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Efficient Points
So after looking into how to score points and where we get our game pieces from, I haven't found a viable use for fuel when relaying gears the whole competition would most likely be a much better use of time. I see the place for a fuel shooting robot in an alliance, however, thinking selfishly I do not really see someone individually gaining more out of shooting over relaying gears and then climbing at the end. I was wondering if anyone could confirm or deny my thoughts on this strategy?
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Denied. While a dedicated GEAR runner will likely be a very valuable robot, I think you will find that FUEL bots will more than pull their own weight in this game.
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GEAR scoring has a limit. FUEL scoring does not.
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If your team can make a good fuel handling robot, it's worth it. If not, then it's not worth it.
I see it as a pretty steep curve....if you don't get the whole thing working well, you won't do well. But the gears have the same problem, you need to be really good with them to do well, and most teams (and alliances) won't ever get really good at it. So, pick the stuff you want to build, build it, have fun... |
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Gears will win matches.
Climbing will win events. Fuel will win championships. |
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Fuel scoring will determine events, due to ranking points. The best gear bot in the world won't get 12 gears by itself, while really good ones will have trouble breaking 8 a match and average gear bots will get 2-4 (average FRC team, not necessarily the average Chief Delphi browsing team). Gear bots are heavily reliant on partners to get an extra RP, and if captures last year are an indication it will be rare in quals outside the Championship and District Champ events.
In comparison the fuel RP seems much more achievable by one bot with little to no partner help. That is 40 points, the equivalent of an extra rotor, plus a guaranteed RP. If a fuel bot goes 7-3 but gets the fuel RP in every match it wins, it is tied in ranking points with a gear bot that goes 10-0 and gets one extra RP in the event due to hitting 12 gears or a partner getting the fuel RP. Gear running will make you a strong first round pick, but gears alone will make it difficult to crack the top 8 unless you are a top 2-3 gear cycler at your event since bots with fuel capability can have a 2-3 win cushion on you if they consistently get the fuel RP. We prioritized fuel over gears for this reason. We're interested in seeding in the top 10-15 and just making eliminations, since seeding that high will almost guarantee we qualify for the off season State Championship event in Arizona, and we don't think we can pull off a high level gear cycler plus climber. |
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I worry that gears this year will fall into the same trap as low bar robots last year. Being able to fit underneath the low bar was a fundamental design work around last year that teams had to account for. Which in terms so many teams decided to make this part of their strategy that other crucial aspects of the game were ignored. Not saying that some team where not able go under the low bar and effectively accomplish the other task of the game. My team being one of them.
With this year if more teams design around gears being their primary objective, which in my opinion they will, then most alliances will be lacking a refined shooter. Therefore by analyzing the game from this perspective making a fuel robot that is refined and very efficient at fuel scoring will actually contribute much more than an individual gear scoring robot. This adds to your efficiency of your alliance each match and therefore increases your worth when it comes to alliance selections. Where especially in elims where most teams will be able to handle the gear the load the difference will come down to the amount of ball points being scored. |
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Making a refined and very efficient fuel shooter will be a good plan this year. The thing is...how many teams can actually do that, of the number that attempt it? My guess is not very many. It is not a trivial task.
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With this year's game I think the highest quality shooter that could be produced will be a robot that has an accurate turret with vision tracking that can shoot on the run over a tall robot. Not a easy task, not even a moderately hard task, this is an extremely difficult task. However if you could do that it would be awesome and very valuable to an alliance. |
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The general idea I came to (not necessarily my team) is that gears are going to be similar to defenses from last year. They are going to be simple to score and the amount of effort put into your system is not going to dramatically increase its effectiveness. Last year, most teams who put even slightly below average amount of thought in their drive trains were able to cross most defenses, with the low bar being a strategic exception. I think it is safe to say that since the RI3D can make a decent gear mechanism that we will see it on most bots this year.
What I am getting at is that I do not believe the gears will be the deciding factor in any game where all the robots function normally, obviously in qualification matches where anything can happen alliance wise then gears may be much more important, but during eliminations and final matches the fuel is going to decide it. The number of fuel scored is going to make the difference in those close matches. With this in mind we can expect that fuel scoring capability is likely to be the deciding factor in endgame alliance selection as well. Just my thoughts. Also I want to point out, fuel scoring is a finite source of point, because the hoppers process 4-5 fuel per second then that times the number of seconds in a game is the max fuel that can be scored. Unfortunately everything possible falls way under that number. |
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While the mechanism to handle a gear can be quite simple, they will absolutely be a deciding factor in a lot of matches. Just because you have three robots on each alliance that have a simple and reliable gear handling mechanism doesn't mean they will match each other, gear for gear. The ability to score gears is hugely dependent on driver skill, robot maneuverability, and speed of alignment with the reloading station and the lifter. With most gear mechanisms functioning fairly similarly this year, driver ability will make all the difference. As far as fuel processing in the boiler, 5 per second is just the average. Dump 50 fuel in there and it will sort them and be clear before you have another 50 fuel ready to dump. I would not consider the fuel processing time the limiting factor, even for an elite fuel scoring robot. |
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I know that shooting them is easy. The hard parts are getting them to the shooter quickly and consistently, and aiming at the goal so most of the balls go in.
