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MrJohnston 02-03-2015 15:05

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
I have to admit that, at first, I was not thrilled with the game, but I gave it a chance....

* I still think that it is weak as a spectators' game. I've watched enough video of various regional and district events that I can honestly say it's kind of dull to watch. Now, having spent the last couple of months dealing with the challenges of my team's robot, I have to say I had an appreciation for some of the strongest robots around the nation and a lot of sympathy for teams that are still working to overcome the challenges we've been working through. I did find myself enjoying watching the matches - but only because I had been involved in the process. Had I come in knowing nothing, I would not have stuck around long. This is different from the direct competition "sports" we've had for several years.

* I think FIRST nailed this competition in terms of an engineering challenge. The level of thinking, problem-solving and work that we have had to put forth to meet the strategic demands of the game. This task, overall, has been **hard.** My team has been challenged and engaged the entire season and is excited to compete in week 2...

Qbot2640 02-03-2015 15:15

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mastonevich (Post 1452238)
I would like to think that the seeding will be (more) accurate this year because of the "time trial" style of competition. That is a nice side effect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe (Post 1452239)
Another thing that will be nice is that the rankings should settle down more and more as the competition goes on. Meaning the top 8 teams should be pretty set towards the last round or 2 of matches.

I saw lots of exceptions to this at Palmetto....most notably team 2059 with an incredible robot and awesome team seeded 62 at the end of Qualification...really showed their stuff devouring the landfill and churning out 3-stack after 3-stack in Eliminations along with 1533 (also great bot - seeded 17th) and 1261. Very close to pulling off the upset win.

notmattlythgoe 02-03-2015 15:17

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Qbot2640 (Post 1452258)
I saw lots of exceptions to this at Palmetto....most notably team 2059 with an incredible robot and awesome team seeded 62 at the end of Qualification...really showed their stuff devouring the landfill and churning out 3-stack after 3-stack in Eliminations along with 1533 (also great bot - seeded 17th) and 1261. Very close to pulling off the upset win.

Agreed, starting slow or having a few bad rounds can really hurt you this year. It's pretty much impossible to recover from.

Caleb Sykes 02-03-2015 15:34

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe (Post 1452259)
Agreed, starting slow or having a few bad rounds can really hurt you this year. It's pretty much impossible to recover from.

How is that different from any other year? Having 3+ losses in previous years generally destroyed any chance of seeding in the top 8. This year, it is always at least possible to get up in the top 8 after poor matches.

Tom Bottiglieri 02-03-2015 15:35

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
There are very few things for the 3rd alliance member to do in playoffs. I suggest all teams trying to make playoffs in the 2nd round add noodle and RC plowing devices. Moving the noodles away from the scoring/landfill zones and moving the RCs back towards the drivers' station will be very beneficial.

notmattlythgoe 02-03-2015 15:35

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes (Post 1452276)
How is that different from any other year? Having 3+ losses in previous years generally destroyed any chance of seeding in the top 8. This year, it is always at least possible to get up in the top 8 after poor matches.

Previously you could start slow, and as long as your opponent had a bad match it didn't hurt. You don't get that benefit this year.

Pretzel 02-03-2015 15:36

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
As someone who hasn't yet physically been to a competition yet, take what I say with a grain of salt:

"Cons"
- I think this year's game is not as fun, simply because it's very repetitive. Nearly all the teams do the same thing in every match because they've determined the optimal strategy for their robot, so they stick to it. There's no real individuality between matches it seems besides how many pool noodles the human player is able to score.

- Because of the fact that teams are doing the same thing each time, pre-match strategy will become a bit less important than previous years. You only need to discuss what each person will do and where they will do it. You don't have the opportunity to discuss how to counter the opposing team's likely strategies.

- This feels to me like a game that was decided in the first weeks of the build season. There isn't a large opportunity for good strategy to overcome superior robot construction, just because this year is more of an engineering challenge than anything else. Elimination matches will be decided more by the physical limitations of each robot than the skill of their drivers in each particular match.

