Will Alliances Win?
 

Looking back at FRC history, there have been many games where a well-designed robot could effectively win most matches on its own, and only a few where alliances with specialized and effective partners were necessary. The Coopertition Bridge in 2012 seems like a forced effort to get teams to work together, so I'm not counting that. Aside from 2014, I can't think of many games where effective partnerships were super important.

What about this year? It seems possible that we might have actually received a game where the "we-will-do-it-all-ourselves-please-stay-out-of-our-way"robots may not be able to do it all, and where specialized machines in symbiotic partnerships will win more than a do-it-all. I may be wrong in this assessment, and would to hear your points of view.

It's also my opinion that, if the above turns out to be true, it will be an especially bad year for mediocre do-it-alls. My advice to mid-level teams echoes that from a few earlier threads: please don't try to do both major scoring objectives. Do one of them well, and climb. Maybe I'm wrong there too, though.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This is almost always good advice, many years there has been a lot of value in excelling at one thing, and being a capable contributor for the end game. Perfecting one of the two scoring methods and being able to hang will be enough to be capable of winning almost all district competitions, and most regionals. Balls this year are a linear points system, but it is a slow slope, gears become less valuable after the first 2-3. 3 middle of the road robots that split time between both tasks will not get either extra ranking point.

I expect the top teams will do it all, and do it all effectively. I imagine the elite teams will be able to run a cycle loading a gear and filling up the hopper at the loading station, and/or picking up balls while driving, then unload their gear and empty their balls high faster than above average teams can just pick up and place a gear. The alliances on Einstein will likely have 2 of this type of robot.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

After analyzing the rules of the game very deeply, I have come to the conclusion that alliances will indeed win. In fact, I predict that for every match of FIRST Steamworks, there will be on average, just under 1 winning alliance.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

The elite "we-will-do-it-all-ourselves-please-stay-out-of-our-way" teams will still do everything in the game, and do it well. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say these teams will be so superior that they can overcome a 1 or 2 climb deficit. Making up 50-100 points in this game will be a real challenge. I think the difference for these elite teams will need to come during autonomous, because putting in 150-300 Fuel during teleop while also cycling 6 gears will probably not happen very often.

I also agree that specialization is usually very important for mid and low tier teams. Doing one thing well is better than being average at everything. But is it really so difficult to do every aspect of the game this year, and are teams that try to do everything going to be negatively effected more than they would be in a typical year?

My initial reaction to those questions is trying to do everything this year isn't any more challenging than its been in the past. I think it might even be easier. The reason I think so is because teams can literally have a static mailbox or "Gearage" as my team likes to call it, on their robot and they can complete a significant aspect of the game.

Regardless of what Gear mechanism you choose to use, you can only hold 1 Gear at a time, and the Gear mechanism won't take up the entire volume of your robot.

Every decent team including 2nd picks will need to climb this year. 50 points is too large of a deficit for a playoff alliance to consistently make up. So low and mid tier teams will at minimum need to find space on their robots for Gears, and for climbing. I don't see how those mechanisms will occupy the entire volume of the robot, although I could be blinded by experience.

I would think most teams would benefit from having a way to collect Fuel from the hoppers and then dump them into the low goal. It's a significant boost in robot quality with the addition of a single mechanism.

In my mind, the ideal 2nd pick would have a 6 cim drivetrain, be able to cycle Gears, climb, and shuttle Fuel from a Hopper to either the Low goal, or to the key for the best high goal shooter to quickly intake and score it. I also think this type of team will be extremely rare, because many of these low to mid tier teams will fall into the trap of high goal shooting...

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Do you consider a tie a half a win, cause if so then there will be exactly 1 winning alliance on average lol

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Tie =/= win :D

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I'm predicting that there will be less than 10 teams capable of placing 5-6 gears per regional. These teams are definitely going to pick each other, and any robots that can't also place gears and deal with/dish out defense just won't be picked. The 100 point bonus from all rotors turning is way too huge to not have a few extra "insurance" gears in case things go pear shaped. Climbing, unlike last year, is pretty much a must for a first pick. I can see (good) climbers being in short supply after the first round of selections, so I think having a triple climb in district and regional levels is going to be rare and powerful.

I've deliberately left out fuel from the above, and that's because I think most robots will just ignore it entirely in favor of gears during eliminations. People seem to be seriously under estimating the difficulty of getting 12 gears on the airship.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I doubt very much that a robot like this slips to the late second round for the top seeds at normal Regional/District events. If they are effective at climbing and one of the two tasks then they will be an alliance captain or 1st round pick in shallow events, and an early 2nd round pick (seeds 5 - 8) at worst for a deep event.

