Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

We are a rookie team and played in an alliance with 33 and 3773 and it was such a cool experience... We played the second highest score match of the day and had a blast !!!!!

This Waterford event is awesome ! i knew we wee to have fun, but this is outstanding !

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Hey there! We're the weird blue ones!
Waterford was one of the most totally awesome things ever. Everyone was super nice and helpful and we broke a bunch of stuff and fixed most of it. Can't wait to see ya'll tomorrow and good luck!

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Popping in to say that the Michigan streams have been stellar this weekend. Southfield is really high quality video and the announcing on Waterford has been the best of the events I've been watching.

Also clutch match by Wings of Fire in qualification 74 at Waterford. Scoring a high goal boulder with 1 second left to win by 4, watch the replay when it comes up.

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Correct me if there has been a higher score at another competition today but it looks like the highest score in the world is now 185 points, scored by the 1st alliance at waterford: 67, 33, & 4003 in quarterfinal 1-2

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

There was a 185 at Northern Lights also, in the semis.

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A quick look at the TBA Insights tabs for Week 1 events shows that Greater Toronto Central teams were favoring the low goal rather than the high. Results: 8 pts higher average score with a higher rate of breaches and captures, compared with the next best field (Waterford).

GTC: Low Goals 552, High Goals 125
High score 161 (QF 2-1), Average match score 78.24, Average winning score 90.35, Breach 117/166, Capture 15/166

Waterford: Low Goals 293, High Goals 299
High score 185 (QF 1-2), Average match score 70.57, Average winning score 82.45, Breach 110/186, Capture 10/186

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Watched that match live, goodness it was amazing! I can't believe the level of performance these teams have this early on I can only imagine what they can do nearing state championships. Truly an awe inspiring and incredibly educational experience.

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Thanks to 33 and 4003 for an awesome event and congrats to 33 on another District Chairman's award - well deserved. 1023 congrats on EI and an awesome robot. I was very sad to hear we wouldn't get to face you in the finals.

Also to the toaster who asked me for our model of the 3D printed Microsoft camera mount PM me. I apologize, but I think I lost your email address, unless my notes ended up locked in the toolbox which I'll find out sometime next week. I'll try to get in contact with someone on your team. If any one else is interested in it let me know. I'll probably thingiverse it.

I learned a lot this weekend about this game and had a blast.

1) Elimination audience selections of defense is SO MUCH fun, like unbelievably fun. Especially when you have 3 big teams. I thought it'd be dumb, but FIRST nailed this one. Screaming with a giant crowd of people was the highlight of the event. I'm a bit worried this gives big teams an advantage

2) Most alliances could do either A,B,and D defense plus low bar, so defense selection became less strategy and more what we could see through and what they might not be able to cross in auton. For Waterford, that meant always pick sally port and CdF and put the sally port to the side. No one had a CdF auton. The only reason to ever put out the portcullis was if no one on the other team could do it or all the CdFs are broken.

3) Visibility is bad. As expected.

4) At District Champs if you don't breach in every qualifying match you will not seed - at that level maybe it won't be that hard.

5) Breaching wasn't that tough and capturing will not be 8 balls at championships.

6) Low goal is way better if your shooter is less than perfect since a capture is the goal and a missed ball wastes a ton of time. Also not using brass gears on a shooter again. PM me if you want details.

7) 33 is really good. As expected.

8) It's not a matter of if something breaks but when. There's plenty of stuff to fix in bag time. We broke several things that we thought were built robust enough for this game.

9) Still no clue how defense will shake out later in the season.

10) Hanging got us the #1 seed and a 30 pt end of match swing is awesome. We made it a priority to get a working hang by Waterford even if it was a slow one because the event was so competitive, definitely paid off.

11) The game will be fun to watch and play as long as teams aren't broken.

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Can't stress this enough. We went 6-6 in qualifying at Southfield, which would normally put us around 15-25th place, but we ended up in 32nd because we almost never successfully breached (Thank you 2832 for still picking us even with our low rank).

Congratulations to 3604, 3548, and 1188 for winning the event, and 123, 4680, and 573 for being finalists. Also congratulations to 1025 for winning Chairman's, especially in such a strong competition Chairman's wise.

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Does anyone have links to videos of Michigan Week 1 events?

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

I'm having difficulty finding these as well. There is a twitch stream that they have, however there are no archives up and it only works live (oddly you have to be logged into twitch(?)). They ought to have archives/videos of the event soon right? I asked a couple of the volunteers to get back to me on that, but nothing so far. There are a couple other threads on the forum about this specific "issue", if you will. I'd like to show people some cool stuff we did on the field, but we didn't have the means/people to record :P

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

It was great to play with you, and not so great to play against you. Awesome bot and team, as always. Being the team that helped us get our first blue banner, you will always have a special place in our hearts!

We were looking forward to seeing what we could do against you as well, and a broken drivetrain was not anticipated. We will be overnighting some new parts, and hoping and praying they arrive before our noon departure on Wednesday to Pittsburgh! 2nd time we've had to bag our robot in pieces this year! :( Changes will hopefully be tougher, though snapping the part we did just shows how tough this challenge is on bots. I'd advise all to really examine the hidden damage they may have incurred to their gear boxes prior to going out to a second event. Who knows which hit or defense was the final straw for our bot, but never seen that kind of damage. When we pulled ours apart, we found multiple broken parts.

