defend full court shots.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I agree, I'm wondering if it will be an issue at the higher levels or not (Championship playoffs, District Championships, IRI).

Re: Shooting full court?
 

No, but we have only had them for 5 days or so and have not begun heavy use of them. Also, I doubt that teams will be able to warp their disks even with heavy testing because you cannot replicate the beating that they will take at a competition.

You are also not a 150 lb robot driving over the top of it.

I might be wrong, but using last years balls as an example, the disks will not get replaced until they absolutely need it. I think that teams with poorly designed shooters that unnecessarily crunch the disk, teams with inaccurate shooters that pound the disks off of the walls, and teams that drive straight over the disks will destroy these disks. We will see, but I think that it is nearly impossible to simulate the wear that an average disk will take until you get to a competition.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Clay pigeons are a lot denser, less aerodynamic, and you do not want them to have a consistently repeatable trajectory. Variability is good.

Ok, but I know the efforts Siri's team went through to try and warp the disks, without success. So next time you speculate, label it as such and not as established fact. Please.

Last years balls are not very comparable. FYI.

Bad information is worse than no information

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Rim damage will occur, most certainly, from the shooter tests that people have already posted, but the speculations you make have already been considered and have been debunked.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Iteration throughout the season means that an 84" pole with a sheet of, well, whatever (even, say, 180-count percale cotton bed sheet) on the top will utterly destroy any full-court shooting robots in later regionals and especially at CMP.

Strategy: Park in front of uber-unstoppable robot. Stop shots. When necessary, go climb.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Last year we designed a robot to shoot full court and it wasn't a smart goal. Although the use of recurve bow limbs allowed our catapult to fire across the full field there was to much variability in shots for them to be accurate.

TL;DR Build within your means and good luck if you wanna shoot full court.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Don't forget that Frisbees fly in all kinds of neat ways... be sure to exploit this ability!

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Just saying, FIRST has never chosen a game piece with the advantage of aerodynamics and lift.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Why do I get the feeling that this type of flight pattern results in less accuracy on the goal? :P

Re: Shooting full court?
 

When designing your long distance shooter, be sure to chose your disk rotation so that missed shots bounce away from the protected loading zone, rather than toward it.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Less accurate for sure, but even if you're only making 50% of your shots, that's an un-blockable flightpath if the angles work out like drawn. If you can take each shot in under 2 seconds, 45 shots takes less than 90 seconds. At 50% accuracy it still ends up with 66 points in the high goal, and the rest of the missed shots are there for alliance partners to pick up (if they have a ground pickup). 30 seconds to do a level 2 or 3 climb, and you've added at least 20 points to that. It could be a minimum 86pt strategy. That might not be the highest scoring robot in the competition, but it'd be a heck of an alliance partner to someone with fast ground pickup and an accurate shooter.

Plus if you can get a level 3 climb mechanism and dunk in those 30 seconds, now you're talking 66+50 = 116 pts by yourself. Not too shabby!

Re: Shooting full court?
 

You remind me of your grandpa :cool:

Re: Shooting full court?
 

This sounds like somewhere where we'll have to wait for someone to prototype it and see what the accuracy is first-hand. The ratio of shots in the goal vs. scattered on the floor would be the dealbreaker.

I think you'd have alliances fighting over you if you managed to pull this off with a good goal ratio :D

If you designed for a flight path like this though, wouldn't you need a second shooter that shoots in a normal path for shots from anywhere else? Or can the same turrent throw both? I'm not an Ultimate player, so I don't know much about frisbee technique. I guess you could also fall back to defense if it doesn't work out in a certain field, too.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

As Don clarified (Thanks), my question was not "have you warped your disks by shooting them?" Abusing them was the first thing we did, and there's no destruction here. We have indeed over-compressed them, jumped on them, dropped steel bars on them, slammed them between robots and walls, and yes, driven straight over them--and not just with robots. Before you assert that competition conditions can't be simulated, think outside the warehouse a bit ...like, you know, the the driveway. Four times both directions under my car, and it still files like a beaut.

I'm not trying to assert--because that would be speculation--that there is no way these disks could become seriously warped in competition. I am asked how you think it would happen, though.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

We are very interested in running the 2013 game simulator you mentioned. Where can we find it???

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I would assume he is talking about Catalyst 2013, released by Diamond Bullet Studios. It was one of the pieces of software we got access to in the virtual kit as can be seen on the kit of pars home.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...c/kit-of-parts
Follow this next link to download the simulation.
http://www.dbsgames.net/

Re: Shooting full court?
 

well, see unlike game pieces in the past, like last year for example, you don't really have to arc a frisbee, which generally fly straight as an arrow. That being said, a robot can only extend to 84" in their own auto zone and when contacting the pyramid, so being that the blue team's feeder station would be in the red team's auto zone, a robot who's goal is solely to shoot full court shots is very un likely as a defensive robot for the red team would have the height advantage even though it may not be touching the blue robot. Not to mention that from the drawings, it appears that the pyramid will essentially block the high and middle goals on the walls, and the only straight shot would be for the low goal directly ahead from the load zone for blue. Having a large margin for error and the fact that you will most likely only be able to score 1 pt. goals will probably deter teams from employing such a strategy. However, I do feel one strategy to be weary of is a team that would solely drive up to the loading station, get the colored frisbees and take 4 of them with them on the pyramid as they climb. basically, i feel a robot aimed solely at climbing is more likely even though it may only be active for the last 30 seconds of the match, it may play defense for the other time remaining. So, long story short, i feel you wouldn't have to worry if you are playing against a team that decides to do that, :)

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I'm sorry, my fault, I did not know how much you guys had tested those disks. I made an assumption, and we all know what that means....

