Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

Hey everyone,

As a human player, I've been practicing throwing the litter into the other team's auto zone, and I was just curious if other teams were planning on using this strategy. If you are, how have you been fairing distance wise?

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

At this point, probably not... It's not worth that many points and litter that fall short could really cause problems for robots... However, if we could consistently throw it well over the other alliance's landfill - perhaps piling it up in front of their human feeder stations - it would be worth considering...

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

No. Have you tried to throw those things?

If an alliance partner wants to throw it I'm going to politely ask them to show me them throwing it out in the parking lot.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

Chances are, we're not.

If we can get them in the containers, we'd rather get the 6 points vs. a chance to get 4 points if the opposing team can't manage to move them into their landfill while given a 20 second head start.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

There is indrect value in throwing litter. If even a single piece of the litter is reasonably straight, there's a good chance we'll get it in the right spot.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

We are apparently having a very different result than most other teams. We are able to get the majority of our thrown noodles across the step and past the opposing alliances landfill.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

That is bizzaro we have such a hard time throwing it. The question in the end is will the opposing alliance take the bait when we throw. Could they just compensate by throwing together a stack. It seems conditional to me.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

I think most teams will end up throwing litter by champs. Litter collectors seem to be something that's going to be a really rare capability that robots will have. Normal bots won't be able to push litter on the ground with their drive train as many think. Its just going to run them over and possibility get stuck in drive train. Especially if you have mechanum this year. Overall ~40 potential points a match will make a huge difference to your ranking. More so than a 3 tote auto technically.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

I can see litter throwing becoming an asset, especially towards the last few weeks of regionals. I think with some practice, a lot of human players will be able to be fairly accurate with litter throwing.

On my team, we are going to let the human player practice some and if they can get good enough, we will be throwing litter that we aren't using anywhere else. So far we've had a few people have some success with it.

_________________
Mackenzie Glaser
Team 1261

We aren't going to do it lt. First of all they are hard to throw and if you mess up you jeaporadize your team quite a bit. Besides I don't feel very gracious professional throwing stuff at. Other teams.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

HP here. I've been practicing - I can hit it pretty much every time, with some probably even going to the other alliance's starting zone. The only time I can't really get it over is when the noodle is incredibly damaged. We have a noodle specifically for the purpose of having a terrible quality noodle, which we constantly bend, crease, and chip pieces off of. Even then, when I throw it (over the 6'6" wall) I can hit that about half the time.

I've even made it so that I can throw over the driver's heads and still make it the proper distance.

You have 10 noodles and you're going to use at most 7 (unless you screw up somehow) to use in recycling containers. You might as well throw 3.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

We were lucky enough to have a football player/javelin thrower join our team just this year. He's been practicing and can get it pretty consistently around thirty feet. I definitely think that if you have the human resources to throw litter that far, then you should. Considering that very few teams will probably be able to get litter in the cans, I think the potential gain is worth the risk.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

Our team has a few students who can easily clear the step (none could when they started). Its definitely worth more than the 4 points you'll gain. Any team that gets caught up in noodles or noodle clearance is not scoring totes or containers. If an alliance gets less points because of that then in all matches that's better for you. At best a team can score only 7 noodles, and outside of champs or the highest caliber teams, I doubt many regionals will see even that many used.

Its not hard to throw them over the step, just takes a bit of understanding of the type of throw needed. Think Javelin!

-Bernie

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

I see litterally no reason not to, they don't count against you if they miss and you have a maximum of 7 trash cans if you plan to noodle them.

If they miss you just push in the landfill for a point.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

Reasons to not throw litter:

A) Very rarely (if ever) will you see a team that can consistently get them over the step and past the other alliances landfill to get any points.

B) In the rare case you do get it that far, they will probably be close enough to the other teams landfill it will take very little time for them to score them in their own landfill.

C) If they end up on your side of the field they will likely be an obstruction to driving, a lot of teams wont compensate for driving over them and may incur a penalty for damaging a game piece.

D) I personally don't want to take the time from stacking my totes and containers to get a lousy few points when I could be getting 42 for a full stack.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

Agreed with the rarity of the situation, but I don't think it'll take that much time away from stacking since it's gonna take like 5 or so seconds to safely place a stack of six plus can.

I can also see where driving would be a problem, but if your human player can't throw the litter more than 15 feet or so then that's where the problem is

I'd also rather attempt to get 12-28 points(3-7 noodles) even if you risk giving them 3-7 points. Because any alliance that is going to benefit from 3 points isn't a threat in qualifications anyway(elims is different)

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

A) I think you're right; it's tough to get them far enough with most techniques. Yet I think it's like 2012 - once teams see the 'right' way to do it in a live match, everyone will quickly adopt it.

B) Hint: throw it at an established stack. The opponents won't dare touch it if it's lying next to a stack they may knock over. That's if they even see it land there. They can't push what they can't see. Jackpot if it lands on their scoring platform.

C) Fair point, but match flow should help mitigate this. It depends on what the alliance is doing with the field totes, and how fast those field totes get manipulated. As far as damaging a game piece, I really hope the refs wouldn't penalize a team for an obvious and expected outcome of soft foam meeting 150 lbs in motion. We'll see.

D) The drivers & coach wouldn't waste any time. It's all about the HP who isn't working on loading totes/noodles into the field through the openings. Throwing the 3-5 best noodles for some bonus points seems like a win to me, if it can be done with a net-positive point advantage. At Regionals I'd certainly pick an average bot with a great human player as a 2nd-pick depending on where I were in the rankings.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

I would be happily surprised if anyone had the accuracy to land the litter where they wanted to. They take some pretty severe flight patterns in my experience with them.

When I'm talking about wasting time I am referring to clearing them off of my side of the field once they have failed to reach the other side.

Re: Is your team planning on throwing litter?
 

Check G16. Unintentional damage to litter(i.e. by driving over it) will not incur fouls.