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Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
Based on posts by other people on Chief Delphi, it sounds like a lot more teams will be attempting to score in every way possible than in the past. I was a little startled when I saw that many teams will be attempting to score in the high efficiency boiler, score gears, and climb. I made this poll just to see how many teams are actually planning on doing all three.
I'm aware many teams will say they are attempting to do all three and that may not occur on their final robot, but I'm still curious to see the replies. |
Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
I always love the optimism of week 1.
This poll tells me that more than 60% of teams will have at least one mechanism on their robot that never works or works so poorly that it isn't worth using (scoring 20 balls in the high goal all teleop). I will concede that a small portion of teams will succeed in having at least decent ability in all categories. For everyone who voted the first option, please go watch Karthik's Effective FIRST Strategies video, and then reconsider your goal. |
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*If you think you're going to build a sort-of-okay climber and gear runner and floor pickup and on and on, good on you for honest assessment, but why? |
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CD is also populated to a large number of people on established, well funded, and competent teams. |
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Karthik was correct last year, the vast majority of teams who limited themselves to fitting under the low bar while shooting were mediocre high goal shooters, or mediocre Boulder scorers period. You only needed to average 2.66 boulders per robot for a capture last year, yet a capture was rare outside of the top 2 - 4 playoff alliances in the first 3 weeks last year, and more than half the boulder scoring was being done by one robot typically. If you are on one of those elite level teams more power to you trying it all. My advice is listen to the advice of many experienced FIRSTers and become elite in 2 out of 3 instead. You can win a World Championship without doing it all. |
Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
Please never look at how an Einstein robot (particularly an AC or first pick!) sets their design specs as the "correct" answer. Setting your specs to be a world champion powerhouse does not make you a world champion powerhouse. Meeting 30% of those specs is not going to make you 30% of a world champion. In the literal sense, it probably even won't get you a third of the way there. Just because it worked for them doesn't mean it will for us mere mortals--statistically speaking it almost certainly isn't the correct choice. All the winning alliance captains of every other event are not looking for poor 330 knockoffs; they're looking for your best effort to meet alliance strategy needs.
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Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
We have two that we've made much bigger priorities, and the third will be extra if we get to it.
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Personally the results of this poll are disappointing because I thought that one of the best advantages of this game was that there are a lot of creative and focused options for lower tier teams to pursue and be successful. |
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Cheers, Bryan |
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Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
I don't think 330 should have built 330's 2016 robot
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Teams should push their limits, a regional of AM14U3's driving around playing defense is not one I want to watch.
Some of you are coming across very elitist. Will a team/student learn more from simply assembling kit bot or from trying something completely out of their comfort zone? Yes they should try to do it in the offseason, but if they only do FRC during build season, they should try something new. Fail early and fail often, just learn from each one. It isn't a robot right? |
Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
I think a team can feasibly achieve 2 out of the 3 tasks rather simply. (in order of simplicity)
1. Passive gear mechanism 2. Velcro (if ruled legal) or other type of drum/winch climber mechanism The aforementioned 2 tasks could probably be manufactured and put on a robot in 1-2 weeks or less by a good amount of teams. This leaves a good amount time to develop a somewhat effective shooter. Now that time could possibly be better spent improving other function of the robot along with driver's practice. At the end of the day I think many teams find themselves with the resources to check off all three tasks, but I'm curious to see how this translates to competition. |
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My team personally is going to be prioritizing balls over gears and gears over climbing. However, I do expect to be able to accomplish everything. Atleast by our 2nd regional ;). However, we will not even be attempting to build a climber until our shooter as well as gear mechanisms are all atleast somewhat working. Karthiks Golden Rules are definitely something which should be taken to heart. I hear he knows a thing or two about FRC. |
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Last night, Team 4272 Maverick Boiler Robotics decide we would only be focusing on only two aspects of the game and not all three. As a team, we decided our efforts would be best put towards two high quality (relative to our past) systems rather than three below average systems.
