Week 3 analysis
 

For thouse who competeted or watched week 3 regionals what did you see/learn?

For us we learned that if you could grab the ball and hold on it to it to the point where it won't come out you would fairly well. Also a simple robot that could pass and defend was super great. Also defending 2 robots at once from getting the ball was something that became a super helpful skill.

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yes, we attended a week three event WPI and did extremely well because of the defense, when not controlling a ball we would completely shut down the opposing alliance from scoring, and we established our catapult so that we can shoot while getting defended worked real great

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Pedestal delays were still occurring this week at St. Louis. We had one match where it never lit up after a cycle completed, after about 10 seconds of yelling about it we finally just grabbed it and threw it on the field anyway. Other times delays were around 5 seconds. Have that happen a few times in a match and it adds up.

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The 1 point goal is real.

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This.

Two of the best shooters at the New York Tech Valley Regional, 20 and 1126 paired up for eliminations. Until finals, the alliance scored a total of 1 high goal during teleop.

#Lowgoalisbestgoal

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It is the foul points that win/lose many of the games. Also, the refs/volunteers seem to take their sweet time lighting up the pedestals and getting the balls back in play once ejected from the field.

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Make sure you know what you're talking about before you make broad statements like that.

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Sorry, my bad. At the NC and Palmetto regionals there were many instances where the pedestals would take up to 20 seconds to light up after a cycle ended. Also, if a ball was ejected from a robot out of the field, the volunteers seemed very confused with how to get the ball in play/who to give the ball to so they can get it into play, in some cases the ball was passed around the field only to be given to the human player who was next to the volunteer when the ball was collected.

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Teams still hold on to the ball for to long thus slowing cycles down. Do anything with the ball other then hold on to it. Spit it out, throw it in the air, anything except keep it from your team.

And some teams still cant get over the "sex appeal" of throwing a ball high instead of dumping in low goal for fast cycle.

Human players also need to be running the ball back to start cycles I saw many that walked the ball over to a waiting robot.

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It's funny when the human players aren't paying attention and you yell at them by saying "HUMAN!!!". I've never referred to someone that way but it makes sense now.

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It's also worth noting though that most of these errors were just during practice matches on the first day, and when such errors did determine the outcome of a qualification or elimination match, the refs did the right thing and decided that a replay was in order.

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Going into our first district event this past weekend, I was surprised at how few G40 fouls were called given all the controversy surrounding that particular rule. The refs at Mt. Vernon were focused on robot-robot interaction...perhaps a bit too much (I saw a few instances of what I thought were clear G40 violations that were not called because the refs were not watching), though I can't say I disapprove, as at no point did it seem to be a safety issue.

I guess the main takeaway is that refs still have too much to watch for given the game-changing nature of technical fouls.

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At NC it wasn't just the pedestals not lighting up correctly. The blue alliance assist points were often not correctly scored. There were matches where upwards of 30 - 40 assist and truss points were not being scored.

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Not all the time at NC. 449 had to replay match 4 because the pedestal did not light up for a few seconds. However we were not allowed to replay other matches (such as match 30) when an auto ball was not returned to the field for close to a minute preventing normal cycles from starting.

Refs were very inconsistent with replaying matches when cycles took abnormally long to start.

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Sorry to hear that. I was referring mainly to Palmetto. It's a real shame how hard this game is on the refs and volunteers with the long list of things to look out for and keep track of.

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In Dallas I heard a lot of G28 but G40 is something I didn't hear. The only foul I disagree with is that another teams ball flew into the air and landed in our robot and we were pinned. We discarded the ball immediately but were given a foul that I found unfair.

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we had figured out quickly that defense isn't always about pushing force its about getting in the way we had one match where the autonomous ball didn't leave the field until a minute and a half in and another where they never got rid of the second auto ball.Mecanum really can play defense.

