Ground Intake for Fuel and Gears
 

My team is in the process of discussing the need for ground intaking of fuel and balls.

We are anticipating a lot of fuel on the ground. I estimate 250 from spilling hoppers and ~40-80 missed shots/retrievals.

Also, if gears were to be dropped, it would suck if an alliance was just one gear off from setting the rotors running but the rest were dropped and none could pick them up.

So the questions we are pondering are: Would there be a situation where we would run out of balls? and what's the likelihood that gears are going to be dropped?

Thanks

Re: Ground Intake for Fuel and Gears
 

One thing, balls are fuel, not two separate things.

As for your questions, I definitely agree with you on the amount of balls on the field, for sure.

The thing to keep in mind about the balls is once scored in the boiler they are cycled back onto the field through the loading stations. Theoretically there is no time where you would run out of balls. There may be some times where balls are sparse on the field, but I doubt that will be the majority of time.

As for gears being dropped, ideally nearly every team designing a gear manipulating mechanism would understand the importance of holding tightly onto the gears, but of course that will not happen, so yes, expect some gears to be on the ground. I would assume the most likely place gears will fall is when being placed on the lift.

So yes, expect some gears to be dropped, but keep in mind, there are spare gears in the player station. Is it worth dedicating time and energy to a system that may or may not be used in every match?

Hope this helps!

Re: Ground Intake for Fuel and Gears
 

My concern is that in matches with lower level teams who consistently miss their shots will be unable to cycle fuel that the opposing alliance has scored and eventually all fuel ends up on the floor. Also the other alliance could just rush all the hoppers and just dump them on the ground leaving only 20 (initially in loading lane) + 10 auto + 50 (1 hopper) fuel available.

Re: Ground Intake for Fuel and Gears
 

I think that harvesting balls from the floor is going to be essential if you're planning a shooter If you can't, (and the opposing ball scorer can), someone on the opposing alliance will dump everything on the floor as quickly as possible to limit your scoring.

Gears, not so much, but as noted above, they are precious - they come from far a way, and you can only carry one at a time. Hang on to them until you've hung them, and pilots, pull them up quickly so the opposing alliance doesn't knock them off!

If you CAN pick up a gear from the floor effectively, each one you can find will save you (part of) a trip across the field. Good to do, but not essential. I expect (working) gear pickups to become more common around week five.

Re: Ground Intake for Fuel and Gears
 

There are 44 gears available, and (currently) 24 places to put them. If a gear is dropped, go get another. If two gears are dropped, fix your robot (or pilot) to stop dropping gears.

Re: Ground Intake for Fuel and Gears
 

It doubt that any match will 'run out' of FUEL. There are a total of 100*5+30*2+20*2=600 FUEL. To control all of those, one alliance would likely fill all 5x of their bins with 60 FUEL each, controlling 300 already-scored
FUEL, plus storing 100x in each of their 3 alliance robots. This seems extremely unlikely to me.