"Dud" robots
 

The most concerning part of this game for me is the potential for one mistake to completely shut down a team. Say a robot during autonomous is loaded with its ball, but the autonomous malfunctions and the robot rams into the wall, loosening all the PWMs, and trapping the ball on board. This team would never have their cycles begin and be shut out of any points or even showing the scouts their abilities.

In previous years you would still be able to play with a robot down, but you are 100% sunk if the ball is trapped.

**edit - Sorry, this is only a suggestion ** There is a solution - if a robot is stuck with a ball inside, and that robot is E-stopped, then another ball is put into play.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Where is that in the rules?

Sorry, but I couldn't find it earlier when I was looking through and reading. Much as I'd love for that to be the case, I'm thinking right now that it's going to be a case of partner robots trying to free the ball from the robot. Like I said, I'd love for that to be the solution.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

That was a suggestion.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

I figured--just the way it was phrased originally.

I'd be on-board with that solution--that is, if a ball is on the field but stuck on an inoperable* robot or other object, a manual override to the system would allow a replacement.


*For clarity's sake, I'll define "inoperable" as: Can neither eject the ball nor drive around due to failure of either mechanical systems or control systems, OR disabled by FMS or E-stop for any reason. In layman's terms, the ball is STUCK.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Another concern is that with only one ball on the field and statistically a lot of teams who won't be fast enough to do successful passes with the faster caliber teams, I see a lot of teams not getting the chance to do anything more than defense.

Ex, a team that can score goals fast enough to win by themselves won't be willing to let a partner take all match just to do one cycle. In the past there were enough game elements for any team to take as long as they want with, with only one though....

Re: "Dud" robots
 

When you load a ball for autonomous you are taking a calculated risk. If you think it's likely that your autonomous will malfunction then you don't have to load a ball.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

THIS is a humongous part of why I'm not a fan of Aerial Assist on first analysis.

Seems to me the elite tier robots should easily be able to turn 150ish points on their own (20 pts [truss toss +high goal] x 6 cycles + 25 auto). Especially so if they have two defenders clearing the road for them on this wide open field. Total number of cycles is unlikely to change much with assisting, if anything going down slightly.

Adding one assist per cycle, brings the cycle points to 30. If doing so 4 times costs you 2 solo-cycle time periods (going from 6 cycles to 4 in a match), you have no net gain.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

You do not have to load the ball into the robot, you can have it on the carpet touching.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

The problem is not that your robot could malfunction and lose you the round. The problem is that you get put in the position where you have to tell your alliance partners that you think their robot's autonomous mode is worse than useless. That's a good way to make people resent you.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

What if you put one robot playing defense on this single scorer, then pass with the other two? If you can't beat the single robot's score with that, then do you really deserve to win?

Re: "Dud" robots
 

How will your one defensive robot do anything when the solo scorer has two defensive robots to clear the way?

Also, scoring with assists will be slower. If you can do 6 solo cycles, or 4 cycles with 1 assist, there is no difference in net score.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Can my robot pick that other ball and score it as well to earn more autonomous points?
Just a thought of a solution

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Your alliance members have always been able to jeopardize your chance of winning by doing something negative for the team. This is nothing new.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

In previous years, if my alliance partner wanted to stop me from scoring, I could still grab discs/basketballs/tubes and score them, or I could single balance, climb, or deploy a minibot. This year, if my partner gets stuck with the ball, I can no longer get points for the rest of the match. Think about if Einstein 2012 happened again, and a robot didn't work on the field. 0 points for that allinace :( . That's the first time they've made a game where your partners MUST continue working if they have a game piece.

I predict if there are field issues (let's face it, it's not unlikely), then teams will be really mad.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

What about a robot losing communication? just e-stop him immediately? because usually a robot who lost com will "come back to life" after a number of seconds..

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Well, if its a three second communications drop (which we and all of our alliance experienced at CMP a few times last year), then wait. If the cRIO reboots, it'll be more like 20 sec, and if the radio goes down, more like a minute, which is too long. You can't e-stop an unconnected robot.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Pointing out to me that my shooter might malfunction and lose the match for my alliance will not cause me to resent you. However, designing your robot in such a way that it loses me a match might. You better believe that our scouts this year will be noting which teams cost their alliances matches this way.

