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Why the privacy in this years game?
Hi, I'm the lead scout for my team, and there's a thing that both makes me curious and annoyed.
This years game isn't so about competition and blocking the other alliance... So why haven't we seen more robots? The few we have seen are pretty much the same basic design, obviously with some specializations and variations that I really congratulate those teams for doing, but I really expected seeing more robots by now. Thoughts? |
Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
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Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
FRC top 25 premiere night is probably holding quite a few back.
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Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
You will probably see a lot more robots after the 17th.
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Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
We tried to keep our build as transparent as possible this year. We even posted a video which you could literally use as a template for your entire robot, if you paused in the right places. :)
At the risk of over-posting this, here it is. Given, our robot follows a very conventional design, and it's pretty low-budget. If our team had ambitions that were a bit more unique, though, we would be happy to show them off too. It's not really in any team's best interest to keep a design away from others. If they do so, they may inspire a slew of copiers (but probably not); or they may gain valuable insight from teams with more experience, so that they can find out what works and what doesn't as soon as possible. Maybe the top 25 teams should try to keep their designs secret. But there are over 1,800 other teams active right now, and every single one of them could likely benefit from another team's advice. Just my $0.02. |
Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
Many people say this every year, and are proven wrong, but here goes: I think a lot of robots this year, with the exception of the very best, will be variations on the same basic design. Most robots will probably be some sort of forklift, and it'll be the little things that differentiate the 'meh' teams from the great teams. As a result, a lot of teams probably want to keep their 'special sauce' a secret until after Bag Day.
There's a good chance that I'll be proven wrong in a week and a half, but that's my theory at the moment. |
Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
Here is why: if robot A can outscore robot B. Robot A will (barring malfunction) ALWAYS win. There is nothing robot B can do (out strategize) to win.
As such, if team B knows what team A's robot does, they take that design, improve it, and become robot A in the first scenario. |
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It's not easy to build a robot. Often, multiple teams will come out with similar designs. What differentiates them is something small. Might be a wheel choice, or maybe more driver practice, or some minor mechanism that actually serves a critical function. And if you can keep that "secret sauce" under wraps until unleashing it at your first event, you can surprise everybody and force them to try to copy it to keep up. |
Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
Aside from the "secret sauce" argument, I think that there's a much stronger force keeping designs under wrap: habit. Quite simply, teams are almost all used to keeping their designs under wrap. Almost all of the reasons for this haven't vanished with this game.
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Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
On the field, you are not directly competing against 3 other teams. However with the way the ranking system is set up, each time you play a match you are indirectly playing against the high scores of every single robot at the competition. I would argue that this makes this year even more competitive than previous years, and anything that a team has that could set them apart from the rest is likely going to be held in high secrecy, because this year each point you make that the other teams don't make matters.
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Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
I'm sure that the most unique robots will be using good can grabbers, and as a result I don't think it's necessary for many teams to release pics and videos this year. Forklifts will be 90% of robots anyway.
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This is the case in almost every competitive sport, you don't have to be the best at anything, you just have to be better than whoever you're playing. This has been a lot more straightforward in past years, but it's still very much the case this year, you're just playing 8, and 4 team free-for-alls instead of 2 team free-for-alls (aka a 1v1). |
Re: Why the privacy in this years game?
For us, the issue is much more simple - we're all working so hard on the robot that nobody has had time to make any video or announcement yet.
On the topic of how some teams end up doing better than others, I'd like to add my own view: * Even a great robot won't do well if the driver doesn't know what to do or where to go - drive team practice and knowing how the game is likely to flow can double the quality of your robot; and * Scouting is as important as anything else the team does - teams that know how to best support their alliance partners and what the strengths are of their partners are will do better each round than those that either plan to do the same thing every time or just fly around hoping they figure out what to do when the time comes. Of course, I could be wrong. |
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