- Nearly contradictory to that last point, drivers practice will be vital this year more than most. This year's game has a high "skill floor", so to speak, in that you need to be able to efficiently complete all the actions your robot was designed to do without tipping over stacks or the robot along the way. Precise, smooth motions will be key. However the "skill ceiling" this year is relatively close to the floor compared to previous years. Once a drive team can efficiently create stacks and place them without tipping them over or experiencing unneeded delays, there's not a lot they can do to set them apart. This is a near-opposite of how it was last year, where nearly any robot could at least possess a ball for assists but the driver skill really set the great inbounding robots apart from the so-so or poor ones.

- If I didn't believe that the GDC already has next year's game prepared and in testing (and subsequently had this game in testing before the competitions last year), I would think that this game was a knee-jerk reaction to last year's complaints. Last year's game appears to have been one of the most violent in FRC history, being dubbed "Aerial Assault" by some, with no safezones and up to two robots free at any time (only one gamepiece) to play defense. This year even the act of knocking a gamepiece into the opposing alliance's side of the field is a foul, and direct interaction is limited to the scuffles that will likely occur at higher levels over the recycling cans on the step.

"Pros"
- One thing this game did very well was it encouraged strategic design choices. Teams had to consider multiple strategies for the collection and stacking of both totes and containers. Some teams created individual solution for each operation (including mine), while others integrated them into one system. Totes can come from the step, the landfill, and the chute door (yes, chute door). Containers come primarily from the step, and this is where I love seeing the diversity of designs. 3310 advertises their can grabber as taking 2 in the first quarter second of autonomous and other teams are grabbing all four bins simultaneously from the step.

- Teams are encouraged to play more efficiently and think about what their actions will do to the field. Robots that collect totes from the landfill need to be careful not to block their view of it with their own stacks, or otherwise install a vision solution. Robots that collect from the chute door need to make sure that they can ensure the totes land in the same orientation every time, as well as carefully train human players to avoid the numerous penalties that can be committed rather easily. The biggest part of all of this is litter and coopertition. By throwing pool noodles early you guarantee you will have time to throw them all without rushing, but you also start to make it more difficult for other teams to reach the step and place their yellow totes for the important coopertition points.

- As boring as the game may seem to some, it is one that is more applicable in industry (especially now) than any other. With the booming success of Amazon, eBay, and other online retailers the need for labor in the shipping industry is growing. Many companies use similar totes to pack their products before shipping, and this is a first step towards students entering the industry and designing robots that can autonomously stack and transport these totes through warehouses. Designs that work for the totes, especially of the forklift variety, could also be easily modified to carry pallets that are commonly used in the shipping industries if the need for automation becomes greater.

"Verdict"
This game is just different from the rest that we have seen recently. It's been likened to FLL with it's "message" about recycling, and it's a game that could be played completely autonomously if a team's programmers were ambitious enough. I don't think it's really fair to compare this game to Aerial Assist, Ultimate Ascent, or the like because it's not really even the same type of game. I look forward to competing as always, but this year appeared to be much more focused on the design component than the competition element.

BBray_T1296 02-03-2015 15:38

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri (Post 1452277)
There are very few things for the 3rd alliance member to do in playoffs. I suggest all teams trying to make playoffs in the 2nd round add noodle and RC plowing devices. Moving the noodles away from the scoring/landfill zones and moving the RCs back towards the drivers' station will be very beneficial.

Only so long as they can stay away from the robots putting up the big stacks. It was not unheard of that a robot was severely hindered by another robot simply being in proximity. Noodle plowers need to be effective, quick, and VERY controllable

Kevin Leonard 02-03-2015 15:44

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri (Post 1452277)
There are very few things for the 3rd alliance member to do in playoffs. I suggest all teams trying to make playoffs in the 2nd round add noodle and RC plowing devices. Moving the noodles away from the scoring/landfill zones and moving the RCs back towards the drivers' station will be very beneficial.

A third robot can make small tote stacks wherever isn't being used by the first two.
I think the easiest thing for third robots to do is get the RCs noodled.
I personally think 3rd robots built for litter plowing are going to get more in the way than anything else.