I'm not bashing on teams that try all three, it's just our team did not think WE could do it and do it well. |
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Personally, I've always found the FRC tendency to value the learning experience of attempting more "elite" bots versus the experience from building simpler ones to be ridiculously elitist. It's also a culture that generates a lot of common learning gaps like this. I admit we tend to overcompensate in an attempt to get some teams to reassess. I do believe this is a year on which more robots than some other years can do all functions (certainly more than full-color, 30 point climb, floor pickup of 2013), but that doesn't mean everyone who might be able to automatically should. |
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You seem to be setting up a pretty harsh binary set of options here - either building a box on wheels or going way outside a team's comfort zone. My experience has been that my students seem to get the most learning and inspiration from doing something just a little bit outside of their comfort zone, but still within their reach if they push for it. Up until about 2013, 1257 was a shoot for the stars sort of team. Every year, the goal was to do everything. Every year, that goal led to chaos. Students bit off way more than they could chew, and that turned into frustration, which turned into anger, which turned into burnout. By the end of build season, nobody wanted to be around anybody else on the team. Nothing much happened in the offseason, because nobody wanted to be there. We were a terrible team - not just in terms of competitive performance, but even in terms of being a group of people who worked together. In 2014, we started to listen to some of the mentors you're referring to as sounding elitist. We realized that we weren't ready to build an Einstein bot - we needed to focus on being able to build a robot that worked at all. We simplified, and we didn't try to do everything. We weren't a captain, or even a first pick, but we got picked. Given our team's recent history at the time, that was a big deal to us. The students had a much better experience on the team when they weren't overwhelmed by trying to reach too far out of their comfort zone, and they learned a lot more when the robot was simple enough that more of the team could understand what was going on and work on it. Our goal since then has not been to build outside our reach, but to expand our reach a bit each year. If the KOP chassis starts to become trivial, we can modify it. If modified KOP chassis becomes trivial, we can try designing a custom chassis, starting with one in the off-season. If we know that we can absolutely, without a doubt, get one task done well, we can try for two. Also, please keep in mind that for some teams, a basic box-bot truly is a challenge. I see multiple teams every year that struggle simply to have a legal robot that they can drive around the field. |
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I don't know what my team's doing yet but I do wish everyone attempting to do all three good luck! It seems like a lot to handle.
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As a mentor for my team we have an effective strategy for picking up gears, grabbing fuel from either the feeder station or floor, and climbing. Implementing those within our design and ensuring that we are above average on all of those is our best game plan. We will see how it works.
"The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks." -Mark Zuckerburg |
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I'll be interested to see what everyone does. I'm betting the strongest alliance will be formed by the best fuel bot and the best gear bot, with the 3rd pick being a competent drive train able to play defense, reliably dump fuel in the low goal and/or occasionally hang gears. Bonus points if the 3rd bot has 8-15 lbs available for a cheesecaked rope solution (if that's even legal this year). |
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45% of people who responded to this and the other poll (Gears vs Balls) are implying that it's better to be mediocre at everything rather than great at a few things. :confused:
(edit) - hint hint - passive gear mechanisms alone do not make a robot 'great' at gears. |
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As a mentor I believe that a team should prototype all the possibilities.
Team 5920 will be prototyping and test all the possibilities that is the way the students will learn. Maybe some mechanisms may not end up on the robot but you just may find the perfect balance to include all. |
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Just because you "can" accomplish a task doesn't mean you will be good at a task. More to the point, the lack of concern for design optimization troubles me greatly. Let's take fuel scoring as an example. Being high top level fuel scoring robot likely means taking steps in your design to optimize for ball storage. The more additional mechanisms you add to your robot, the less space you have available to store fuel. This is a simple and objective truth. You're directly compromising your fuel storage ability by adding additional systems. Similar examples can also apply to intake geometry and placement, drivetrain dimensioning, sizing choices, etc. |
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Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
Maybe I see things a bit differently...but I look at three different scoring methods, with three different levels of reward, difficulty, and effort to make the mechanism. One of them has what I consider to be a very high effort to make a very effective mechanism, the other two will take a medium effort to make. Our team is going for the two relatively easy scoring methods, and doing our best to ignore the really difficult one (even though it is obviously the most fun).
Should be an interesting build season. I was also thinking back over the past several games, and noticed that lately there have been games that require added mechanisms to accomplish the end game, where if you go back several years, that was not the case. FRC robot design is getting more challenging. |
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People talk a good game about recommending that other teams leave out a core game function.
