Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it seems like a really good way to create some animosity if even one party isn't being cooperative, but on the other hand, it also forces higher-capability teams to think more about their alliance partners. It's important to remember that highly competitively successful teams make up a tiny percentage of FIRST teams-- does it competitively suck to know that your success in a match may be tied to your luck in match assignment? Yes, of course! But also remember that this is how 90% of FIRST teams experience a regional.

That being said, I do think that, from the perspective of "I want to see the best matches possible," it's kind of annoying that a little bit of pure dumb misfortune could land some otherwise potentially successful teams playing sub-optimal strategies because they remembered the key to working in a team: compromise.

Ultimately though, at the end of the day, I don't really (shocker) care all that much whether there's a highly focused robotics competition happening at every regional. If other people are still walking away inspired, it's all fine with me. Personally, I would find it incredibly inspiring if a highly-capable team helped a less capable one both show off their mechanisms and still scrape by with a win.

As to whether our theoretical low capability team should just accept the strategy of the elite team, I don't think it's that cut and dry. Just like there's more to FRC than showing off your robot, there's also more to FRC than winning matches. Some teams have priorities other than winning matches. They aren't less or more right than a team has the goal of winning the tournament.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

It is a little sad to me that it comes to this. I know that if my team was a rookie team, or if we lacked the resources to build a highly effective robot, I would be disappointed if we were asked to stay away from the ball and play defense. I wish that the powerhouse teams would try to help the less competitive teams by showing them how to improve their robots and strategies rather then insisting they can't test their systems. Yeah, this is a competition, but it's about inspiring and helping others.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

Teams do, but there is only so much teams can do during competition to raise the level of competition of other teams.

Also, if you were a team that didnt build a highly effective robot, with there being only 1 ball per alliance and robot ability/time really decides the score of the match even 1 robot on an alliance that is out of tune or uncapable of keeping up with the others would be detrimental to winning a match if playing offense; therefore, it would be better for all 3 teams if it played defense. I would hope teams, rookies or veterans, would be able to see that.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

There is more than one way to tip the score differential in your favor. Some prefer all-out offense, scoring lots of points. Others prefer all-out defense, preventing points from being scored. The best strategy, of course, is a mixture of offense and defense.

If you can't play offense because of X, then I HIGHLY encourage spending lots of time practicing and playing shutdown defense. I could see picking a team that could consistently and legally prevent the ball from going to the scoring side of the truss, particularly as a 2nd pick, regardless of offensive capability (though opponents might be pretty offended :p ).

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

Exactly.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

In 2012 it was pretty common for an alliance to have a robot that chased around the same ball for half a match. This reduces the alliance's score by roughly: 1/3*1/2=1/6. That's not good, but the match can still be competitive. On the other hand, since there's only one ball this year chasing it for half a match might reduce the alliance's score by 50%. When that happens this year I would expect the alliance to almost always lose.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

When I coached last year, I let teams know that I knew what I was doing, and that all I wanted to do was to help them during the match, and to help them win. I calmly talked to the students about strategy and made them understand what had to be done, so they were more enthusiastic about what will be done to win the match, rather than what they really wanted to do. If a team wants to test out a system, they can certainly do so if our scouting data predicts a high chance of winning the match in the first place. If not, there is a reason for practice fields.

It takes some communication skills and good body language to let others understand that you're not being dominant, but being a leader. If a team has to give up something they want to do, they need to understand that every decision in strategy is done for the good of the alliance. I just ask them "do you want all of us to get these seeding points?" and they usually agree to a strategy that wins the match, whatever it may be. Using strategy mats or boards to make strategies and plans visible and clear and can also help quell any disagreements. See my post on strategy mats if you want one. IT'S FREE!!!!!

Once students and mentors see the plan laid out, and how it will work, there is generally no rejection, and breaking of the original plan while on the field. But this has happened in the past, where teams say they agree to a strategy pre-match, but do something else for no good reason, and ruin the match. I never had problems with alliance members challenging what the plans should be, because everyone participates in making the strategy, and coaches will make compromises if they see a reason to trust me (I rely on my drive team experience), and that my role is to be a leader, not a boss.

This is something that I need to teach to the coach for our drive team this year, since I will not be coaching for this season.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

Regardless of how well you plan before a match, it does often boil down to whether a team is able to keep up with the rest of the alliance. Yes FIRST is about inspiring, but on the field, it's a competition. And in this competition, it's the alliance that wins regionals, not individual teams. So it comes down to how your alliance plays each match, for better or for worse.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

Looking at the title of this thread, I started thinking about a different (and unthinkable?) scenario being discussed, similar to the co-op bridge in 2012. Glad we're not discussing it, and I hope the discussion is never needed.


Back in 2008 there weren't enough game pieces to go around. There were certain teams (like mine :( ) that picked a wrong strategy for the game and ended up building a sub-par robot. During regional competitions, it was a rare occurrence to be paired with two robots that were significantly better than average. This meant that the best robot got a ball, and the other two shared.

During the championship event, it was a rare enough occurrence to have two below average robots on an alliance. Ultimately, teams like mine tended to be deferential to the other two - which is to say that we didn't go after a game piece until we were told we should by another team.