This aspect of the game is actually one of my favorites this year. It makes designing a shooter which must be pre-loaded a HUGE risk. If your robot fails, you cost your alliance the match. So you have a couple options:
A) Start with the ball on the floor and load it before shooting. That way, if your robot starts out dead, you don't cost your partners the match.
B) Don't shoot at all.

I see this rule as part of a deliberate effort on the part of the rules committee to make powerhouse teams less dominate. This year, the risk vs reward for building a shooter is very high. If you build a shooter which must be preloaded, you risk losing matches for your team. Even if your shooter works perfectly, it is easily defended against by a robot ramming you as you are shooting. This lowers the advantage that elite teams have had in the past, bringing them down towards the effectiveness level of a team which builds a simple pusher bot.

Remember the teams last year who asked, "Why did we spend all the time and effort to build a 3 tier climber, when we can be beaten by two robots who only feeder-station load, shoot, and hang for 10 points?"

Answer: The game designers are deliberately designing the games so three rookie teams who work together can beat an elite team who plays alone.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Assists are one of the most important parts of the game, for one simple reason. The first seeding tiebreaker is based on assist points.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Do you really believe that a robot will consistently and repeatably be able to retrieve the inbound pass, drive to the truss, toss the ball over the truss, retrieve the (now bouncing) ball, drive to a scoring position, shoot and score in the high goal, and get back to retrieve another inbounds pass in less than 25 seconds?

I think you are, very much, overestimating most teams capabilities. In the end, there may be 1 or 2 teams in all of FIRST that might be able to pull this off on the competition field, but I doubt it.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Any team that lets me know that their autonomous mode may be 'worse than useless' is marked high in my book because they are honest (we can help them with the autonomous mode).

It's the ones that tell me that they can do it all, when they are barely functional that bother me.


Also:
Is anyone concerned that if a bumper falls off your robot will be disabled? And this could happen with a ball inside your machine?

Re: "Dud" robots
 

I totally agree with this

Re: "Dud" robots
 

If i told you last year that someone could 3rd level climb in 6.5 seconds, would you believe me?

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Looking at several videos of 1114 in 2008, they were able to hurdle 6-7 times in teleop fairly consistently, on a crowded overdrive field. I see no reason an elite level robot could not do a similar number of cycles in 2014.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Also, check out this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JElxKBOT958
This team was able to hurdle AND catch the ball, without it ever touching the floor.

I realize something like this wouldn't get you the catch points, but would still get you the truss points.

I could see some teams doing something like this.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

Defense was pretty much not allowed in Overdrive, and after you hurdled the ball it was right in front of you again--you didn't have to have it inbounded at the other end of the field.

I'm thinking the super-elite teams will probably be able to do 4-5 cycles unassisted with no defense on them. We'll see if that estimate changes as the build season progresses. ;)

Re: "Dud" robots
 

If che control system fails, the team with the failure would lose for no reason, especially because in most cases the failures in the cRIO are natural and happens once-in-a-while.

So you may ask why I am bringing this up. This happened to us last year. As soon as the teleop period started, the cRIO randomly died. Thankfully, we had an extra cRIO sitting in out pit so recovery didn't take too long.

However, what if this happened and the robot was loaded upon the damage? That would be shear bad luck for the entire alliance!

I actually don't remember if we were even allowed to rematch after we fixed the problem so they really have to tweak that rule.

Overall, in my opinion, I think this is the most poorly written game in the FIRST history! There isn't even an endgame to give teams more of a challenge. Also, the ball is roughly the size of the robot. It also needs to be picked up. Because of the size and what needs to be done with the ball, it isn't as simple as 2008 where you could knock off the ball and then kick it. I think one of the only possibilities is to kick the ball!

Re: "Dud" robots
 

After you truss toss it, it will be right in front of you, just like overdrive, and like overdrive, you have to return to the other end of the field to score again. There's an extra ball acquisition per cycle, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that 6 will be possible by the elite. Remember, 2008 was 6 years ago. All of those elite teams have learned a lot in the intervening time about how to build better robots too.

Re: "Dud" robots
 

While I might be inclined to agree that Aerial Assist is one of the weakest games the GDC has come up with in my 11 years in FRC, there is definitely no problem picking up this ball. Go watch some videos from 2008, when trackballs were twice the diameter of this ball, and robots only marginally larger. Picking up a 2014 game ball is not that big a deal.