Re: What could go wrong?
 

Being one move ahead of your opponent rather than one move behind them. If you are reacting to what the other team is doing you have already fallen behind. Scouting will be paramount. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the teams you are playing and the strengths and weaknesses of you alliance will make the difference between a W or an L.

The communication behind the glass will be a killer. Staying undefeated will be really hard this year. teams can easily be taken down by their own alliance.

(not so hypothetical strategy)

Team A
"teams A & B will shoot in auto. We will do a 2 ball auto, team C just drive forward"

Team C
"but we need to show our auto mode for elims!"

Team B
"Our scouts say you haven't hit it once."

Team C
"that's why we need to show we can do it!"

Team A
"did you get it on the practice field?"

Team C
"no we couldn't get a time, but our programmers say they fixed the problem"


The best possible solution is A&B let C shoot and then ....

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Assists are going to be much harder to do than people think.

Too many teams will concentrate their designs on shooting the ball through the goal (not that difficult of a task) and not on making nice easy to pick up passes.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Contact inside the frame perimeter can be a serious problem when you're trying to acquire a ball and your opponent is playing defense on you.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Moving in autonomous.

I know that may sound silly since all the robot has to do is move forward, but based on past years I've seen lots of situations were teams failed to move their robot in autonomous.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Acquiring a ball, assists, and drive practice. These would be my top unprepared items most teams will fail at or are underestimating.

Acquiring and keeping control of the ball/game piece is a huge aspect most teams underestimate year after year. Most teams spend most of their match trying to gain control of the game piece or lose it easily.

Assists are this year's big ticket item for points but most teams will underestimate what is needed to do assists well. Simply saying in a strategy meeting, "we'll simply just spit the ball out and they will give it back to us" will not get you very far. There are so many factors that will go into working well will your partners on the field. I predict that most alliances will attempt to do a triple assist (or even double) and spend their entire match trying to do it but running out of time to score.

All of this boils down to drive practice. You NEED to give your drivers time to practice its not even funny. There is no end game where you can make up the difference you have one part of the game and you need to some part of it well. This all comes down to your drivers. You can design a robot that does everything but if your driver can't perform to the level your robot needs to be driven at you are going to have a bad time. Assisting will but a huge time dump if drivers aren't ready to do it quickly. I see a lot of matches being won by a robot out cycling a few poor robots attempting to assist.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Ed you hit it right on the head. All the issues previously discussed in other threads have detailed strategy concerns, but I bears repeating here. ONE playing piece for three teams and the miriad of permutations as to what each of the allies could be doing at a given time relative to each other and the other alliance is very fluid and difficult to coreograph--even if they were willing to do it, forget about just trying to convey all that info.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

I think a lot of teams will practice and practice and practice...

and then realize they don't know what they should be doing when not holding the ball.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Like most years, I also expect a lot of this one: "But we need to show that we can _______ this match"

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Too many teams will waste too much time trying to acquire the ball, just like always.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

QFT. There will be a LOT of incidental, unintentinal incursions, especially Week 1. I wouldn't be surprised to see an Update come out between Week 1&2 of competition season reminding teams to be aware of their design.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

These three imho are going to be the biggies. Last year all we really had to do was make fast cycles and occasionally maneuver around a defensive bot. This year, a single robot will only have the ball (ideally) about one-third of the time, leaving the other two available to play defense or get set up to receive assists. If you have robots that are entirely focused on being able to do nothing but put the ball in the goal, you're not going to be able to form any kind of strategy at all.

This year, all the robots on the alliance should be able to play some kind of defense for when they don't control the ball. There aren't any no-touch zones on the field this year, so it's possible to totally shut down an alliance's progress by just physically keeping them from moving down the field. Coordinating a strategy that actually involves as much if not more defense than offense is going to determine who goes to nationals and who doesn't.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

I am surprised no one wrote anything about inspections. You can't play if you don't have the sticker! Number one on my list is legal bumpers, followed by legal pneumatics and electrics. This year add successful dry fire tests so scary shooters don't launch objects (robot parts) into the spectator seating areas. Be safe out there....

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Good observation. This is going to be a real problem for some teams. I also think that many teams are going to struggle with their own shooter damaging the robot. I see a lot of catapults causing repeated stress damage to the robots on which they are deployed.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

There will be at least one team that does not understand the 20" extension rules and unintentionally breaks them for their catching mechanism. For example, a 28"x28" robot will try to extend into a 68"x68"square by extending out ~28" from each of the 4 corners. Read G24! It shows rounded corners for the legal extension area.

Re: What could go wrong?
 

Great point! I think there will be quite a few claw type grabbers going after the ball, and quite a few net-type catchers that may try to defend. When these 2 meet it may be hard to separate them...