Huge thanks to our awesome alliance. Wish we would've had a chance to see what we could do with all three of us working at the same time, but the fact that we made it through semis with one bot not shooting in one match, one bot tipped in one match, and one bot with a broken drivetrain in one match shows we worked very well together. Enjoyed working with you. Thanks to 3655 for picking us, 5048 for being an awesome and amazing second pick, and thanks to 5860 for stepping up when we had to remove ourselves!

Corsairs, you put on an awesome event! Thanks for the hard work! Nader fam, you are the best! Thanks for all you do for FIRST in Michigan!

Bruce, our amazing electronics mentor, and Waterford DJ/AV guy. thanks for all you do to make the event fun for all! Your sound effects are great, and we can't imagine competing without you, EVEN when you play Yoda Stop it Now! :D

To all the Waterford teams - It was fun playing with you! Great to see old robot friends, and make new ones! :)

Pittsburgh, here we come!

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

This game is a blast to play. Brutal at times, but strategically deep and a lot of fun.

Standish-Sterling was a very young field. Kudos to the teams and volunteers who helped get everybody up to snuff and thru inspection. The median team number was 5226, and 27 of the 40 participants had never experienced bumpers before. Once the bugs got worked out, everything ran smoothly and the level of play was very good.

Thanks to all the planners and volunteers who made the event possible. Week 1 events are always a special challenge.

Thanks to 4377 and 5166 for joining us in the playoffs. I wish I could have been there to be part of it. It looks like there were some really tough matches, and I can't wait to see video.

On a more personal side note, it was good to be a TenBrink yesterday. 1918 won at Standish and 70 won at Kettering. However, neither my brother or I were around for playoffs. Our mother turned 95 yesterday and the whole family was back in Fremont to celebrate. She had a lot of nerve being born during robotics season. You would think her parents could have anticipated this back in 1921. Back in 2011, I missed the family gathering for her 90th because of robotics and I caught a lot of well-deserved grief from my 6 siblings. Robotics is fun, but it isn't the most important thing in life.

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Congratulations to our winnings and Finalists from each event:

Kettering:
W:4384, 70, 5084
F:5460, 3656, 6081

Southfield:
W:3604, 3548, 1188
F:123, 4680, 573

Standish-Sterling:
W:1918, 4377, 5166
F:5448,6098,862

Waterford:
W: 67, 33, 4003
F: 3655, 1023, 5048, 5860

I was only able to watch Waterford and Southfield this weekend but I did notice a few things.

1) Both winning alliances utilized all three robots to capture and breach
2) Quick shooting from the batter (mostly low except 33 and 548) is very effective early on.
3) This game is BRUTAL on robots. Two back ups had to be called in. 1023 was unable to play in the finals, calling in 5860. Over in Southfield the fourth alliance lost 5901 and backup 5014 forcing them to play their last matches 3 vs 2.
4) This game is very fun to watch and I can't wait to see how FIM evolves in the coming weeks.

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Well... I have no word to express how thankful 5860 is at this point.

Waterford was our first event. As a rookie team, i cannot express enough how cool the experience was for our kids, mentors and parents that attended and the people in our small community that watched over the live stream.

We went through the entire range of emotions, from winning matches, losing with very small difference in score, and tying in our final qualifying match against powerhouses team that we look up to and dream of being like !!!! and on top of this, being called in for the final match... Our kids will remember this moment for their entire life, and for that thank you to all that cheer us up !!

Waterford for us was a very humble experience and i cannot express enough thank you to all the team that helped us, the volunteer at the event and the First in MI organizations.

Thank you to everyone !!!!

Re: First In Michigan Week 1.
 

Had a great time in Standish-Sterling event this past weekend.. There was some issues with the live streams and Internet was weak at the venue, however we had a great time anyways.

We had a rough start to the day, with our first match (Q4) being 1 bot short on both alliances. We flipped our bot on the ramparts just at the onset of the match. There was field faults and the scoring did not work, causing a rematch of Q4 and Q5. We replayed the Q4 just before lunch, still with only 2 bots, which went well, roughly 45 Red to our 65 Blue, however again, the field did not score the match resulting in another fault. FIRST opted to revisit the rematches at a later time.

On our 2nd match (Q13), a corrupted flush caused our poor bot to start the match with no robot code. This was shaping up to be a bad day, but our alliance partners (5224, 5447) pulled off the win anyways with 46-44. We ended Friday in 24th place, but with 1 less match than most teams. The FTA scheduled our Q4 rematch for 8:15AM Saturday, before opening ceremonies, which we won 77-37.

By mid day with some losses out of the way, things picked up after we joined 1918 and 5166, setting the event high score of 125-52 (until Q79), setting us on a streak of wins bumping us from 24 up to 5 at the end of qualifiers.

We selected rookie team #32 6098 BIRobot from Beaver Island with their low, fast defensive bot, and #38 862 Lighting Robotics from Canton with their bot.

In QF4-1, we picked up a tie, 97-97, which due to tiebreaker rules became a loss. We won QF4-2 110-106, and took the QF4-3 win 95-90.

In Semifinals, we took both wins, 119-104 and 103-64.

In finals, we just barely missed the win both times with 115-130, and 110-120.

Congrats to 1918, 5166, 4377 on the win.

1918: If it weren't for your darn scaler working properly at the end of the day, we'd have had you. Looking forward to seeing you at WMRI!

-Jim