At most events your top seeds are going to just be looking for a team that can move and climb for their last pick. They may have these other scoring mechanisms but they won't work well, if they did the team would have seeded higher and would already be snatched up by an earlier alliance.


On a related note, I see 6 CIM drivetrains mentioned more and more frequently on CD, but it is rare to find in my experience. You can't do 6 CIM drive using the kitbot gearboxes which automatically excludes 50% of teams, and even for teams that do a custom chassis or other gearboxes many don't use 6 CIMs. In 13 years of FRC no team I have been with has done 6 motors of any type on the drivetrain and we've made playoffs 11/13 years, advancing beyond the quarterfinals 7/13 times. Maybe I just think pushing power is a bit overrated, we've had much better success sinking the extra weight/power/money into manipulators or beefing up the frame.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Last year, many teams could reduce the tower, whether 8 or 10, and cross 4 defenses on their own, and only needed the other 2 bots to mount the batter at the end--not too difficult of a task. So they could get all of the RPs and bonus elim round points on their own.

I don't think that a team will be able to get all 12 gears on their own running standard cycles, and the climb is a bigger factor this year. So alliance mates will be more important in the qualifying rounds. Also coordinating both placing gears and setting up for shots will be more important.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

One other thought--low goal scoring during teleop will be worth very little. It takes 360 low goals to get to 40 kPa. That's time better spent chasing gears if that's the choice a team faces.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

And for that reason I predict defense in this game will play a role like we've never seen before.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Were you around for Aerial Assist?

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

He joined CD in 2015, so I don't blame him if he wasn't on a team to know the defense present in 2003, 2006, 2007, 2011, or 2014.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

2015 wasn't a great year to join, at least concerning defense.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Fixed that for you.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I am quite aware haha. May have been exaggerating slightly ;)

I just think people may be underestimating how big defense will effect matches this year especially in elims. It's just been a long time (if ever, not a game i can think of) since there has been a game with two primary ways to score with only one of them being protected. And the one that is is what some would consider less advantageous.

I think we may see a fuel alliance beat a gear alliance. The distance to travel to collect gears and score them is somewhat large as well as blocked by obstacles. Some of the lifts are somewhat hard to see and the peg is not exactly the biggest target. Mix some or two robots in playing defense I think some interesting things could happen.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This year, it seems like gears are the prerequisite for doing well rather than a main task you focus on. I think even for two really strong robots, it will be tough to get all the gears done and even if they can, having a third robot able to do their part in gears is going to be too helpful to pass up. Especially since there are so many other things going on in the game.

I think overall though, a really strong robot will be able to carry itself through qualifications. Alliances, like almost every year in my opinion, will be what wins events.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I think that the auto gear is absolutely essential for fuel robots. My production is to be a first pick you need it and any other robot with it is an auto second pick. Gears are not going to ml win the game at the high level. They will just be the starting point.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

We used a three cim drive train once for 2014.... and let me tell
You for that game it was well worth it. But we have been designing our own gearboxes for years. It's not somthing in would recommend for a rookie team two Will do just fine for this game!

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Aerial assist defense was absolutely insane nothing better then that, you could shut down an entire top ranked alliance And beat them doing one assist cycles. I miss those games

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This year, in quals, there will not be many alliances that can get the four rotors turning, even the top teams. So if you can get those 6 gears plus a little bit of fuel in the high goal to offset the score and a reliable climber, you'll be able to rank high in quals. Pick another robot that is a good gear-er or fuel-er and you focus on your prospective tasks plus a raw defense bot and that's a winning alliance. I just think its going to be really hard to separate out scores in qualification alliances based on how those gear tiers are set up.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Honestly- everybody is talking up how big defense is gonna be, and I gotta believe it.
But we all talk about how important it's going to be, but yet everyone is designing a robot that can score, and talking about this mysterious robot that will come from the shadows and tear apart the souls of top-take down alliances simply because it can move back and forth in a choke point. The fact of the matter is that building a purely defensive robot will NOT happen unless a team uses it as a last resort.
I can however, see high ranking alliances using it in dire situations to get the upper hand on an even higher ranking opponent. (Similar to 2016 IRI finals) The reason is simply that teams will always try to outscore the opponent until they know that they can't. That's when teams will play defense. Otherwise, defense is really more of a net loss for both sides because one team is lacking efficiency, and another is simply losing a second or two during their cycle.
The climbing is the real problem here because if a robot is trying to defend too much and can't climb, they lose a lot of points.
Now, maybe there is a bit of place for it in eliminations if they can stop some gears from being scored, but I honestly don't think that the best alliances will have one individual robot per job. They will more than likely all three be able to climb, cycle fuel, and cycle gears. Even if it meant losing 100 pts in Elims (for not getting all 4 rotors turning) an alliance could easily identify that they were losing and have a weaker alliance member go to defense to even the playing field.