SteveGPage 02-03-2015 15:46

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
I will echo what has been said previously, boring to watch (Friends watching the video feed told me that watching paint dry or grass grow is much more exciting!) - challenging to build and play. We thought we had nailed this - great analysis of the game, how to play, things we needed to do ... build an absolutely beautiful robot ... that doesn't work at all. Week 1 showed that we completely missed the mark in how to build for this year's game. We are fortunate that we have a shot at redemption - 4 weeks until the Chesapeake Regional, and then 2 more weeks until Championships. So 30 pounds of changes between now and Chesapeake, and 30 more for Champs. We have just entered our second build season! In this regard, I'm glad we did a Week 1 event, so we could see what we need to do for subsequent events.
I remember the days of being "One and done" and it would have been heart-breaking to think we ended the season on the disaster that was our Week 1 outing at Palmetto. This is much, much tougher to play than I thought.
Congratulations to the amazing teams we saw that nailed it and could perform at a high level this weekend!

A couple of side notes:
* Tossing Litter -- if you haven't started to have your human player practice, start immediately. It is a huge impact on the game.
* The field Geometry -- the space is much smaller that you think it is - Human Player Stations are practically on top of the Totes and RCs. Landfill is hard to drive around.
* Coop points are a must -- Just do that consistently, you'll score high
* Human Player -- Totes don't fall like you think they will. We built the practice field version, and the actual field one works completely different. Spend the time on the field during the practice matches dropping them out the chute door (yes, chute door).

Steve

electroken 02-03-2015 15:53

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri (Post 1452277)
There are very few things for the 3rd alliance member to do in playoffs.

I'm pretty sure that without our 3rd alliance partner (3464) and their 4 tote stacks, none of us (236, 230 and 3464) have our nice, new blue banners.

Tom Bottiglieri 02-03-2015 15:57

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by electroken (Post 1452295)
I'm pretty sure that without our 3rd alliance partner (3464) and their 4 tote stacks, none of us (236, 230 and 3464) have our nice, new blue banners.

Something something averages versus outliers...

I don't doubt there will be awesome 2nd round picks that fall through for whatever reason. At the average event, the average alliance will probably have a 3rd robot which is less than capable of building 4 stacks.

Also, as the higher powered teams get better, your opponents will also get better which means the percent contribution of the third partner becomes smaller. At some point, an uncapped stack of 3/4 has a higher opportunity cost (less landfill totes/more entropy on field) than scored value.

Caleb Sykes 02-03-2015 16:08

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe (Post 1452278)
Previously you could start slow, and as long as your opponent had a bad match it didn't hurt. You don't get that benefit this year.

Last year, we didn't start slow at all. We played our first 2 matches very well. However, the match schedule put us up against two alliances who managed to do even better, which started us out with 2 losses. I don't see that as a benefit.

The only difference I see between this seeding system and previous ones is the variance relative to robot ability. This system is so much better at sorting robots, because one tipped over stack will only drop your team a few ranking spots at most, whereas in previous years, a similar event either would either have kept you in the same spot in the sort, or dropped you down ten, which just means more variance overall. Additionally, teams could legitimately blame the scheduler in previous years for their poor seed, but this year, most teams who do that are just looking for a scapegoat to take the blame for their own poor performance.

excel2474 02-03-2015 16:11

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes (Post 1452305)
Last year, we didn't start slow at all. We played our first 2 matches very well. However, the match schedule put us up against two alliances who managed to do even better, which started us out with 2 losses. I don't see that as a benefit.

The only difference I see between this seeding system and previous ones is the variance relative to robot ability. This system is so much better at sorting robots, because one tipped over stack will only drop your team a few ranking spots at most, whereas in previous years, a similar event either would either have kept you in the same spot in the sort, or dropped you down ten, which just means more variance overall. Additionally, teams could legitimately blame the scheduler in previous years for their poor seed, but this year, most teams who do that are just looking for a scapegoat to take the blame for their own poor performance.

Exactly. This year, teams control their own destiny. I guess some people don't like that.

waialua359 02-03-2015 16:17

Re: Week 1 Observations
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe (Post 1452259)
Agreed, starting slow or having a few bad rounds can really hurt you this year. It's pretty much impossible to recover from.

I disagree.
We were 30th after our 1st 3 matches and by the end of the day, ranked 3rd.
We held onto the #1 spot and lost it in the final match by 6 total points.


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