Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

That's why I said I would be impressed; I didn't say it was impossible. 6 seconds per game piece is incredible efficiency.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

That's why I specified as an alliance. The best robots this year might not be the ones that can do the most independently, but can do the most with any other robot alliance members AKA the team player.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

Yup, agreed.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

Although what the "team player" can accomplish, is limited by the capabilities of the "team" (alliance).

Which is why it's going to vary quite a bit between regionals, and on average probably will end up around 100 points.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

Week 1, yes.

Auto will often be zero points in week 1 I think. I don't anticipate a lot of teams being able to contribute and I don't think that the top seed at every regional will have an autonomous routine that will account for other teams doing nothing.

I think that there will be a lot of time wasted in teleop waiting for the other alliance to complete there part of coopertition, often I don't think that it will be done at all, so that isn't even a sure 40 points. Noodles I wouldn't guarantee either.

Overall, I think week 1 is going to look pretty pathetic for most competitions in quals with teams fumbling around and getting in eachothers' ways. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of teams end up knocking over the RC's and rendering them unusable for the alliance.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

If a team can't pick up a knocked over RC (which really should be considered a right side up RC for stability reasons) they need to reassess their design if they are hoping to do a lot with RCs.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

I'm pretty sure that there are more quality machines being built today than there were, say, five years ago. Credit that to increasing participation in and awareness of CD, Ri3D videos, and fantastic bumps in quality from AndyMark, Vex, and other suppliers. I think people are still overestimating the scoring ability of robots (usually their own), and that #1 seed scores will be <100, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were two or three or more robots that can pull off the three tote auto at each regional.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

Not only are there a lot of posts that overestimate like they do every year, it's particularly odd this year. Why? Let's recap

1) This is the hardest game in the modern era.
2) This is the hardest game in the modern era.
3) This is the hardest game in the modern era.
4) This is the hardest game in the modern era.
5) This is the hardest game in the modern era.

By hardest, I don't mean plain stupid like Lunacy. I mean designing a robot that fits in to an ideal alliance this year and being able to execute that strategy with two partners who also fit in your strategy at a Week 1 is going to be VERY VERY NOT EASY. If a team plays 10 matches in a field of 60, they will have up to 20 unique partners. They will not have the top 20 of the remaining 59 robots partnered with them. They will be fortunate to get 10 of the top.

This is not an easy game! What is the minimum competitive concept? How many points can the MCC convert or help convert in a match? How often is the best team at a Week 1 event going to be paired with two robots that reach above the standard of the MCC? How are you getting an answer that generates a #1 QA during week 1 of 140+ points?

Think about how many teams have built robots that never considered how the hell they are even getting the totes! They don't gracefully fall from the heavens on the field right side up and evenly spaced! They come out of the most restrictive human player interface in the modern era, are shoved together up against a wall with no space between them, or blocked by other totes shoved up against a wall on a box with lips!

You think the co-op step is going to be almost 100% in Week 1?????? Was the Co-Op bridge even 50% in Week 1 in 2012? Did a majority of the teams come to the event last year understanding what the hell their human player was even supposed to be doing? How many teams do you think actually comprehended the significance of the 2nd order sort last year during week 1? When yahoos start chucking noodles into the gap of the landfill zone at the start of the match, you're probably not going to see a co-op conversion. Teams are going to be flummoxed when they realize the chute is not their friend. Teams are going to hit unprotected partners and knock over stacks.

You can have the best robot on the field but you can't prevent stupid. You can try to treat it or mitigate it, but so many teams who compete in Week 1 are ignorant to the rest of the competition outside of their 42x28x72 volume.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

I agree but I also think a lot of teams won't consider that until after week 1.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

One of the things that makes this year hard is the fact that totes and RCs are not each exclusively beneficial by themselves. In past years, teams have only had to manipulate a single game piece. Now, an RC is useless without a stack of totes underneath it, and a stack is no more valuable unless a can is on top of it. So for a single team to put up huge points in teleop, they have to be able to handle two game pieces EFFICIENTLY. As dodar pointed out earlier, it takes 6 seconds per object to get 3 stacks. That's harder than it sounds; I would put a fast robot at 8-9 seconds average for a game piece, mainly because the time it takes to acquire a can is significantly longer for many teams than the time to get a tote.

It was hard to get an alliance to be very coordinated last year in week 1. I doubt much will change this year; it still takes a lot of coordination to play well.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

This. Definitely.

I end up saying this a lot to my team. It's easy to forget how many teams aren't active in the online community at all.