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At Escanaba, the biggest thing is effective ball handling. When robots either have 1) only bumpers to touch the ball or 2) something poor system that ball can easily fall out of, it is very hard to earn possessions and assists. Not earning assists quickly kills matches, whether or not there are any shooters. 857's best matches, with the available bots, were 1) load in 857 2) 857 trusses 3) other team grabs ball 4) other team high goals ball. Or if 857 had to pick up, a slick pick up wins matches; it jamming kills matches

If you can't shoot in the high goal, stop trying and get in the 1-point.

For Esky, if alliance selection is any indication, there was a "wasteland" or "valley of death" from about seed 24 to 30 (of 36 teams) that weren't good at scoring or defense. Higher ranks could score; lower ranks could play defense. Ranking also isn't the greatest: #12 seed only got into elims as a back-up.

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The pedestal problem was not as bad in NC as it was in Palmetto (from the matches I saw - I was in the Pit quite a bit), but the volunteers slowly returning the ball was huge in some matches. Some ejected balls were very casually carried around in a random manner. Better training for these volunteers and perhaps red and blue vests for human players to make them more visible. I strongly recommend teaching your human players to follow the ball with their eyes and make themselves very obvious in readiness to receive.

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We went to the Dallas Regional, here are some things I noticed.

• Defense is brutal. Your robot needs to be robust. Cantilevered intakes and other appendages will get beat up/broken.
• Also, referees/field crew really need to learn not to put balls back into play after you score two in autonomous. Resulted in a field fault because we did a two ball auto and they told our inbounder to put them back in resulting in 2 red balls in play.
• Field crew and referees need to not bump or reflect balls back into play. Again, a field fault.
• Pedestal delays, not during our matches but In other matches it happened. Field fault.

Overall this week went well I believe, less penalties but they are still to high in value.

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The biggest things I learned week 3:
Get your auton balls in. If you can't clear them fast, keep them off the field.
Human players need to move fast. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a ball.
An inbounding robot is an immensely useful and easy position that not enough robots can fill well.

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I only really remember 1 instance of the pedestal not lighting up at Mt. Vernon this past weekend. It was in Match 44, where the red alliance's pedestal wasn't lit for about 45 seconds after the previous ball was scored. That match was replayed after the rest of the qualifications were over.

The one thing I did notice though was 3 assists not always being awarded for a cycle. It particularly annoyed me when the third assist wasn't given to the robot in the third zone, when they scored the ball... and especially if those 20 points were the difference in the match. The Human player in bounds to robot 1, 1 assist. Robot 1 passes to robot 2, robot 2 goes into the white zone, 2 assists. Robot 2 throws over the truss, robot 3 collects it in the third zone and scores, but no third assist...

Also there were a number of instances of G12 at Mt. Vernon, at times it even seemed to be easier to have possession of an opponents ball than your own ball... bumping an opponents ball seemed to often give a G12 whereas bumping your own ball didn't give you an assist. Unintentional "Bulldozing," an act specifically mentioned in the manual as not qualifying as possession of an opponents ball, was once called for a G12... idk, seemed a bit excessive.

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Things I learned from Utah:

Calls made by referees can decide matches, and what is or isn't called a foul (or an assist) can be very inconsistent. G28 was enforced more strictly on Saturday than Friday, and in some cases it did decide matches. There were also inconsistencies on when rematches were played, which I know frustrated some teams. Overall, it's an extremely hard game to referee and I think the refs just have too much to keep track of to be able to maintain a high level of consistency in their calls. Ultimately, I think it's the lack of consistency that has made so many people frustrated with this game.

As others have said, defense, assists, and 1-point goals can trump high goals at times. Low goals are especially useful when the high goal is well-defended. Defense can, of course, be very rough. We had a bearing in our drivetrain shatter, a drivetrain chain snap, and our frame bent in one hit. We actually got called for a G28 on that one, as we were hit so hard that our arm dropped inside the other robot's frame perimeter. In the next match, we had a roller ripped off, as the welded aluminum tab that had held it on was snapped. It's a violent game, so building strong and easily replaceable mechanisms is critical.

Overall, inconsistencies in penalties and assists were the biggest frustration. The gameplay can be very hard for refs to keep track of, so inconsistent calls will probably be a persistent problem, I think. Hopefully in coming events it's effect on matches will be minimized. We were lucky enough to escape pedestal lighting issues for the most part, so kudos to the refs for being on top of that.

