Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Here is a possible reason why Karthik is terrified. Think about the following:

How many points do you think you can score with your strategy?
Could you build a tall robot that scores more points?
Do you have the resources to do so?
If you did, would you choose the low bar robot anyways?

It appears many teams are. Those teams are going to score fewer points than the tall counterparts, and the robots that are relying on passing through the low bar (apparently about 90% of teams are going to for the most part) are going to experience a lot of congestion that will slow down gameplay even more. 4/5 of the field will not be utilized to its full potential in that case (except for perhaps the breach points), which makes for a much more boring game. Not to mention, defense selection is going to be a lot less valuable than we thought.

However, one of the biggest problems is when defense is stronger than offense. If an underdog alliance can shut down a powerhouse alliance from defense, it gets exciting because the playing field is more level. If neither alliance can score boulders due to defensive wall bots (which are easy to make), then the game will also be extremely boring. It's like a game of basketball where neither team can score.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I think that Karthik is terrified because he doesn't want to make everyone feel bad when they show up with a low bar bot that unfolds to shoot 100% at 54 inches. :eek:
He also could have thought that it would be a less utilized strategy. Now he is sad that he wont have a unique robot.

Bees? Bees!

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

FYI my final answer is Karthik is mostly terrified of the near certainty that somewhere in the world someone has unironically written Karthik Kanagasabapathy fanficition.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Yup. Last year we thought that it would be slower to cap your own stacks, so we decided to split the task. As it turned out lots of teams were able to effectively build and cap stacks. We knew we were not going to seed well with the robot at the regional, but thought that a specialist would come into play at the championship level. While we had a reasonably successful season, we were wrong in our choice. But that's how you learn and grow.

We are taking the approach this year of trying to control our own destiny, but still thinking about how we will fit with other robots on the field.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

With so many teams attempting (keyword: attempting) the low bar, my concern for them is going to be standing out enough to be a good potential alliance pick. If everyone's doing the low bar, that means you'll have to be able to do a number of other things to avoid blending in with every other low bar robot.

The issue here is whether teams are taking too much risk in trying to do other non-low bar tasks well that they don't do very well at anything, including the low bar.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

If you are going to pick one thing to be good at, why pick the thing that every alliance only benefits from having one of (and that many shooting robots may want to utilize to improve their cycle times)?

If you are going to pick two things to be good at, why make one of them the thing that is most difficult to integrate with most other robot functions?

If you are going to pick three things to be good at, now you have two functions that are difficult to integrate...and now most teams are well on their way to ineffective robots.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Wait, maybe we've got the question wrong!

Instead of "What is terrifying Karthik?" maybe we should be asking "Why is Karthik terrifying?"

Could it be his horns?

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

This^

I totally agree with that sentiment as it applies to the majority of teams. I think that if you compound this with the idea that some things that will be incredibly important at a high level become nearly impossible to implement on a low robot. (such as the ability to shoot over a defender with a pool noodle, or having an accurate and reliable shooter) Then it starts to look like there are few teams for which the decision to go under the bar is a good one.
(exceptions may include young teams who don't plan on shooting high, those who plan on seeding high but aren't concerned with boulder shooting, and potentially those who could not produce a shooter that can hit from the outer works to begin with)

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

So Joe, who is the winner?!?

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

He probably hasn't decided and/or is getting a 2nd opinion (maybe from Karthik himself?)

Patience...

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I'm probably too late for the Mountain Dew (don't drink it anyway), but here goes:

The poll results terrify Karthik. If these results were expected, they would not terrify Karthik. Therefore these results were unexpected. This means that the Simbotics strategy committee miscalculated the frequency of strategies being employed by teams. To someone as good at understanding and predicting strategy as Karthik, that in itself could be terrifying.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I see what you're saying, but here was our thought process.

Team defenses don't match the real thing, and adding polycarbonate/aluminum sheet only gets it so close to the real thing. It would be an entire tangential fundraising/toolset to get the real defenses built. In our analysis we wanted to be able to ensure the breaching bonus as well as the contribute to the weakening bonus as best as possible. In order to do that, we first determined the rolling drive train properties across the defenses. Then we decided to hedge against the fact that we probably won't solve one of the real defenses even though we've solved it in our shop.

Thus, in order to ensure we could still hit our target of X out of 5 categories of defenses, low bar became a major target. We'll find a partner or two to compliment us for elims.

Then there is the utility for cycling. An entire zone of the field surrounding the low bar becomes obsolete without the ability to go under the bar. It even becomes a liability in the wrong situation. It's definitely a tradeoff though.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Hmmm....

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Did I miss the post? Is Karthik still terrified?