My bad, I figured that like almost every past year using a game piece that had some flex, there would be some inconsistencies among them after a while that would affect gameplay.

My fault again, sorry guys.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Actually, no. I've done the math and there is a straight shot from the feeder zones to the center of the high goal. Everything to the outside of those shots is open -- so shooting from the right zone will be able to hit the high goal, right middle, and the one pointer.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I want to see a double bounce shot off of both of the pyramids.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Did you use software to model that flight path? If so, what software did you use?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Truth be told this is a Frisbee not a ball. Two totally different types of flight patterns. Frisbees tend to curve after a while to the right or left.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

If you are referring to my drawing, that is just a concept sketch done in paint. I have no idea if there is a feasible flight path along those lines that doesn't interfere with the venue ceiling, but based on my experience with Frisbees it would be a possible (albeit extremely difficult) shot.

We are not planning on firing from the load port at this time... I'll leave it to somebody else to point their shooter way up in the air and test the concept. :)

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I'm waiting for someone to post a video of their prototype shooter doing this. Please, make my day. :)

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Unless wind picks it up, don't you generally have to run forward to catch throws like those? o_O

(Cue venue installing massive fans in the rafters)

Or this.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

to be honest, my opinion is that it's not plausible, in the case of throwing a Frisbee, the farther it goes, the more it curves, so my guess would be that's too far for the robot to shoot accurately

This is BA. I'd love to see such creativity be exploited for goal! Good luck with this design. Unique.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

So from what I understand about the Paint schematic, the robot is firing backwards so that the curve takes it all the way to the other basket? Pardonez-moi, but I don't think a frisbee will do that.
Sidenote on the hammer:
If I'm the human player this year, I hope I'll be able to do that

Re: Shooting full court?
 

What are the other 2 robots on uber bots aliance doing? If they get in front of the feeder station in between your defender and uber bots disks leave close to the 60 and will climb quickly I dont think this will be easy to defend...

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Thanks for the link. It makes me wonder, now, if there is any youtube video with a frisbie in it that has not already been viewed by an FRC team member. Also wondering if there will be a robot this year named "MC Hammer." (can't touch that stuff!)

Re: Shooting full court?
 

From all these videos being posted of shooters shooting further than the length of the field accurately, how many cookies were you planning on giving out? :D

Re: Shooting full court?
 

It seems reasonably likely (at least to me) we will see a fair number of full-court capable shooters based on all the videos people are posting. I believe the best shooting teams will just keep that as a capability on their robot and use it if there are no capable defenders against them as it's an incredibly high scoring strategy. Then if someone is capable or willing to play defense, they will just zip down field and make closer shots that can't be as easily blocked.

We are building a climbing robot first, shooting second and so our range is no where near this far. But in all our strategy sessions, we did talk about what we would do if it was a shooter first and it looked something like what I've posted above.

-Mike

Re: Shooting full court?
 

This is our shooter at full court and this is our shooter at half court

Re: Shooting full court?
 

So many long range shooter videos.I think that if I had a full court shooter and needed to pick an alliance partner I would choose an 84" tall defense bot to stop this madness.=0

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I'd rather pick an otherwise good robot (e.g. auto scoring, smart drive team, good reliable drivetrain, other strong defense tactics*) and put a 84" pole/net on top if we need it. Bonus if we can slap on a cylinder/steal a solenoid and make it go <=60" to 84". It's easier to get taller than shorter. Keep your CG low and be ready to become a 'wall' if need be, but I'm not sure why to make a big deal out of the ability.

That said, can you full court shooter get over an 84" tall defender if one of your (short) allies sits between you two? Depending on how high you shoot from, rising 24" over a span of 36-54" shouldn't be too bad. If you're accurate enough, you'd probably still score more than the two of you would individually otherwise.

*Climbing might be a trade-off with the pole.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

No one's called me on it yet, and I don't expect them to. Those shooter videos are poor simulations of game conditions. They are perfectly lined up, with no robots and pyramid in the way, and those shooters don't have to worry about defenders. We won't be seeing that much in actual game play (and never in regards to the pyramid).

Also, looking at last year indicates that few robots will be able to pull off full court shots. Given, frisbees are more consistent than those awful foam balls. Last year, we saw a fair number of full court shot videos, and essentialy no robots that bothered to shoot full court. But, it's a lot more possible to shoot full court this year, given the aerodynamics of frisbees. So I suspect that we'll see a few teams that shoot full court.