We enjoyed our experience in Utah greatly and are looking forward to Colorado and Championships!

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Field resets are very common after this type of stuff happens just make sure you get the head refs attention and she or he will do something about it. Happened to us twice.

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What I learned from Howell district

1. The pedestal delays are down to ~3 seconds
2. If your strategy is to let other robots inbound a ball, you better make sure it happens and always have a backup plan or you will lose the match
3. Penalties are a little high, I personally would like to see the points halved
4. Truss shots are always the way to go
5. Blocking is both easy and hard; if you know how to do it, its easy, if you have never done it before, expect a lot of tech fouls

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The biggest thing I noticed was how different the elims are from quals. Not just because the robots are better and you have a more experienced relationship, the actual play gets amped up. There are some teams that had good offense but exposed there week points and they got shut down in the finals. Assist points are very important.

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Agree with this. There is only so much each ref can do and it appears they are pushed beyond what is humanly possible.

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Absolutely. In Groton I saw a robot with its bumper off and still playing and at WPI a couple robots with bumpers dragging on the ground still playing. It seems like the refs are going after the big violations and letting the little ones skate. There is just to much for them to do and not enough of them to do it all. Some stuff has to fall through the cracks.

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From the EWU event in Washington

1- must make auto- teams must make 2 or 3 auto balls (40 -60 points) if missed get it off the field as soon as possible very important in elims
2- you have to get into assist mode fast
3- truss very important those 10 points per cycle add up fast
4- most matches 40-50 point cycles were done 1-3 times in elims average 2
this said if you go for the 1 point goal over the 10 point you lose 9 points per cycle 1-3 times that's 9-27 points per match that will win a match
5-a fast robust robot can fight thru a strong defense
6- robots must hold on to the ball when they get hit ( they will get hit ) chasing a ball lost many matches
7-if a bot can shoot a 10 point on the move they have a great advantage over a bot that has to stop to shoot from a certain spot
8- know the rules this was week 3 some teams did things like play the ball of the other alliance (possession) 50 point tech foul

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While scoring the high goal effectively is good to have, being able to move and pass is more important. As a matter of fact the most important stat is assists. If you're in your eliminations, you pick an ally who assists score is bellow 200 you are cooked.

The stats don't lie:

Team Rank Assists Name
971 1 640 Moutain View HS
114 6 330 Los Altos HS
668 9 320 Pioneer HS, San Jose
100 26 160 Woodside
766 31 230 Menlo Atherton


----- Teams picked for finals, probably based on high goal ability or name recognition - I am guessing ------

1868 50 120 Space Cookies
115 51 110 Monta Vista, Cupertino
1351 52 100 Arch Bishop Mitty


In Sacramento - (the 1 rank 971 picked the 2 rank 1678, their third pick was 766 - who they modified to a pass through during lunch after alliance picks. They ended up winning, even though during one match 766 was dead on the field. 1868, 100, 115 and 1351 all made into the finals - and I am guessing they all had 10 point shots but not the consistency.

When 254 picked the lowest seeds at Inland I heard they were booed because people though they were being arrogant. That is BS. They picked teams who could pass the ball to them. So My advice is if you get to finals pick the remaining partners based on assists, not on rank.

BTW:


My team 751 rank 30 assists 310

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At least in the Michigan Districts, the penalties are down immensely. Average Tele-op score per team by the end of the Howell district was something like 273 compared to 430 at Southfield. I assure you that teams weren't on average scoring 160 less either.

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This is at least the second time you've aired your dirty laundry about how you disagree with the picks at the Sacramento Regional.

While I actually agree with the premise of your post, stop the slagging, it makes you look childish.

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Please stop putting down 115, 1351 and 1868. All three teams are exemplary and have incredibly competent and hard working students who have produced awesome machines to play a very difficult game.

Also, we were devastated that 766 was out one match (1678 blew a main breaker one match too...) but very relieved when they got working again. We loved working with 766 and their robot was a steal as the 24th robot in the draft, much like 4161 was a steal at Inland Empire. There is no doubt in my mind that our success at both events has hinged on the two fantastic teams of 4161 and 766.

