Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Please, seriously, slow down, take a deep breath... and type. I'm not trying to mock you, everyone makes typos when they rush. However, it would be better for all reading this if we all took a moment to consider our thoughts and type more s l o w l y.

Just think about the rate that you are saying that you will aquire balls at. This rate is 2 balls/sec. I don't think that's realistic, but that's your opinion.

However, there is no way that you will be able to aquire more than 80 balls at any time. If what you meant to say is that you would aquire some balls, score, and then go get more, that's going to take a LOT of time. If you can put up 5 palls/sec, you just spent 16 seconds firing. And you spent time finding those 80 balls. Now you're going to go find more balls spilled out through the return mechanism? Think again.

Also, keep in mind that your opponents will have control of any and all balls that your teammates scored in the corner goals, and they will have no reason to throw those balls to you.

-Paul the Dreamcrusher

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

That is not necassarily true. If you go into a match, win autonomous, and then automatically assume that you will win the game, you are destined to lose. Although winning autonomous may increase your chances of winning, a sound strategy from the opposing alliance can very quickly overtake your lead and actually win. We have yet to see how any scrimmages or regionals will play out, but I will say right now that there will be a good number of teams who can lose autonomous and then overtake the deficit and win the game.

Getting back onto subject, just remember that if you decide to build the uber ball-holding robot that sucks up all eighty balls in the field, then what are the three opposing robots and your two team mates going to do during the match? Trying to convince the other two teams on your alliance to actually do nothing except load balls into your robot may not pan out as well as you think. For a lot of teams with an "average" robot, they would rather lose a match than listen to a "bossy" team with a good robot.

Just remember that when you devise your robot and strategy. Try to make your robot complement the other robots out on the field, not dominate over them. Pick one task and do it well. No one robot will be able to do everything on the field efficiently, so pick something and aim to be the very best [pick one] corner-goal-scorer/center-goal-scorer/defensive domination that you can be.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

I think we have gotten off topic from my original topic. The objective of transfering balls to one robot is not to hoard all the balls on the field. The strategy was that since a harvester will probably be able to grab and control more balls than a shooter, you can put those balls to much better use by giving them to a shooter for 3 points each as opposed to one point each. I perfectly realize having all 80 balls is not feasible, but having a good 20-30 balls by the 3rd or 4th quarter is fairly realistic as a harvester robot. Surely you can dump them into the corner goal for 20-30 points but if time and opportunity allows, a well manuevered trasnfer can potentially increase that to 60-90 points. That is the reason I started this thread.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

AS you said people shouldnt try to hoard all the balls. In the last couple years we have relized that you can go big and not always to good. Like last year with the tetras teams built bots that could stack 15ft high. How many matches actually came down to the last tetra needing to be placed 15 ft high. Most of the matches would go to 6 or 7 at the most sometime reaching 9 or 10. We have in the past years tried to be the best ball collector, the bot that can stack the highest tetra, and the bot that tries for the highest box multiplier. We haver lost track of the game and what it is trying to teach us. I think that teams last year wold go for a bot that could stack really high even if it was not that quick, because they thouht they would be picked for that reason. Last year the teams that won were fast at capping the tetras and good at the human and auto loader. We need to try and forget about trying to be the bot that stands out and be the bot that is really good. A number one ranked seed team is not going to pick a team that can stack 15ft tall if they can only do it once in a match. They are going to want teams that can stack quick. The ideal amount for a storage device should probaly be no more then 30 balls. Because even then you might average a ball every second, and thats one quarter of the game gone. I am not trying to say that bering able to pick up 80 balls is a bad thing but try for a ralistic number that you will see on the average match, not a number that you might see in a single match at one tournament.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

What about Hitler?

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

[quote=jonathan_powers]i believe the game will be won in autonomus because if you controll from the start thers nothing that can stop u
/QUOTE]

Except if they know you'll win autonomous. The defensive stratgey is to do nothing during autonomous. They dump 30 balls in your goal, your alliance already has 40 in it's possession. They'll have only 10 to use for their offensive period. While you finish stocking your robots to the hilt. May be this is where a harveter transfer can work becuase you want to try to score the "stockpile" 50 - 10 seconds from the end so the opponents don't have time to use a lot of what you score.

Our robot has an open top but the sides go up to the 60" so can't be restocked from a harvester. I doubt any shooters could be re-stocked at 48" since that would compromise the design of a centre shooter..

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

first of all its good to have the capacity but do u reallyn think u could control 50 of the 80 balls in 2 min or even 30 which is possible but its still going to be hard

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Here's some suggestions for you:

-See if you can possibly find a *safe* way to latch onto other robots. Make your robot an extension to theirs. Yes, its a crazy idea, but hasn't anyone though of an alliance multibot? think of the possible advantages to this cooperation. I think you might see alot of 28" wide bots in standard config rather than 38". So, think about that....
As per standard sizes, I think the thing you need to focus on the most is height. If you have some sort of conveyor systems that drops balls into an open-top hopper, its likely that they're not going to be *too* tall. Possibly 4ft or less?

I think this is a really unique idea, toss around with other ways to make it unique and let it have a chance!

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Meh I guess thats too bad then. I was hoping more shooters would have a lower basket.

We are looking into modifying our harvester to pop balls out the top efficiently and quickly by simply reversing/modding our harvesting mechanism so we can transfer to shooters with 5 feet high basket openings.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Personally, our hopper is about 26" off the ground.
I'm suprised so many other teams are going with tall robots. I'm guessing they aren't going for the ramp.
Our bot will be quite low, and quite capable.....

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

I think most shooters go for max height so its very difficult if not down right impossible to block their shooting mechanism. However my opinion is that just because the shooter is high doesn't mean the hopper has to have a max height opening.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Two words: Ferris Wheel :eek:
That is all that I am at liberty to say.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

One thing I think needs to be kept in mind, restocking by hps is going to be harder than all this talk assumes. Have you seen the arena?
Unless you have a very tall hp, accurately loading a robot will be quite hard. Just something you may need to keep in mind...

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

In 2004, the HP was chucking 13 inch playground balls, into a cylinder 20 feet away, with approximately about a 30 inch opening, over that wall. And that was how you scored! I can't do it, but there are over 1000 people that have field experience doing it. So, it's possible.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Um... Many people have been talking about blocking shots. Unfortunately for people who have been designing to block shots from the beginning, there is a rule against this - you can't purposely place your robot in front of another robot to block their shots, and there is a 5 point penalty per ball - this can add up fast. So, if many people don't know about this, perhaps it would be good to put your shooting mechanism lower down - you could penalize them massively.
--phobbs