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No one should read this as "don't focus on accuracy", but the accuracy requirements for this game, versus 2016's single ball shot, are vastly different. |
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Shooting 5 balls a second, and 80% of them going in, would be just fine. Will your team be doing this? Ours isn't going to even try.
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- 1RP from 40kPA fuel - 1RP from 12 gears - 2RP from winning a match The first ranking point can be earned by a single robot acting alone. (Reward for individual performance) Barring defense, which is often not a factor in qualification matches, the second ranking point can be earned by an alliance. (Reward for team performance) The final 2 RP not only depend on your own alliance, but on how the opposing alliance performs. Barring defense, this is not within our control. It makes strategic sense to prioritize scoring actions in that order. First get the RP you can earn by yourself. Then get the RP you can earn with good partners. Performing those tasks will, more often than not, earn you the final 2 RP. In the final matches of an event, where alliances are more evenly matched, you may need to modify your strategy to take actions which effect the opponents ability to score. But, at that point it's smart gameplay strategy and robot reliability, not robot conceptual design, which makes the difference. So, making my own predictions for the season: 90% (or higher) of matches where 4RP are earned will have the 40kPa RP scored in the autonomous period. Also, 75% (or higher) of matches on Einstein will have a 40kPa auto period. At least 6 of the 8 Einstein alliances will be led by teams which are capable of a 40kPa auto mode. The ultimate Einstein alliance has a robot with a 40kPa auto mode, floor fuel pickup, and average gear handling, paired with two extremely fast gear cyclers. While the first robot may not be within the reach of many teams, the latter definitely is. If you are going for a gear handling bot, be sure to be far above average at that task. If your ambition is to be a championship alliance leader, you better be working toward a 40kPa autonomous mode. |
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But I really see this game playing like 2009, where volume of scoring is the important thing more than accuracy. There are six hundred balls to work with, and you have another time consuming task that you will have to help with on any alliance (gears), so you want your shooting to be quick opportunistic points that occur as a thing you do in between gear cycles. In 2009 the very best (one ball wide) shooters could get six balls per second, with a game piece much harder to transfer energy to, and much less motor power available. I'm hoping as a stretch goal, if everything goes right, to double that. |
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We did pretty well in 2009, once we aimed our shooter down instead of up. That was an easier game as far as designing the robot---the robot only had to do one function, which was to move balls as fast as possible. This year there are three things the robot has to do. With a team of mostly inexperienced students, we decided to try for the two that have the highest chance of success.
I think we scored one high goal last year. Reality is tough. |
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Quals:
Elims:
Thus for 99.8% of teams, gears give more efficient points. |
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David |
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I'm sure many teams are going to do what I call "Super Cycles" where they score a Gear and Fuel in the same repeatable sequence. For these teams I suspect they will choose to intake Fuel while driving to and from the Retrieval Zone and after they are finished depositing their Gear, they'll make a quick pit stop in the Key to score their collected Fuel. The time it takes to do this pit stop will determine the effectiveness of the Super Cycle vs. cycling Gears only. If things work out the way I'm thinking they will, teams that do Super Cycles will be more efficient (and a more valuable alliance partner) than teams that only have Gear cycling capability. |
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Additionally, I don't see how point 2 leads to the conclusion of point 3. How do we conclude margin of victory in winning matches predicts winning more total matches, unless you are predicting a higher average points scored per match for gear bots (wins and losses), which means a greater probability of winning matches in the first place (counter point 1)? |
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*so long as partners at least drop their auton gears, this is likely so trivial a good gear bot can use the extra time to play defense on the super cycle bot Quote:
Point 3 does contradict Point one, but Point 1 was a supposition rather than an assertion. Your second paragraph is correct - I presume that more points = more wins, and since starting the next rotor means many more points than an average cycle of balls into the boiler, it is likely a gear bot will win more. Sorry this wasn't clear. |