The 30% comes from my belief that it's just hard to hit a target acurately in FRC. Simbotics had a percentage around 60% last year, usually at very close range. Half that seems like a reasonable number.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

If we shoot 3/4 the court, can we get 3/4 a cookie?

I expect my cookie at Sacramento.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Well...

To reiterate, the bet was that there would be no team in FRC that could shoot full court and make more than 30% of shots. I'll clarify that by defining "full court" as from the alliance feeder stations or behind, and "30%" as making that percentage of three or two point shots over either Quals or Elims. Let's agree that making one hail mary shot does not count.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

We can shoot full court pretty well actually. It is accurate too.

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzIke...er_profilepage


We are planning on shooting full court most of the time. Unlike last year, frisbee's are more stable and accurate while traveling long distances.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

But like last year a defensive robot can be 84" tall on their side of the court. How exactly are you guys planning to combat a wall?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

You really don't have to. If you have a bot that is able to score reliably enough from the feeder zone (with no D played on you) then you will invite dedicated defense, unless your opponents have a comparable full court shooter to keep up with yours. If they play D, then you maneuver until you can get a good shot (significantly reducing your scoring frequency and/or accuracy) but you still have tied up an opponent bot that is doing nothing but sticking near you and not scoring himself. If that bot wants to climb and abandon defense, and you continue to shoot, you will likely outscore the climber with an accurate full court shooter, assuming you still have a disc supply (not an unreasonable assumption.)

Re: Shooting full court?
 

We plan on maneuvering around them. We are a small robot that has a lot of pushing power. We can use that to our advantage. Also, the good defender robots will not only defend, but they will climb the tower. So in the time it takes for them to climb the tower, we could be banking shoots. In the past years, defender robotics really don't stick around to long because there is a "end game" task that they want to do. So therefore, you have about 30sec to shoot as many off as possible.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

To be clear -- you're expecting to build a robot that is capable of accurately scoring from 50+' from an arbitrary position on the field that also has the ability to collect frisbees from the ground, store them and shoot them -- again from an arbitrary position on the field?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

You're assuming a lot of things. If I'm doing match strategy and there's a robot that can "bank shots for 30 seconds full court", why would I tell a team to stop defending them. Stopping my opponents from scoring 30+ is just as good as scoring 30+ myself.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

If we know that you'll score more in disks in the last 30 seconds that we'll score on the tower, why on Earth would we stop defending you?

I suspect you'll find in quals that there are more than enough defenders that have nothing to do but sit on you. (In elims, this will still be true, but they'll also be good at slowing you down on the way to the feeder station.) You're not creating a 3-on-2 scenario, you're creating a 2-on-2 one, only the robot you take from them in the lowest scorer while the one you take from yours is well, you.

To be clear, I'm not disparaging you of the strategy, just advising you think more about it. What can you do to up your competitive advantage?


To Madison's very good question, I really hope "maneuvering around them" means "within the area of the loading zone" rather than in the open field. Have you simulated this with accurate/scale sizes? I think you're in for a heck of a surprise either way.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I'd go with the safe bet that shooting from the "safe zone," where a 84" blockade has no effect on you shooting at the 3 point target, as the best way of making shots....right?

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Yes ma'am! :) We are planning on doing that. Now, lets see if we can actually get that done! That is the trick! :) At the end of this week, we should have the robot ready to go. I will post a video when it is done.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Yeah, i do tend to assume a lot of things :) but yeah that is very true. Then obviously we wouldn't keep trying to shoot at back of the field. We would just move to the back of the pyramid and shoot 3's there.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Yeah I totally understand what you are saying. I have been in robotics for over 3 years and I know what to expect.

I agree with you, and I know there will be a lot of defenders. I know that for a fact.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

The problem with full court shooting is that accuracy is at its worst, and for defense a team can literally just sit in front of you and block your shots. I think the better teams will have aiming aids for their drivers, such as targeting systems, possibly visible lasers, and probably a multitude of other things. Worst fear is that matches are boring because all that happens is teams shoot from the other side of the field and constantly miss.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Team 225 would like to collect on your offer. During one finals match at Chestnut Hill, we missed only one full-court two pointer of the 41 that our robot fired. However, defensive robots did become a problem during the event

Re: Shooting full court?
 

I don't think a better game piece will ever be used for full court shooting again. Frisbees are perfect. Multiple teams are able to accomplish this task, most into the 3 point goal. Something that bothers me is that hardly any team is able to shoot at the Pyramid. It is easy points if you are consistent, and can be a real game changer.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

It may be a game changer but since there are only 6 game pieces that can be shot into that goal, it will never be a consistent game changer for the common shooter. The pyramid goal will only be a game changer when in use by a level 2/3 climber that dumps; and more often than not those robots are purely specialized to do just that.

Re: Shooting full court?
 

Another Team to add to Full Court Shots - Team 4212
This video was taken today from the Wisconsin Regional (Practice Day).
Just short snips. Dead on almost every shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3_ObAFqDqI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKVyFueyWqA
(1080P videos)