1 in the high goal....hopefully

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

I think that it really depends on your strategy. The way we are doing it seems about even in complexity to 2013. If you plan on getting the ball from the center line after crossing back into the neutral zone the task becomes more difficult.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Look at how many teams consistently did a "shoot - get discs from midline - shoot" auto in 2013. Maybe 20 in the world?

Look at how many teams consistently did a 2 zone auto (including bump crossing and collecting/kicking balls in the second zone) in 2010. Maybe 10 in the world?

A 2 ball auto in Stronghold basically requires doing both of these tasks sequentially...all in 15 seconds...with a much narrower margin for penalties...into a much smaller goal.

Working 2 ball autonomous modes will exist but they will be more rare than multi-game piece autos in past games. You will never see one robot score three balls in a match in autonomous mode in Stronghold. Jar Nack has spoken.

(Don't agree? Get out there and prove me wrong)

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Agree, and even looking at 2014 where all you have to do was shoot straight forward. I don't expect to see very many balls scored in auto let alone more than one from a single robot.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Jar Nack has been correct before in regards to auto. Wise teams will listen to his wisdom.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Agreed. Robots in a temporary (or permanent) Tortuga will probably not be scoring boulders.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Completely disagree here. It is an order of magnitude harder to drive to a "sweet spot" in autonomous than teleop. Most shooters won't be able to shoot from just anywhere that their camera has a clear shot on the goal either, but rather have the most accuracy from specific spots. Getting to those specific spots without losing position accuracy while crossing the various defenses is an immense challenge that teams seem to be consistently underestimating. Spy bot is a different story of course.

You also shouldn't need more than a single frame to figure out how much you need to turn to hit the goal, right? At least if you're using an auto-aim feature. This reduces network latency.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

lol @ more than 2.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

If the number of teams who are working on a scaling mechanism is any indicator, 10 points a match are being taken pretty seriously.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

10 auto points is a pretty big deal considering that auto is the first ranking tiebreaker.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

I think just being able to possess a second ball after scoring one in autonomous consistently will be a commendable action.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Yes, 10 points are 10 points.... The time investment for those 10 points is going to vary from team to team... Once the robot is fully functional, the programmers are going to need time to program any auto routines and the 2-boulder auto is going to be tricky enough that they will need quite a bit of time with the robot - and might even request that some things be altered mechanically to do it. All the hours invested in doing this will come at a cost of drive team practice.

I'm not saying that it's not worth the time investment - Heck, we are working on it. What I am saying is that there is a cost in time and teams will have to evaluate whether that cost in time is something they can afford when looking at the other needs their team might have.

Regarding the climber: We've put the strong auto routine ahead of the climber for several reasons:

1) We plan to have a very good shooter. If we can manage to put two additional boulders in the tower in the time it would take us to climb (assuming we still challenge), we have overcome the need to climb. We figure that if our partners are both climbing, there should be boulders available. If our partners are still shooting, boulders will still be fed to us... In other words, we see climbing as "nice" but certainly not necessary.

2) Auto routines are done during a totally separate time period. We look at everything we can do during an auto period as "bonus." There is no downside to scoring more autonomous points.

3) Scoring in auto will not require an additional manipulator of any sort - this saves us on cost, construction time, robot space, and the number of things that might need repair later. The code can be tested on our practice bot after bag-and-tag and therefore continually developed.

I've never said that a two-boulder autonomous can't or shouldn't be done - only that it will be difficult and require a significant time investment - at the cost of developing other parts of a team's game. For some teams it will be a good investment. For others (especially for those who don't get it figured out), it may be a poor investment in terms of robot performance. (Of course, that does not account of the potential learning that trying to figure it out will involve...)

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

I think actually scoring a ball in auto will be a commendable action.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

I think you mean if you can manage to put two additional boulders in the tower and CHALLENGE in the time it would take you to scale. Since you'd be foolish to miss the capture bonus and CHALLENGING, while trivial, does take a finite amount of time to execute.

Re: How many balls will you shoot during autonomous?
 

Now, this is a challenge worth taking up.... **If** our two-boulder autonomous is up and running cleanly before our second district, I'll have to challenge to programmers to pull off a three-boulder routine... I can visualize our route and see it happening... We we can overcome all the challenges of a two-boulder routine, the only thing we'll have to do is go faster in order to pull off three... If there were 20 seconds, I bet we could do it... 15 will be difficult.