Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

If you're figuring just what your team can accomplish in 2:15 minutes, you can break it down to points vs time.

For every tote you have 2pts
For every tote with a bin on top you get 6pts (This works across the board. If you get 6 bins, you could stack 6 single level totes with a bin on top for 36pts. Or a 6 level tote stack with bin for 36pts)

Now a sample equation can be:
135s = T +

Never mind I just put it into a spreadsheet to make it easier. I gave everyone "edit" access, so play with it or make a copy.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

Emphasis mine:
As for aiming, yes, six, unless your design prohibits it. As for finding your actual sweet spot for execution, practice, practice, practice. Scout yourself while doing it. Find out what your sweet spot is, preferably on the practice field and not in the arena.

I anticipate the median sweet spot for execution at regional seeding to be 3, or perhaps 4; un-nested stacks get unstable quickly above 3.

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

In my opinion, teams that can do stacks of 6 will take their time to create those stacks, even in early weeks, because of the large points involved. While they are doing the larger stacks, the "support" teams will be making quicker stacks of 2 or 3 and getting them on the scoring platform and then coming back to add to them later.

Totes are worthless unless they are on the scoring platform, so IMO teams are better off making quick stacks and getting them on the platform asap, even if they are "stacks" of 1.

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

We thought that the sweet spot is 6, and I think the actual sweet spot will be apparent when we get into the competition. What I am concerned about for some teams is that they became convinced that 3 or 4 is the sweet spot, but if it really does turn out to be 6 then they are in trouble. We can do 6, or 5, or 4, or any number we want, so when the sweet spot becomes clear we will be able to do it. This is about building your robot to be able to perform whatever strategy is revealed to be the best, rather than trying to guess the best strategy from the beginning.

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

Remember that a stack is nearly worthless without a bin. Not that it won't give you points, but that pushing 4 totes on the platform in the last 10 sec is worth the same as a 4 tote stack that takes 30 sec.

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

Keep in mind that one stack of 6 with a RC and a noodle is worth less than two stacks of 3 with a RC and noodle. So if your robot is capable of making one 6 stack or two 3 stacks, the 3 stacks are worth more to you.

This will be different for everyone so I recommend during your practice you time how long it takes to do different variations of stacking to find your teams "sweet spot."

It could be anything like four stacks of 2, up to a stack of 6 and a stack of 5. But find your limits and play to them. Also don't forget the co-op! I predict it will make up over half of most teams average scores.

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

Good idea! I wonder if we can compile enough scouting data to execute this for the whole alliance, not just our team.
This covers the case where time is the most limited resource well. Another thing to consider is that quite a few alliances are going to run out of RCs, either because they have no grabber and are limited to the three in the staging area, or they're awesome and used all seven, or somewhere in between. When RCs are the limiting factor, it may be worth taking the extra seconds to make a capped stack taller as opposed to stacking more uncapped totes; as you noted, a capped tote is worth thee times as much as an uncapped one, assuming a single stack of upright or inverted totes.

Oooh - I wonder if making our top stacks sit on two bottom stacks rather than one would be more stable? (We plan to stack and score four totes, then cap with a stack of two more totes and a vertical RC, noodle optional.)

Sour spot
 

Don't ignore the possibility of a "sour spot" for some robots. Because of the vertical range and style of our lift, four is likely to be a sour spot for us. What I mean by this is that we may need more margin time to get from 2 to 3 and from 3 to 4 totes in a capped stack than to get from 4 to 5 and from 5 to 6.

Our uncapped stack timing should be closer to linear; the sweet spot will be risk-based.

Re: Where is the sweet spot?
 

Teams are often overly optimistic. Take a look at the poll results for how many people will be doing a 30pt climb in 2013: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ght=climb+poll

46.6%? That didn't happen.