From experience, I can say that there will be plenty of opportunities to demonstrate your abilities. My team catapulted the trackball several times that season. If you don't think your robot is good enough to pick or be picked in the first round, your offensive abilities likely won't be the only reason you would get picked for elimination. One thing that is guaranteed is those picking will remember uncooperative teams and bad attitudes. If you do your best to be a team player, you will do better than you would otherwise do.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

I like to think that build season and off season is for building character, and competition season is for getting wins. Of course, winning is not the absolute most important thing, but it's the cherry on top. Getting the most out of FIRST does not require winning, but what team in their right mind builds a robot designed for losing?

This is the kind of conversation a crazy team like this would have:

Student 1: "Hey, let's make this robot have no wheels, and no scoring mechanism"
Student 2:"why?"
Mentor: "Well, it's not all about winning!"
Rookie Student: "This is so uninspiring... I'm joining 1114"

My point is, that everyone builds a robot with the intent that their robot will score as many points as possible to win, but what is just as good as your own robot contributing to the alliance win is another alliance robot contributing to the win. You get the same seeding points for whatever amount of participation in the match. I would be grateful for that, even if my team didn't do what we wanted.

We willingly did this at the 2013 Colorado Regional. We were the number one seeded alliance, and chose 2169, King TeC, the best cross field shooter in FIRST as our alliance partner, who I believe was either in second or third seed. But anyway, our robot was designed to shoot, and although it did well doing that, and the students put their blood, sweat, and tears into making a really good shooter, we understood that King TeC's was even better. At our matches, we played defense with our other alliance member 2259 1/4 Twenties, to keep away blocker robots. We broke 200 points a few matches, and we were glad to have our wins, even though our robot didn't contribute to the actual disk scoring, but we defended to keep 2169 safe to shoot cross court. Were we disappointed that we didn't do what our robot was designed to do? No, because we did it for the win, and we dominated eliminations because of it.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

If such a situation occurred in Aerial Assist (where an ineffective team deliberately hogged a ball for half the match just to prove that their design and/or driving was poor), that would be the case of the weaker team bringing "Ill Will" upon the game. Such an attitude is just as offensive as a strong team eschewing any interaction from a weak team simply to avoid the possibility of that weak team from disturbing the scoring drive.

As I implied before, the truly great team will be able to use anything that moves to their advantage. If a team has built a weak-bot, they should acknowledge that, and do the best they can with it. If they can't shoot, and their alliance partner knows it, they should be prepared to take the advice of the de facto leader of the alliance.

This is a zone game. In any qual match-up, a non-shooting robot can be an effective zone 1 or 2 bot. For example, Bot 1 bumps the ball into the white zone. Bot 2 bumps the ball twice (herding) in the white zone, Bot 3 takes the ball and scores.

If, on the other hand, the above Bot 1 thinks it deserves to keep the ball, and sloshes it around for 90 seconds without doing anything, that team is rejecting the spirit and written intent of the game. Well before that point, a strong-bot would and should intercept the ball and score it. If that team can't do so, then it is not as strong as they think they might be.

In any case, this will be a huge year for scouting, I think everyone saw that very early. The standings will have almost no bearing on the effectiveness of the robots being picked; an alliance will need to find robots that are strong for each zone. If a hack-bot causes a strong team to lose in the quals, knocking them out of the top 8, or even back into the 20's,,, well you know the rest.

Our team has clawed it's way past the middle, but we are still in awe of the superteams out there. We still find them inspiring. Stay gracious everyone!

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

This is the main reason I suggested that teams aspiring to win tournaments need to start now to raise the level of competition at their upcoming tournaments. Teams that have lower estimates of their abilities need to seek help, AKA offer the opportunity for other teams to help.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

I am glad we have started this thread early because I have also been worried about the single game piece in the game causing a ridiculous amount of behind the scenes human anger and drama. FIRST seems to think this game is played by robots and is not taking into account the human nature teleoperating them.

For instance, lets take a suboptimal team's perspective. We have spent minimum $9000 to compete in this regional. We have spent the same six weeks of late nights, hard work and stress as any other team out there and here comes a team that tells us to play defense only. Sure my mechanism is slow and janky but it does allow us to score once a round. My student's parents are out in the crowd and I want to show off what I have been putting the late nights working on off. To be able to win I cant do that. 50% of the teams at the regional are in this situation. In the past there were other game pieces to play, now there aren't.

I dont even want to start the things that teams will do as the seeding starts to close and they start to realize that they can break up traditional power house teams by simply throwing a game by goofing around with the one game piece. Ill will everywhere indeed.

I predict that one of the lessons learned in the First game design handbook after this year will be no more games with a single game piece. Humans are competitive and they are also justified in their desire to play the ball after sinking so many resources into their robot. The behind the scenes is going to be more high strung then usual this year and that is saying something considering how high strung it is to begin with.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

This is (at risk of perpetuating a quite loaded and vague phrase) against the spirit of FIRST.

FIRST is about pushing your boundaries and learning. If the teams who "should build a box on wheels" build a box on wheels every year, then they'll never learn how to do better. Trying new things is one of the premiere things that makes FIRST fun. If I were on a team that stuck to building a box on wheels every year, I would get bored very quickly.

So cut out your elitism.

Re: Aerial Assist and Ill Will
 

Testing out systems is what the practice field is for