BTW: Your ASSISTS in ranking does not actually reflect your robot's ability to create assists. It reflects your alliances ability to create assists across all of your qualification matches. Theoretically, 751 (or any other team) could have sat on the field motionless every match and still gathered 310 assist points over 12 matches. This is why teams scout.

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What I learned in Utah:

Defense is hugely important. In one qualifier, our alliance had 2 shooting bots (our shooter broke) and the other team had 3. We brought the game down to a few points thanks to hard defense from both sides (props to the 399 drive team).

Robust robots are hugely important. Many teams did not realize this, and after a match one ref came up to me and told me he was gonna start calling technicals on our alliance if I kept hitting robots too hard. I didn't really understand this, as we always hit with no protrusions from perimeter, but something to be aware of.

I didn't see many instances of pedestals not lighting up.

Overall, Utah was a lot of fun, and I'm excited for the Colorado regional now that we got the kinks worked out of our bot.

Congrats to 2996 Cougars Gone Wired for their win! See you guys in Denver!

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We realized the value of assist scoring, and we were lagging at one point. In our quals match that we scored 222 (against an alliance that went entirely dead halfway through), we scored 7 teleop points and about 65 auto. The rest were assists.

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How to Lie with Statistics

I recommend spending more time on building relationships and marketing your team. All teams suffer from the "our robot is better than that robot", but upon further reflection I've often realized that "their marketing is better than our marketing." I believe that teaching students how to sell their robot, can be just as important as how to build it.

Team spirit, robot presentation, and pit involvement all help your odds of being picked. Rather than blaming everyone for not seeing your robot, it may be more constructive to ask what could have been differently to make your robot/team stand out more.

I noticed you are also one of the lucky teams to get to attend a second regional. I would say get your team pumped for that regional, and make it so no team can ignore you :).

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This is very true. I remember being at a regional during Lunacy and our scouting data showed that the top team after qualifications had scored a whopping 1 ball the entire competition. Luck is definitely a part of qualification rankings.

As lineskier said, marketing your team is definitely a good way to help getting picked for eliminations. Make sure you make good impressions with those teams that are high in the rankings when you play with them. Teams remember who they enjoyed being paired with, and if they think you are difficult to work with they won't pick you to play with them.

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Whoa guys - I never said anything bad about any team or would dream of insulting anyone. The POINT of the post is to stress passing is more important than having three high shot teams that can't pass. Also, I am guessing at what the criteria for the third picks were - only the alliance captains know, and when you're the 8th to 3rd alliance - you probably haven't really got a handle on who to pick. It is probably: "OMG who is left that I've seen make one good play during the day." While scouting is important, any team ranked 10 or lower hasn't really expected that they need to have a deep pick list. Say if you are a 10 seed moved up to or 8 and you don't have a high shot, your first pick will be the best high shooter out there. Then you third pick is whoever best left who complements the alliance, and at that point your best bet is someone who can pass and run defense.

I used the alliance picks at Sacramento as an example to make the point. I really do believe that the assists score is a better indicator of performance then rank. The ability to pass in a third alliance pick is more important then rank or the ability to do a solo 10 point shot. Maybe the assists score doesn't reflect passing ability accurately, but is the best indicator I have. I backed up this hypothesis by showing the relative ranking and assists of team in my local area that I am familiar with. How the heck is showing the stats of a team putting them down? It is public information that everyone can see.

Any FIRST team is terrific. I expect to see the the Space Cookies, TKO, Wildhats, MA Bears, Spartans, MVRT at SVR in 3 weeks and have my team play with and against them along with the Poofs and many other legendary teams. I expect they all will be working at top efficiency, having learned the importance of passing, and expect to have a blast.

Perhaps some statistician can analyse the the strength of alliances based on rank vs. assist scores to prove or disprove my hypothesis.

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As to the feeling that if there wasn't 200 plus assist points for each robot on your team you'd be toast, check out the MAR Clifton District. 1626 won the event as Alliance Captain 2 with 140 assist points. Partnered with 869 (240 points) and 1257 (140 points).