Not that this long winded semi-rant is done I would like to mention-
I've only been at this for 2 years, so I could VERY easily be proven wrong, and that all of this is my opinion with experience and CD browsing to back it up. Do NOT take anything that I said to heart, just bear it in mind.

TL;DR: Somebody actually has to make a robot designed for defense to make defense effective

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I should also mention- most teams don't have a good way to measure effectiveness in defense, so if you did build a defensive robot, you'd purely be hoping that your ability to prevent other robots from scoring wins you matches during Quals, which is not easy to count on. (As well as it makes it harder for your alliance to score rank points due to the fact that you're not contributing to it.) So when alliance selection comes around, most stats will say that that robot scored 0. And it might be noted that t played defense well, but ultimately, alliance captains will want robots that can help score lots of points (such as getting rotors spinning) over having a purely defensive robot.

Like I said though, that doesn't negate the need for a defensive robot in dire situations, but said robot should not be built for defense.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I agree this isn't a defensive game, it's an offensive game, that why there are so many balls and not just one that must be scored, and that's also why there are three davits and not just one. You will not be picked in the finals if all you can do is play defense.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

In 2014 we used mecanum, an instant forfeit of any pushing ability and We ended up as a #8 captain and the #4 pick at our two events so it still went well. I didn't feel like we were at a huge disadvantage, nobody pinned us into a wall for 2 minutes.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Yes. There will be very few teams which can hang 12 gears, and only a few who can get to 40 kPa by themselves. There are likely to be a handful of powerhouses who can do either in any match, but not both. Any team which can do both by itself in the same match with any consistency are likely to be as rare as ginger unicorns.

Alliances will win most qual matches, and essentially all elimination matches.

I expect defense to be important this year for the same reason it was in 2014 Aerial Assault - because while each task looks simple, there are problems that many teams will not discover until their first competition match, leaving them with little or no scoring capability. And most of those teams which are unable to do more offense than they can counter will get in the way, dump hoppers, disrupt scoring, and whatever else they can to slow down their opponents.

Climb will be essential. I don't think it's ever been easier, because you don't have to reach up to a rung but snag a rope within your allowable volume. (Though maybe I'm still missing something here.)

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I would definitely agree with that statement about the defense. But I also have no doubt that high-scoring teams will find a way to counter it during quals. Otherwise, the usefulness of defense will be major in eliminations when scoring will be much closer. But even then, unless it's in a match where somebody knows they will lose, I still see teams trying to outscore each other.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

The best thing that could be said about 2015 was things could only go up from there.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Not true. We saw many things go down from there :yikes:

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This is the truth. In 2013 my team's alliance made it to the MSC finals by simply outscoring every other alliance handily. However, once we got there, we lost the first match when the #1 seeded alliance filled the high goal with their full court shooter. We changed our strategy completely to a defensive game, with one robot running cycles and the other two sort of tag-team defending and cycling, and ended up winning. I think in this game we'll get the same thing; an alliance will lose their first match when they can't keep up on the scoreboard, and so for the next match they'll switch to a defensive strategy.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I'll agree with KokoEd on this. As much as I dislike the themes for the past two years, they sure beat Recycle Rush! as a theme. And the game design for last year and this year is leaps above RR, and probably as good as some of the other good games from the past. I can't think of any aspect that has gotten worse, and most got better.

30 seconds to climb a kinetic object, little room for error


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I'll preface by saying this is my first year as a mentor (and first year within FRC) so I may be underestimating the task but is everyone else really thinking that 30 seconds leaves little room for error?

I personally think 30 seconds is a generous amount of time to climb. In fact, I would expect the teams that do it well will be able to ignore the rope falling down until around 15 seconds left in the match, or even 10, depending on where they are playing within the field.

Am I off point here?

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

The main aspect is lining up and grabbing onto the "rope", once that occurs a rs550, BAG, rs775, 775pro, Mini-CIM or a CIM can complete the climb in a reasonably small period of time( probably best to avoid AM PG's, Snow-Blowers or Automotive motors if you want a fast and reliable climb) Geared correctly a single 775pro or CIM can easily lift a 154lb robot 5ft in 5 seconds.

The Linear Mechanism/motion tab in the JVN calculator is a pretty easy way to estimate speeds and gearing necessary for a given motor:

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3188?langid=2

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

There is a tendency to think that a team is either offensive or defensive. One can play a game where the role of offense and defense is fluid. Diverting from offense to take an opportunist shot when the opponent is blind can take a second or 2 while the bashed robot takes many seconds to recover. Defense is about robing your opponent time with out hurting your own efforts. The lack of vision this year plays into the hands of defense. This is an alliance game.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

On a (somewhat) unrelated note, I'm going to be a little mad if gears are as big of a deal as the appear to be, since the mechanisms required to do them aren't very sophisticated.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I would say gears will be a huge deal between alliances. In quals, if you are unable to do at least three rotors as an alliance it may be fine depending on the quality of the robots/teams at the event. In elims, as finals matches near, if an alliance can't do three rotors minimum that alliance is going to be put a severe disadvantage.