If you're a team that's good enough to consistently seed as an alliance captain, then sure, it's more convenient for you to draw qualifier round allies and 2nd round picks that are capable of doing one function really well. But those allies aren't necessarily doing themselves any favors (competitively speaking) by capping their abilities at a scoring level that's too low to win a regional except as a lottery winner 2nd round pick. I'm not trying to disparage the value of those 2nd round teams, but I do say that banking on being that team is a low probability proposition. I'd only want to go that route if my team's resources were low enough to rule out any reasonable possibility of building the everything bot and seeding high. The scoring math is depressing to look at for robots that are missing one of the key elements. It comes down to team resources. It makes sense for lower resource teams to pick something and stick to it. This isn't a year when I'd advise a middle resource team to skip out on part of the game, and that's due to the nature of the game scoring. |
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The advice given, to not be a jack of all trades, isn't the top teams trying to talk down to middle teams to get better second picks. It's not only a good idea because you're a better 16th selection that way; you'll be a more effective robot overall and quite possibly a captain or first pick. The advice is gets middle ground teams to win events. Depending on your team, the event, the task, and how good you're at it, you can definitely seed first without doing all of the game tasks this year. |
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The last time we seeded first at a regional was 2013, and we did it with a robot that was kind of flaky, but did the main scoring thing reasonably well, and the end game only for the minimum number of points, and not very reliably.
I know that you can seed well at many regionals with a robot that leaves out a scoring method, if you are really good at the other two. You'll definitely do better than the large group of robots that are mediocre at all three elements. But each team will do what they do...as always... |
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Somehow, I severely doubt that. I still expect that most third robots at the regional level will not be able to climb, especially the 24th robot in the tournament. Even if you want to include two climbers, no one robot is going to get 12 gears. Especially if the other team is thinking any kind of gear defense. You need multiple contributors in AT LEAST the gear aspect, and in fuel too at the higher levels of play. |
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That made us a perfect pick for a good ball handling robot. The year that we specialized the most, we did our best in elimination, making it to the finals on Einstein. Now if only I can get the students on my team to realize this... ;) |
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Of the 3 core game functions, one gives a set amount of points (and it is a reasonable amount of points for the time spent). The other two only give a LOT of points after a LOT of effort. It does teams little to no good to give half effort to both game functions to get no bonus when compared to an alliance that is great at one or the other and gets one bonus. The hidden 'bonus' with balls comes by overwhelming the opponents with overflowing balls and then starting a cycle where balls are continuously dumped on the floor near the boiler they're to be scored in. It really only has to happen once or twice a match to be very effective for points. Yet getting & placing gears means wasting the time spent in gathering & scoring the large quantity of balls required to start this cycle. |
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And winning is still the best way to get RP, last I checked. It has to be a balance. You don't have to be the best gear robot in the world, but you need to be able to rely on yourself to do upwards of 3 per match. You don't have to be the best fuel robot in the world, but if you can get 35-40kPA by yourself, you're sitting pretty good. You don't have to have a climber, but man, it's sure faster to have a climber than to do another 3-4 gears. |
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So to us, getting the RP for the gears isn't nearly as important as a win margin for Quals. The way we rank above other gear bots is "simply" by being the best at gears for an event, thus winning our matches with good scores. |
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I think teams pursuing versatility is important. If your robot only scores gears and you're on an alliance with two other robots that only score gears, your alliance is in trouble. Having the ability in this situation to score balls (even minimally) is better than only being able to score gears. But I think it's also important that a team is somewhat specialized.
If a team is really good at scoring gears but can also score balls, is on an alliance with a team that's really good at scoring balls but can also score gears, the alliance (imo) is much better of than if both robots were completely specialized or not specialized at all. For example: Our team intends to have a robot that is really good at delivering gears but can also score balls in the low goal if necessary. I think pursuit of all forms of scoring might mean that people do things only marginally well, and so it's important for a team to monitor what they are trying most to achieve and do it the best. But I also think an alliance with three robots that can all score three ways is strategically a lot better than an alliance with specialized robots. |
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That ranking point won't be achievable with just two robots in quals at most events. Think of how many cycles teams did in 2013, when scoring was much faster. |
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Is being a marginal fit onto each and every possible alliance really better than being an ideal fit onto a subset of alliances?
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Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
I am generally the person on my team arguing that being really good at some of the tasks is better than being decent at all of them. This year I am not so sure. At least from a building the robot perspective. This year a mediocre gear scorer that can score their initial gear in autonomous or early in teleop and is capable of getting 2-3 more in a match if needed can be very valuable if they can climb. A team that can reliably climb in 20 seconds is not at a huge disadvantage over a team that can climb in 10 seconds. So it might not be worth investing a ton of effort in a better (faster, cooler) climbing mechanism if that takes away from moving another capability from poor to mediocre. Obviously scoring fuel is the most difficult task because it takes so much fuel to get many points. On the other hand it could have a really high marginal value given that there is a hard upper limit on score from climbing and gears. I have been noodling around a lot in the past few days with game theoretic models and it is not at all clear this year (unlike most years) that a robot has a huge advantage being really at good at one thing, mediocre at one and unable to one versus a robot that is mediocre at all three. Particularly if the climbing mediocrity is that it takes longer versus not being reliable.