Scouting and putting together an alliance that works well together is far more important than the ranking stats. Look at how many No. 1 alliances are going down this year. Our picks were ranked 15th and 21st respectively.

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With all due respect:

One of our mentors already addressed this in the previous thread. 1868 was not selected on name recognition, or purely having seen them shoot into the high goal. Our scouting consistently showed that they would make a great second leg/truss/assisting robot for our alliance.

No statistician on earth will ever be more reliable than a good scouting team. Statistics and rank don't mean anything, especially in a game like this. If you want to prove or disprove a hypothesis, watch matches.

Please stop guessing, especially after some of us have publicly stated our decision rationale. Please don't be so quick to assume that an alliance captain below 3rd doesn't have a competent scouting team.

And just to say it again, we were proud to have 1868 on our alliance. They were friendly, cooperative, and good-spirited, making for some of the best matches we have ever played in.

Now please, let's stop :deadhorse:

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First thoughts looking back at our scouting and the discussion of our elimination strategy:

The ability to score under/around defense is what makes or breaks top bots.

Stopping the truss shot to the human player and forcing the opposing alliance to go pick up the ball adds a lot of time to the cycle. This is a difficult feet because you basically have to ensure the robot stays facing the goal so the ball will not go out of bounds and end up at the human player.

2 Assist cycles if executed quickly can outscore 3 assist cycles (secret sauce speeds this up substantially).

Versatility in your alliance is super helpful: three robots that can pick up, truss, score high, and play defense at all other times can adapt to any other alliance. Many alliances ran into the issue of being forced to score low by the way they picked their teams - this is much easier to defend.

Defense is essential, but if your score is lower than your opponent it does you no good to forgo assists for defense

Along with that last one, winning auton and playing heavy defense the entire match is a viable strategy

Don't miss

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This one is huge.

A good inbounder with reliable passing (even better if it can truss to HP), and a solid shooter, while the third bot plays some hard defense, can win most matches.

Looking back on how we played matches, it's a strategy we'll try to implement more often.

Also, it's important that every robot actively handling the ball be either playing defense or keeping defense away from the ball.

The latter is one I saw a lot of need for, but there was never enough of it.

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This. If you're ahead, and you've got 3 robots playing defense, it is entirely possible to keep most alliance from ever getting the ball past mid field. It's not very exciting to watch though.

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I do agree with this. One of the guys from 67 works with me and I was discussing this with him.

The thought process for our pick list as far as shooting goes is limited to this:
1) can the team score in auton?
2) can the team score in case we're drawing strong double team defense? (In this case, we would change on the fly to let the other team score and we'd play assist. That usually confuses the other team for one or two easy cycles until they pick up on it.)
3) Can they do a truss pass?
4) Are they so good that we wouldn't want to play against them?

That's about it. All of our other pick-list criteria was centered around how well they inbound, pass, floor pick-up, defend, don't foul, etc.

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Also, defense isn't necessarily disrupting their cycle, it can be disrupting them from disrupting your cycle - especially if you know your cycle is faster or more points. 3548 was awesome at setting up a pick for us to get around and score.

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My ideal alliance was created this week.
All 3 robots make autonomous in the high goal/2 make it with one as a 2 ball.

If your robot can only shoot from one place on the field by elims you are gonna have a bad time. I will know where that spot is and you wont be getting there.

Inbounder passes ball on the ground to midfielder,
Midfielder trusses it to HP or just to other side of field,
remaining robot scores high or low depending on defense.

When ball is not in your robot's possesion you better be able to play zone coverage defense or interference for your partners or against the opposing alliance.

If you miss your auto balls in elims and your opponent doesn't. You lost the match already and least there is a much higher chance of it..

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I'm not a statistician, but this is what I found.

I looked at the results for all of the MAR and NE events (8 total) and found the sum of an alliance's Qualification Score, Assist Score, and Autonomous Score. I then ranked these by event from 1-8 (to standardize by event, 1 being highest, 8 being lowest). Alliances were also ranked by what order they picked.