Five robot placed gears to get three rotors being less than half the challenge and time than the last rotor is going to make quick and dependable gear mechanisms on alliances paired with other beneficial components pretty important this year.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I don't think there will be a gear powerhouse sure thing team this year, this year as any defense can start to thwart that... plus need 12 (9 if 3 auto) to earn RP. Perhaps if three do gear-focused bots exclusively all game. you could mitigate that somewhat but that's relying on partners.

There are 5 easily defended points... the retrieval area for (180 the three pegs and the transition ..any of those defenses slows cycles. Not like last year or year before...with shooting from safe zones and no defense year prior . I think any alliance can significantly slow if dedicated any gear bot and has that last 6 (gear differentiator) to do so.... save the 100 or RP.

Fuel is another story, entire Launchpad and unlimited collection albeit harder to max out but not impossible (both tend to top out around 200) . Easier to earn the RP or 40 and much harder to defend with low bots...plus leave time to climb

Definitely an alliance game even just looking as climbs. Much harder than a capture and that was not guaranteed either

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I suspect that in any given match, all three robots will have some for of a gear mechanism. Getting the rp for rotors is easier than everyone is thinking it is. Each robot only needs to score 4 gears. That gives cycle times of 30 seconds per gears leaving 15 seconds to climb. Not to mention auto. While a defense bot will be able to slow 1 robot down, said defense bot will have a hard time shutting down 3.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

We've been known to do this from time to time, is it teaser time yet? :p

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I think a single defender can guard or slow down significantly entrance to the retrieval zone or jostling Gears out with another doing part time peg ramming perhaps the shooter bot could be effective... hard to place a peg on a spring when being jostled. Also the retrieval zone is a known corner a defense bot with a good drivetrain could impede that for all three bots. So a 30 second cycle all the sudden becomed becomes a 40 second cycle negating the fourth rotor besides I doubt 4 is anywhere near the average success more like 2-3

Plus the traversing blind aspect, and far end acquisition of Gears , loading is easy when on your end the other end not a given

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

We are planning on a five secound climber from lining up to touching the top very easy with the right motor/ gearing. And s good lining up method

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Remember that gear scoring is capped and fuel scoring is not. In fact there's an inflection point out there where the two cross. I'll let you calculate it.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Not true. 148 showed us a video of a Regional match where they lost their shooter last season, and then turned single handedly to completely shut down a high-goal shooting alliance. It's most about the driver, a bot with torque and not being top heaving.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

How did none of us realize this, this is amazing. :)

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What typically happens is that teams that cannot score due to their mechanism not quite working properly, would be better off playing defense.

Interestingly enough, defense is more of a driver thing than it is a robot thing. For example, an experience driver would know which robots to target, how to abuse different drivetrains, angle of attack, playing defense around game obstacles, etc. I know teams that have their drive-teams perform drivers practice year round just to mess up drivers that don't have as much experience. There are teams that will scout for drivers that have bad habits/tendencies (nerve issues, etc) and then exploit them (even in quals). The best defense robots are going to be the ones that have very good strategically map awareness and very practiced drivers. Especially with the advantage that a defense bot has at the gear cycle path.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I agree with you here- but my overall point is not that defense is entirely irrelevant, but that it likely won't be a huge important thing this year. (Or any more than any other year.) However, I would say that if there were teams with well thought-out defensive strategy, they will do quite well. (And I also know about the lack of functioning robot parts, from experience ;) ) But I still for the most part think defense will be rare, and good defense will be even rarer, because teams with a well-thought out defensive strategy are probably good enough teams that they will be able to score with consistency.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Which match was that? Is there a publicly available video of it?

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I think a lot of people are missing the point here there's nothing more important than gears and climbing. Sure the 40 kPa is big but that can be done by one robot in half the match. Those other two bots just need to place gears and climb any team that wants to play after lunch on Saturday build a robot that will do gears passively and climb but don't disregard the drivetrain 6 cims 4 inch colsons, you don't need a shifter just be around 10ft/s good speed for cycling and defense. This is the year where younger teams build for Eliminations not for qualifications you can lose all your matches but if you're consistent with your gears and climbing and can hold your own on defense any team actually scouting and thinking strategically will call your number Saturday morning.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Well the mechanism might not need to be complex, augmenting that mechanism so that it will perform better is still important because it will shave time off of scoring cycles.