Optimal strategy is going to change drastically depending on your alliance. Last year there were plenty of robots that could get a ranking point on their own by clearing the outer works. This year it will be the rare robot that can score 40 fuel or 12 gears on its own. This year my plea, to my team, is to go with pretty good mechanisms we can get done quickly in order to give us time to practice with them. I completely agree with the posters who believe that we tend to give short shrift to optimizing pretty good devices versus making really amazing devices. All of that said, try to concentrate on doing what you think will lead to the best experience for your team. Pay attention to the advice you get from experienced mentors, by all means, but don't let that just make the decisions for you. Last year I know several teams that abandoned low goal capability because the "good teams" told them to. I was personally struck by how many matches I watched last year where alliances did not get the ranking point for clearing the defenses because they couldn't clear the low goal and failed at one of the others. I ran a bunch of game theoretic simulations and you had to be really good at high goal shooting to make it worth giving up low goal capability. Furthermore, the lower profile robots seemed to hold up better to the wear and tear last year and didn't fall over as much. |
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We on 2910, determined that we will prioritize the tasks as such:
1. Gears 2. Climbing 3. Fuel Currently we are subscribing to the thought that a Jack-of-all-Trades is a master of none. We would rather have a really good climber and gear system, with the time it takes for driving practice, than have an OK version of all three manipulators, and limited driver practice. We are still considering handling the fuel in some capacity however, and are thinking of gathering it if it happens to be in our way, and dumping it in our zone for any shooters on our Alliances. The thought process here is a combination of the points, and considering the time it takes to perfect and tune a shooter. Hope this helps! |
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It is my belief that 70% of the seeding matched will only have 2 propellers running (at least 2 gears, but less than 6). The reason I believe this is because teams will not realize the difficulty in retrieving and placing gears once the field is littered with fuel, gears, and defense). since 1 propeller is guaranteed (due to the reserve gear) any team that can score 40 kPa (with a little help from their alliance partners) will match that 80 points of the gearbots and have the ranking point. They will thus rank higher and be in a picking position. I believe that gearbots are more setup to win in the elimination rounds (tougher to defend against 2-3 gear ferrying bots), but need to get there first (which will be hard for them). |
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Being an alliance captain and having a decent chance to win the event aren't quite the same thing. You can get stuck in the bottom half of the elimination round alliances with little realistic shot at winning if you pick a strategy with a hard points ceiling. |
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For a lot of teams they feel the choice is "do everything well" or "do some things very well", when really the choice might be "do everything at a mediocre level" or "do some thing well". The latter is, very consistently, more successful no matter how good you are at the Some Thing. In my seasons in FRC, I've never had a season that ended with us hitting our points ceiling, having been the most effective at any task we specialized in, but unable to contribute further due to designing out a key feature. Either we never got great at that one task we specialized in anyway, or we tried to do too much and ended up as a jack-of-all trades who gets picked 4th-9th in the draft and losing before the finals. Part of this advice is influenced by being in the district system, where being a middle of the pack semifinalist will get my team to DCMP, and then we'll be a top second round pick if we don't add additional functionality and we really do get very good at the key aspects of the game. I dunno. |
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Re: Will Your Robot Be High Goaling, Scoring Gears, AND Climbing?
We are similar in that we are focused on two things, but plan to work our way to three. In the past two seasons, we have reserved one extra function to develop after build season for Dist Champs and Worlds. Here's my opinion of our priorities:
1. Drivetrain (we have an experienced driver and developed a faster drivetrain off-season that will work with some modifications in geometry). 2. Gears 3. Climbing 4. Shooting 5. Floor intake Robot volume is our most troubling aspect right now. Last year, we overemphasized RP's and that made it difficult to win matches. This year, we want the points first for the win and then ranking points. But it still gets down to cycle time. I feel a strong alliance will be two good gear robots with the 100 points available in playoffs for getting all four rotors going. Not sure on if defense will make this very hard. |
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