For the winning alliances the averages were:
Pick rank: 3.5
QS rank: 2.625
Assist rank: 5.125
Auto rank: 3

These results make sense. The alliance with the highest total QS score wins most of the time. Out of these options the best predictor of an alliance winning in eliminations is how much they won in qualifications.

Obviously actual scouting would be better for picking than this.

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Team 900 only needs to shoot from one spot... ;)

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If 4 is true, I would assume 1-3 must be true. Agree on all those points, although not the order. I don't place as high of a value on Auton because we have a 2 ball, so only one of my partners needs to have one.

In both picks, I'd require (hence the numbering):

1) Willing to cooperate with the agreed strategy. If you're getting in your partner's way, you're out. I don't care how cool your robot is.
1) Ball Handling - pick up, hold onto the ball, and able to dispose of the ball to their intended location. I do not want to waste 15 seconds of my cycle waiting for you to pick up the only ball while you are undefended, especially if you are just going to get rammed and have the ball fall out.
1) Ability to play defense - what else are they going to do while we're scoring? Drivetrains are more important than any previous year.
1) Does not get stupid penalties.

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Wouldn't it be better to pass without touching the ground?

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Don't discount their current regional win dude... At Palmetto 1024 figured out their strategy, but couldn't stop them in the 3rd match because 900 figured out how to play counter-defense. There was more to 900's strategy than just sit in a corner and shoot, even if it looked that way. Also, last time I checked, 254 sits in pretty much the same spot when they shoot, but defending against them in that spot is almost impossible.

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I'm sure people said that to 469 back in 2010. Of course the game is different, the scenario is different, and 900 isn't nearly as lethal, but it contextualizes the ignorance of your statement.

There are enough teams that are only comfortable with shooting only from a small handful (1 or 2) spots on the field (read: 254, 1114, etc.), and I don't know a team that'd want to go toe to toe with them on a good day.

- Sunny G.

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As a recent graduate and current mentor of Team 751, I would like to state that I was very surprised to read Dr. Bot's posts, and would like to make it clear that those opinions do not reflect the beliefs of our team as a whole. 115 and 1868 are actually two of the teams who we have spent the most time working with and who have helped us the most (at least over my five years with 751), and we hold them and their robots in very high esteem. I sincerely apologise to everyone who was (rightfully) offended by those posts.

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Defense can shut down an entire team! Here is a video of us stopping an entire cycle where the team could have potentially scored atleast 3 more cycles!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-U9YIILaZY

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I think we completely agree. I didn't emphasize it, but my that list of attributes was only as far as shooting the ball is concerned. To be honest, as long as they could score in autonomous, shooting the ball wasn't a huge deal for us other than as listed.

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I know Lake Superior was a week 2 event, but I found that at that regional pushing defense was unbeatable because if a strong pushing bot got between the opposite alliance ball and the opposite alliance robot then they could just sit there pushing the other teams away from the ball. I also saw that pushing defense could disrupt shooting. In one instance I saw a team push another team that was just about to score back to the other end of the field before the offense bot was able to maneuver around the defending bot.

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Hey Everyone,

I am very sorry, I've seemed to upset a lot of people, and I am trying to get my head around that. I certainly would never put down any team that comes to the competition. I once talked to Mark Leon when he was watching the Poofs win another regional, and I told him, "You must be very proud of your team." He replied "They are all my teams." I feel the same way. Maybe I would of been better off just to say passing is important and leave it at that. Instead I shot myself in the foot, reloaded and shot myself in the other foot. Well, at least I won't limp.;)

I want to especially apologize if MVRT, TKO and the Space Cookies, and the Apes feel I've put them down. You guys are all awesome and I expect great competition at SVR.

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Elaborate. How many other ways of passing the ball between robots have there been. Beyond truss toss/catch & HP loading.

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Challenge accepted.
I say passing on the ground is way more effective from inbounder to truss specialist with relentless defense on you.

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Unless an opponent robot veers into the ground pass before it reaches your intended robot and a referee slaps you with a G32, or G31:( ...game over Glenn.