While the importance of the co-op stack may seem glaring to most of us, there are a lot of teams out there who just haven't picked up on it yet. Same thing with the human player. It's clear to us here that lining up with the human player station is not something trivial, but a lot of teams will simply not take it into account, may it be for lack of team resources or simply inexperience. I mean, and this is just an educated guess, but out of the 3000 some-odd teams in the world, I would wager that most don't even finish their robot before bag day, let alone have the practice time to see how there robot really interacts with the field during match play.

All the reveal videos going around tie into this too. Its easy to say that the average robot will be scoring 60+ points a match after watching those. I know, a bunch of people on my team did. If a team bothers to put together a video, then, first of all, they have their robot all ready to go before bag day, which means they are already pretty well off, and two, they think they will be competitive. Those videos are not accurately representative of the population of FRC teams that we will all see at our events. Be careful when you let them influence your predictions.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

Agree.

Its so easy to be enamored with all the reveal video's keep in mind almost every one was edited to show the robot in best light. In our reveal for instance everything was full speed and only cut in three places, partly to take out a delayed noodle insertion as she was not the normal noodle girl. This provided for the most part accurate assessment of shown capabilities.

Many of the TOP 25 reveals and others posted were HIGHLY edited and video speeds either slowed or increased. This again to put the robot for TOP 25 reveals in best light.

I have a distinct feeling after watching the 5 minute Week 0 matches that 2:30 (- 45% of match time) Week 1 matches will be fairly low scoring overall. Alliance partners can help the average or curtail it really depends on who is on your team.

I think this game unlike past years really is hard to predict as there are so many variables to take into account and hard to fully duplicate field conditions. I'm glad we got two full days of practice initially we were terrible but we got better another Thursday practice will be needed ahead of our matches to be primed to compete. At least we will have the benefit of seeing earlier results that is huge.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

I do agree that this game is spectacularly difficult and slower paced than most games (many teams had to speed up their robot reveal videos and make cuts - it's not too exciting to see a robot park in front of a feeder station and load 6 totes for 25 seconds), but I'm not as pessimistic as you are.

Here are a few reasons:
1). Teams have access to an amazing selection of COTS parts this year, including REV robotics bearings/extrusions for making simple lifts, new Vex Pro and AndyMark gearboxes for powering these lifts, and many options for affordable, off the shelf drive systems. These COTS products are cheaper than ever before, so building a decent elevator is no longer too difficult.

2). There are a decent number of reasonable easy points to get. Coopertition sets are quite easy to get, and a coopertition stack only requires one robot to do any stacking so it may happen more than the 2012 co-op bridge, which required two robots to be good balancers.

3). There's less room for robot damage. In previous years, there has been lots of defense, things to fall off of, things to crash into, and scoring racks to get tangled in. This year, there's not much on the field that can damage your robot.

4). It's easy to practice. A practice field can be very close to the competition field this year. Teams need less room to set up the field, and the scoring platforms, tote chute, and step are much less complicated than the 2013 tower + goals, the 2012 bridge + hoops, and is as easy to build as the 2014 low goal and high goal.

5). RI3D. The Team Indiana lexan flaps are a great idea that many teams have implemented.

I could be wrong, but it seems like we've gotten carried away with saying that teams will always do worse than we expect.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

A) Most complicated? Sure, I'd agree with that. Scoring this year is pretty complicated. Hardest? Hard to say. Sure, many teams likely went through the difficulties of making a mechanism that can pick up a can and a tote, but there are common dimensions between the two. Every game has its challenges; just because this year's game presents a unique challenge doesn't necessarily make it any "harder." We'll see how difficult it actually is after week 1.
B) Think back, I don't know about you, but I see no difference between the tote chute and 2013's disc chute. It's not like most teams let discs drop to the floor then pick them up with a ground collector, and those that did generally had very good ground collectors. Same applies this season, have you seen any reveal videos? Many robots have chutes that line up with the human loader, just like they did in 2013.
C) The game evolves as teams find better and more complex strategies. Like you said, we saw that last year with human players. If a human player is throwing noodles where you don't want him to, perhaps your drive team should communicate with the human player. Or, possibly even better, tell the human player to chill with the noodle throwing all together.
D)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGYOFU5CnlI

Edit- that said, I think week one qualifier scores won't exceed 80, averaging 40-50. As always, many teams will have inexperienced drivers and strategies will be underdeveloped.

Re: Week 1 Number One Seed Score Average
 

Ditto, some of us prefer it knocked over!