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In the case of the Gear specialist, assuming you're paired with 2 average robots, you'll be able to deliver 6+(2 or 3)+(2 or 3) = 10 - 12 Gears. This means that you'll be heavily dependent upon your alliance partners to turn 4 Rotors, and you will be heavily susceptible to defense that slows you down just enough so that you just miss 4 Rotors. I think in situations such as this where you know delivering 12 Gears will be close, you're better off just planning on delivering 6 Gears, and spending the rest of the time doing other valuable tasks like defense, or scoring Fuel (which isn't possible in the case of the Gear only robots). If I'm playing against an alliance that might just barely score 12 Gears, I'm going to play extreme defense towards the end of the match to ensure you just miss your 12th Gear. In the case of the Super Cycle robot, continuing the assumption that you're with 2 average robots, you'll be able to deliver 3+(2 or 3)+(2 or 3) = 7 - 9 Gears. I personally like this situation much better. You have a decent buffer against defense/mistakes and you are also shooting 3 hoppers worth of Fuel into the Boiler. The value of this Fuel will be completely dependent on the effectiveness of the shooter, but some Fuel points are basically guaranteed. These Fuel points will more often than not be the difference in matches where both alliances turn 3 Rotors and have the same number of climbs. Disclaimer: Obviously this analysis is simplified and doesn't include factors like autonomous. The analysis also changes if you assume the average robot can cycle more than 2-3 Gears. In this case, Gear specialists will likely be able to turn the 4th rotor more consistently and in doing so will be a much more sensible design choice. TL;DR: Designing your robot to handle solely Gears is risky because you're dependent upon alliance partners to achieve a Rotor advantage vs. the opposing alliance. |
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You make a good point though. It seems like the MCC for a gear specialist is a reliable auton and then at least 3 full-field gear cycles under even the heaviest of defense (2v1). Other than that, I'm not sold that it's riskier than over-extending a team's capabilities by doing more mechanisms and dividing attention during an event. This bias is based upon my team's history of over-extending. With an all-gear Quals alliance as you described, I'd probably start the match with an understanding that we would attempt 4 rotors and adapt from there with preset milestones and knowing who would play what defense if a call was made to abort. The gameplay strategies (and a little luck in execution) are the secret sauce for making 4 rotors work in that situation, so I won't reveal too much ;). |
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I think this year the "cool factor" of a wiffle-ball-machine-gun-robot is going to hurt the competitive level of a large portion of FRC teams. The arguments I'm making apply to the relatively few teams that can effectively pull it off. On another note, you have me thinking about what strategies you could employ to counteract a defensive blitz at the end of the game. My first thought was that you could just shuttle Gears to the base of your Airship during the early game, ejecting all the Gears on the ground near your springs. Then during the late game defensive blitz, you could just sit by your Airship and use your Gear ground pickup to quickly score all the Gears you cycled earlier in the match. High risk, high reward strategy... sitting on a bunch of Gears for most of the match would be pretty terrifying. |
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Gears are only more efficient for the first 3 rotors. The last rotor is super inefficient. I know that in a district match a single robot wont be able to get that far, but when you're moving to championship eliminations every alliance will be able to cap out all rotors.
After this climbing is the most important. If your alliance has 2 robots that can climb, but another has 3 then it will be very difficult to win. Finally, when your in finals at a championship and both alliance can cap out all the rotors as well as have 3 robots that can climb, the winning alliance is the one that can shoot fuel. |
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1. Whether or not your robot can shoot fuel is a very different decision than whether or not your alliance can shoot fuel. You can recognize that fuel shooting is an aspect of the game that may be required at certain levels of play without doing it yourself necessarily. 2. At no point will a single robot score all 12 gears by itself this season. It will be quite rare for two of them to score 12 gears without some help from the 3rd (e.g. dropping a gear on the ground for them to pick up). |
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I think everybody is over estimating climbing.