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Joe,
sorry about the SD finals.

If you have a chance to watch our Dallas SF and Finals, we adjusted from the QF to do very effective, quick passing WITH defense. It also allowed us to transition very quickly back to defense.
If balls are being transferred via air, an opponent flying into your robot will definitely affect the attempted assist.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Glenn,
We are unfortunately used to "things happening"...all part of the game sometimes. Agreed that air passing has risks for sure. We found "kiss passes" to be effective and generally safe and speedy too;)

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There's a 3rd way to pass. Find a robot that can pull a ball out of a partner robot. Don't have to worry about loosing possession that way. ;)

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A version of the kiss pass...direct robot to robot interaction.

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I can vouch for this mainly because we were the team that would came and "flying" into you. In all honesty we came in like a wrecking ball (couldn't resist :D)

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Since I wasn't very clear, here is a recap of the conversation I had with Josh. I have a feeling Dr Bot's thoughts were along these lines when he posted:

Background: Josh and I were discussing the LookingForward preview that predicted 67 and 469 would get together at Howell, at which point I said something like:

"This game is different from past games in that you have to try not to get too enamored with picking the best offensive team available. If you're a good shooter, you don't need another shooter because you can shoot and there's only one ball. You need someone who can inbound well, has a fast floor pick up, can pass well, doesn't foul, etc. The only criteria for shooting is if they can make their autonomous shot and maybe shoot in a pinch in case the defense has you tied up, or make a truss pass if you want to do that. There's no reason for an alliance captain that's a good shooter to need another good high-volume shooter. With that being said, if you're afraid that the best shooter on the board can beat you, then you should pick them just to get them off the board."

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The things that our team (3701, Royal Robotics) learned from the NC regional is...

- Make sure to have someone on your alliance who can help get robots off of you. We had multiple matchs were two robots would be on us because we had the ball and couldn't move.

- One point goals are just as valuable as the 10 point goal

- Make sure coaches dont touch anything. We had one match, and one of our alliance members human player was MIA and the coach started to grab the ball before the match and I told him coaches aren't aloud to touch game pieces, but he did anyway and we were fouled.

- This was my first year programming. I started three days before bag and tag, and I wasn't sure how to make a mecanum drive in LabView, so I used the arcade drive in the program and it over loaded and maxed out the CPU in the cRio in the last match, we had two teams come by and talk about alliances and because our program was messed up we weren't picked. So make sure you dont have any extra things not need in your program!!

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

I have a question on this and I can't find the answer when I searched. Is the (student) coach allowed to carry the robot on the field? I thought the answer was NO- coaches aren't allowed to interact with the robot, controls or game pieces. But I can't find that written and I questioned our team on it this past weekend. I am now wondering where I got that idea in my head. Can someone clarify this for me? Thanks.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Me and our coach are the ones that always carry the robot on the field and we have never been told it was not allowed. From what i understand, coaches are not allowed to touch anything after the match has started.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Sharon,

There are no rules restricting the coach from carrying or interacting with the robot, while positioning it on the field pre-match.

The only rules for coach-robot interaction would be during the match, the coach can't touch the controls. Unfortunately, I could not find the specific rule in the game manual to determine if that applys to student coaches or not.

I did find these rules:

G33

The COACH must wear the designated “COACH” button while in the ARENA.

Violation: MATCH will not start until the situation is corrected.

G34

COACHES may not touch BALLS. Inadvertent or inconsequential contact will not be penalized.

Violation: FOUL

Can anyone find the rule that restricts the coach from touching the controls?

The best I could find is the definition for DRIVER and COACH, stating that the DRIVER: a pre-college student TEAM member responsible for operating and controlling the ROBOT.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

I also don't see anything about an extended penalty, so for 50 points, you can drive :).

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It's in G42:

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Yes! Thanks. I was scrolling past the graphics for G40 to fast, and missed G41 and G42.

I assumed it was in there and I was just blind.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Thanks for the clarification.
Sorry for hacking the thread. Now back to week three analysis....

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

I'm going to continue the highjacking real quick..

