Hopper Wars
 

At the highest levels of play, the points from fuel will be the determining factor in matches. There is a limited amount of fuel available, mostly in hoppers that anybody can access (hard to say if alliances will max out the fuel, but I suspect they will). These hoppers remind me a lot of the recycling bins from that FRC "Game" in 2015.

Do you think these hoppers might play out as the recycling bins did? Will there be Hopper Wars at high levels of play?

Re: Hopper Wars
 

See also: Return Bin. Equivalent capacity of 1/2 Hopper, and dumped straight into a waiting robot (ideally).

Someone was saying something about limited Fuel?

Re: Hopper Wars
 

I think it will be exceedingly difficult to get two alliance partners aligned under a hopper and make sure no balls are lost to the floor in a reasonable amount of time.

I expect 250+ wiffle balls on the field even in final rounds.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

I think we'll see fights over the hoppers but my favorite thing to see will be an alliance with incredible ability to pick fuel off the floor playing an alliance that struggles to retrieve fuel from the floor. I think this would be great because if I was the first alliance I wouldn't even "fight" over the hoppers, I would go as fast as possible and dump all the hoppers onto the floor, causing sheer chaos (500 little wiffle balls on the floor) for my opponents and preventing them from retrieving all that fuel.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

This was the scenario that convinced us to make picking up field fuel a priority. If other teams are relying on the hopper then a good spoiler strategy would be to dump fuel as quickly as possible.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

Seems like even a fast intake would still be a bad strategy since the points per ball is so low. The time to collect and then shoot them all seems counter productive unless the other 2 teams on your alliance have all four rotors spinning and all three robots are 100% rope climbs. Then collection time wont matter since there wont be much left to do.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

Meh.

We may see some squabbling over a hopper here and there, but the incentive to fight over a single hopper at the highest levels isn't nearly the same thing as 2015's game. Of particular consideration is the potential ability to score some portion of a hopper in autonomous - doing so is the equivalent of 'winning' a hopper in autonomous and scoring it in teleop.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

I do not think that hoppers will be in contention in anyway similar to 2015's as it relates to cans. The robots in each match will be scoring so those balls will be recycled (albeit to the other team) and will then be scored again, so this is not a resource that can be exhausted. Even if people were battling over hoppers a robot, due to size constraints, can't intake from both hoppers at once so half would end up on the floor. This would cause any "fight" to result in really only half of the available fuel being captured and it subsequently not really being worth it because the opposing alliance could then collect just as much as you.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

Having the ability to shoot just for autonomous makes a world a difference in this game expecially for qualifying rounds. After that though teleport shooting won't be as significant. And if that's the case a floor pickup won't be an important feature

Re: Hopper Wars
 

I think that teleop shooting is going to be the difference between a blue banner and a finalist medal at a regional level. Even one point could be the tipping factor.

Re: Hopper Wars
 

I was completely oblivious to the fact that there is a return bin... Ri3D plus being sick has taken its toll. Obviously there won't be Hopper Wars because there is no limit to the number of fuel available. Stupid question, my bad!

Re: Hopper Wars
 

The advantage for a low goal robot to have efficient ground pickup is to clean the field into their low goal so that their high goal shooter would have access to the balls via chute

the other advantage is that robots can score low goals at such a high rate that you can easily fill the overflow bin, which is going to help your high goal shooter as well.

basically dump truck low goaling from fuel on the floor is a very helpful attribute, but don't let gear manipulation and hanging come after the low goaling.