How many climbers did you think were needed last year on an winning alliance? Who thought that a triple balance was needed in 2012 to win? I think climbing is going to be important, but I don't think it's a must have on a robot. I get that this thread is about efficient scoring and the climb certainly is that, but it's also the most difficult climbing task I've ever seen. Attaching to that rope is going to be much harder that everyone's prototypes are showing. Practice will help but you're not always going to have a clear line of site and your addrenalin is going to be pumping and it's going to take longer to acquire the rope that people are thinking. How many teams climbed consistently last year? Not many and climbing last year was exponentially easier than this year as the object you had to grab didn't move it was rigid and always in the same place. You cannot count on that this year. |
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I really wish Cheesecake wasn't a 'thing' :rolleyes:. |
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Last year, climbing was worth scoring two game pieces in teleop. You basically DID need a triple balance in 2012 to win. I mean not for the strict definition of need, not to the detriment of the rest of your play, but at the highest, non-corrupted-by-hacking levels of play, it was essential. Even so, triple balancing could be beat by scoring seven balls in teleop - a fairly steep number but elite shooters like 1717 and 2826 (heh) could do it. This year, making up a one climb deficit can be done by scoring 150 fuel in teleop, or by getting 1 more rotor turning plus 30 fuel. I think that is a lot more comparable to 2012 than 2016, and currently, it's essential. I would compare the value of hanging this year to the value in 2004 - you need to be absolutely top tier at something else as an alliance to justify not doing it. I think every robot on a viable alliance at moderate to high level play will need to do it. (I also have some opinions on the difficulty of climbing this year, but I'll hold those back for awhile) |
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I do however think it's a lot different than most games in terms of just how many points climbing is worth. Assuming both alliances can get 12 gears, it takes 150 high goal shots just to break even with one climber. If you somehow get three robots in the air, that's 450 high goals. It's also more reliable of points than triple balance was back in 2012 since it's reliant on individual robots. I think that as you get further along the weeks of competition season, if you don't have a working climber, I recommend saving weight and space for one to be cheesecaked on you. |
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Climbing this year does not seem to be that difficult. Or maybe our prototype is just lucky.
I mean, the rope is right there in front of you. You just drive into it, and run the winch. No need to reach up. |
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- 1RP from 40kPA fuel - targeting at least 20 in auto and rest in teleop (less than two total loads)...optimizing up to 40 in auto. - 1RP from 12 gears - switch to gears (from floor or feed station) to complete this...or go back to fuel if under control and on target. - 2RP from winning a match - stay ahead on kPA if opposing alliance is on par with rotors - and climb. Great discussion on this thread...good to see the diversity. |
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I see a lot of people in this thread comparing gears this year to the defenses last year.However, this year there are some key differences that make gears much more valuable.
Last year, one robot could break every defense and still have half the match to do stuff. This effectively meant that after week one, if you only did the defenses, you were not a very good robot. Other teams could be more efficient and both break the defenses and score a bunch of points. This year gears are very different. One robot cannot do all of the gears. This means that much more of the match could be spent for a robot scoring gears. The lack of scoring fuel is not a problem because every second of the match is still spent scoring points at an equal or higher rate than fuel. A good fuel robot can acquire fuel from everywhere, but a good gear robot can only get gears from the feeder station. That means that if a team does not have a gear bot, their fuel bots will need to waste time crossing the field to get those valuable gear points. A good fuel robot will be able to score gears by its self, but it will still be valuable to the alliance to have a gear bot. |
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The alignment actions for acquiring and placing gears are non-trivial and placing gears requires specific upper assemblies. Additionally, like several people have mentioned, spinning all 4 rotors will be a very rare event, except for the very best District/Regional alliances and for the better alliances in quals and elims at DCMP and CMP. Also, I do not think 4 rotors will be a "given" at DCMP or CMP... particularly given that there are 12 divisions across the two CMP's this year. Many regarded the capture rates from last year similarly, but the elim capture rates were: Curie: 79.4% Einstein: 72.2% Carson: 71.8% Newton: 65.6% Hopper: 60.7% Galileo: 56.3% Carver: 52.94% Tesla: 43.3% Archimedes: 36.7% |
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A 3 gear auto is possible IF the two alliance partners agree to just set their gears on their bumpers and drive away in Auto. Every historical game I compare the gear cycle shows me there is no way a team will AVERAGE 8 or 9 gears a match by themselves. Some may do it once or twice the entire season. No team will do 12 by themselves between teleop and Auton. This is 2017's Lochness Monster. |
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I expect a team that underestimates the difficulty to attempt a robot centered around this, and I also believe that there are teams with the resources and ability to make this happen. I don't expect them to overlap, and I don't think we'll see it actually achieved. A team with the resources to pull this off is much better off building a "do everything" robot than an auto gear specialist. The point advantage is big, but not big enough to be game-breaking. If a 3 gear auto represented a chokehold or similar condition, I do think we'd see it. I do think two gear autos are more likely, though they'll be pretty rare due to most powerhouses focusing on getting the fuel bonus in auto. Additionally, by high levels of play, reliable one gear autos will be common enough that spending time on this will become less worthwhile. I think a lot of high level alliances will end up scoring three gears in auto, but it will almost always come from three robots. |
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3 gears by a single bot in auto ain't happenin'. It isn't about a world class robot - doing so requires a ballet of all 3 robots at warp speed so the pilots have enough time to pull the gears up and spin the rotors.