Congrats on the Chairman's! Watching your video submission gave me chills, so amazing what you guys are doing!

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No no no... he's right. 900 just sits in the corner the entire time. ;-)

In fact, 900's robot sits so still that some say it doesn't even have wheels.

EDIT: It seems the original post was removed too... intriguing.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

That was our strategy in eliminations and it won the Lake Superior regional.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFcNY6nVTCQ&t=0m26s

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

That's actually what I meant.
It doesnt always happen smoothly because of defense, and the 2nd robot transitioning immediately from defense to get into position.
This was done the week before with our winning alliance at Northern Lights.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

I removed my original post because parts of it were not necessarily GP.

Would I be wrong in saying that cycle time is what makes your game strategy effective. With the added ability to have 2 robots on the the opposite side of the field to receive the ball and score it.

Seeing as you've said that once you release the ball you do not move to assist in defensive play, you effectively allow your opponent team to do whatever they please on their scoring side of the field.

Meaning there would be significantly less defense played on the scoring team of your opponent, while the scoring teams on your alliance could have to face up to two opposing defending robots at any given time. The possibility of making it much harder for your two scoring robots to complete the cycle quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I really like your team's full court assisting strategy. However, this past weekend I finally got to see how defense is really key in successful elimination play.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

All kidding aside, you are correct that defense is important. We played some ourselves and would not have been nearly as effective without it.

My tongue was firmly implanted in my cheek with my comments about us not moving. Our ideal alliance isn't two scoring robots but only one. The third robot is there for defense and you clearly saw that with our picks for the NC regional. I believe 1287 only ever scored one ball throughout the event and that was in one of our matches because 4288 was out of commission.

So yes, defense is important and the period between us shooting the ball and the ball going into the goal kept getting longer so we had little choice but to play defense and play it we did.

Dual CIMs, high traction tread, six wheels.... that ain't just a robot for shooting giant balls.

The real question you should be asking is what we have up our sleeves for St Louis.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

You've figured out a way to score a ball from the inbounder by bouncing it perfectly off the truss :yikes:

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I still want to see if the full court catching we were discussing would be possible with you guys. A man can dream right?

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We definitely think it can be done and I'm REALLY sorry we never got a good chance to try. We tried hard on that one. We even had the robot inspectors on board for giving us a spot to try it in.

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Don't worry about it. 449 was (and still is) having a lot of controls related problems this year that made us sit out for 3-4 matches on Friday. Hopefully we'll be able to fix everything for our next regional.

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No rules update today? I guess the game is ready for prime time! yay...we play this week

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http://frc-manual.usfirst.org/Updates/0#term 176

No CD thread yet

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Does this mean any consequential contact on an opponent ball is considered a technical foul now? Last update it seemed that ramming an opponent ball with a fixed element (bumpers) for example wouldn't be considered possession. Has this changed?

Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this topic, I'll move this post if needed.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

I know I'm a little late to the party, but...

FYI, we were purely chosen for our defense. We had no real high goal capability, and didn't plan to assist in eliminations. We had a ton of electrical issues the whole weekend, and never really were able to work the mechanical aspects of our shooter that were holding us back.

Saturday morning, I made the case to 2671 that we deserved to be their first pick, as we were possibly the best defensive pick of the regional, and likely wouldn't make it to the second round. We had kept them (2671) from scoring a single point one match, and had kept 1678 to 2 truss shots and 2 low goals in another. We figured that we'd be able to shut down the other alliance's offensive team, while they scored points. We'd be able to get a third pick would handle assisting and trussing, as this event was fairly deep with them.

We we're extremely surprised that we'd convinced 2671, and were very lucky to get a second pick as good as 1662. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out in eliminations, what with technical fouls and main breaker issues.

We're working really hard to make our shooter so it never breaks for SVR, and believe we've finally put our main breaker and electronics issues behind us. I'm looking forward to competing there with the robot we designed, not with the awesome defense bot we discovered we had by accident.

Good luck to you and your team at SVR.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

During eliminations teams must be able to change strategy from one match to another, to keep the other alliance off balance as far as defense.