9 gears is a great 'bucket list' target for a top gear bot. If the bot hits its auto, partners drop their gears, and the opponents are careless with even one gear, that's "only" 5 full-field cycles and 3 close ground pickups. If one partner doesn't do much of anything, and the other isn't confident its auto will hit from the side (and is therefore willing to drop its gear to go down field in auton), this could be a common quals scenario. Seems like a reasonable prediction to say we'll see 1 bot do 9 gears in a match least once a week this season. |
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I think it won't happen because teams will prioritize other scoring options in Auto. |
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In 2011, 233 posted this video, never pulled off the feat in competition in large part because competent single-tube autos were common enough that it was rarely even attempted, and no other team came even close to achieving this, with most two tube autos being buzzer beaters for the 2nd tube. 233 was so much faster than everyone else because of a feature somewhat unique to their robot that year, the ability to pick up from the reverse side of the bot, and score on the other. In fact, they actually gain significant reach due to their arm length on the pickup, greatly reducing the distance the robot has to travel. It follows that a three gear auto likely has to follow a similar pattern, never turning around, and reducing travel distance of the drivebase by moving the gear forwards within the robot as it moves. Certainly, at minimum, the gear has to be picked up on the back of the robot, and scored on the front, so that the robot doesn't have to execute four precision 180 degree turns. Designing for the gear to pass through the middle of the robot like this provides little or no benefit during teleop, and would seem to make the having even a bare-minimum size fuel hopper nearly impossible. This is not an equivalent case to the other three gamepiece auto of note, 254 in 2014. Putting a single ball through a high goal was a harder task than placing a single gear this year, and even the best teams in the world missed a non-trivial amount of the time. 254's 2014 robot was probably the most accurate and effective finishing robot in the world that year. Even teams with excellent autonomous modes gladly gave up their balls to put them in 254's robot, and the build style that enabled the three ball auto also provided extremely tangible benefits to 254 throughout the match. Here, every sketch I've come up with that seems like it could possibly achieve this makes me ask "but why give up so much," especially when I consider the relatively low difficulty of a single gear auto, and the number of teams I expect to be achieving this with competency at high levels of play. |
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The important thing to remember in comparing gears versus fuel is that gears have a non-linear points for effort curve. The first two gears are worth a lot of points for the effort to score them, especially since your alliance can start with those gears in robot already. The next 4 take quite a bit more work though, and the last 6 are going to be beyond the average alliance capability. Scoring 2 gears is easier than scoring substantial quantities of fuel, but 4+ is a different story. My team is pursuing fuel as our top priority, with gears as a second. The key to be effective with fuel, is to count on staying within 1 rotor of a gear focused alliance.
We're trying to ensure we can do 2 gears a match while "super cycling" as Ginger coined it to ensure we get the 2nd rotor and pull our weight for the 3rd one. From there we are all fuel focused to give a 1 rotor cushion and get the RP. We're not doing climbing because we don't want to overextend ourselves and our team is not great at building mechanisms for high loads. We feel we will be more reliable handling balls and gears than trying to lift our robot's weight (and potentially falling). I also am in the minority camp that thinks climbing will be difficult to do reliably in match, and if it isn't then someone can cheesecake a climber onto us for elims. Based on this assumption I think most matches will have 1 successful climb per side and will balance out. Since we can't climb we can sell out on defense at match end to prevent an opposing climb if needed. |
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Honestly I believe that Fuel bots will be more meta this year. They can efficiently if done correctly apply points to the team and can hold their own for most of the match
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Even if your robot was specifically designed for gears and picked up on one side, dropped off on the other, there's still the problem of trying to pick up gears that have fallen in a random position from an alliance partner's bumper. Plus, you would most likely only use one gear peg, as that is much easier and faster than using different pegs each time. Could a 3-gear auto be done? In theory, yes. But your robot has to be very specifically designed to do so, and the advantages offered are somewhat minimal compared to the challenge of doing so (I gather that this year, the ability to handle gears, however minimally, is extremely valuable and should be on every robot).
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WHAT? Curie, generally considered to be the weakest division going into worlds in 2016, had the highest capture percentage? The only conclusion I can arrive at is the community consensus was based on well known powerhouses. There was in fact a huge struggle among some VERY capable teams. The fact that Curie beat Einstein for capture% (and by a significant percentage) may imply that it can't be quantified with OPR, average score, etc. (granted Einstein is a smaller sample size). Anyway, carry on... |
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Lol |
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