Coaches keeping track of score
 

In the kickoff video did anyone notice them mention something about a tactician that would be keeping track of the scoring and tube placement? In the one video shot that they had of him, he a pad of paper of the rack, presumably to keep track of tube placement. Placement of the tubes is incredibly important this year, and strategically positioning them for maximum score looks to be vital to win the game.

So my question to the CD community is... What tools could/should the Coach/Tactician use to help keep track of tubes/scoring? Is memory and mad mental math skills enough?

-Chris

Re: Tactician Tools
 

i know in one of the kit boxes i had saw a small dry erase board ( the one in the video to use for the tactician)

Re: Tactician Tools
 

Thats what I thought. However it is just a clipboard.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

Are laptops allowed to be brought onto the playing field?

I already coded up a quick and dirty version of the rack (looks just like an 3x8 tic tac toe board) which allows you to enter in pieces and gives u a score in real time. The only problem in using this would be the fact that you can't really see the other side of the board.

Neone know some awsome connect four players?

Re: Tactician Tools
 

I think the "tactician" was the coach.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

I knew I should have gotten that tablet PC.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

i'm with macgyver on this one; a small dry erase board should be enough. as long as your tactician can hand two different markers and tell the difference between red and blue, keeping track of the tubes already on the spiderlegs shouldn't be a problem. the challenge for the tactician will be to figure out which spiderlegs the team should try to place their inner tubes on. obviously the middle row will be the most important, but the strategic value of certain spiderlegs could change constantly based on the state of the rack. i say make your tactician the most pragmatic and logical person on the team.

as for b_mallerd's question, i don't think laptops are allowed on the field. i could be wrong, but i think that was the rule last year. if you are allowed, though, an interesting project would be to implement an algorithm in your program to determine and suggest which spiderlegs would be most advantageous to target based on the state of the rack at any given moment. just a thought. i'd be very impressed if you could do it.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

I was thinking about a pocket PC strategy computer. At the very least, it could point out places where you should be blcoking incipient super rows from the other alliance. I know everyone's convinced this could be a super high scoring game, but I think a good tactician is going to be blocking the super rows atleast as often as building super rows of her own. I suspect the really high scores will mostly come against weak opponents. No one's mentioned this yet, but defensive robots aren't just keeping opponents from building up rows, they're protecting the rows you're building up from being cut short by a well played opposing ringer. Your tactician(s) are going to have their hands full directing traffic and efficient coordination between teams is going to be key to success.

Also, I dispute that the middle row has any more importance than the other rows. Spoilling a vertical row of three from the bottom turns 8 points to 4 points just the same as spoilling from the middle or top. As such, I suspect the top row will be most important simply because there will be less teams than can place that high.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

Well people seem to hold the middle as very important because from there you can build left, right, up, or down.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

For the official competitions i think they will have a nice little program that should be able to calculate score based on where the operators tell the computer where the rings are (did that last statement make sense)? Suppose the red alliance scored in H-3 (highest rack row 3). The operator would simply click that spot and assign it a value, denoting the red alliance. Then if the blue alliance put a spoiler over that, the operator could put a spoiler over that (virtually). At the end the program would count the rows and singletons.

Afterwards it would display the score to the big screen, and it would be verified by the people on the field. Much as they did last year.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

I'm going to add my voice to the people advocating small dry-erase boads. Not only does the Rack pose a physical challenge, but a visual one as well. You don't want to be wasting time seeing what color is where on the other side assuming you still can late game, or worse, getting it wrong.

Another suggestion: only keep track of what color is where, not points. As long as you know the length of rows and colums, you don't need to claculate point values unless you're debating whether or not to run home for the bonus.

Re: Tactician Tools
 

Here's an interesting thought regarding the tactician: In theory, all the coach would have to do is monitor the opposing color, because it can be assumed, especially at the end of the match, that if the opposing alliance doesn't have it, you have it. Maybe coordinate coaches so that one is watching the opposing, the other is watching your alliance. One says where to put your rings, the other says where to defend/put spoilers. The other coach and a human player could be relaying this information- there's only two slots for tubes to go through, which at max will use 2 HPs. Just a thought...

Re: Coaches keeping track of score
 

Andy, one of the programmers on our team made an excellent suggestion for small blue/red magnets that would go on a magnetic board with a rack diagram on it. Does anyone know of teams creating anything like this before?

Re: Coaches keeping track of score
 

We had the same idea, but <T23> makes it illegal: If it were part of the console, it would be legal, but then the coach and human player couldn't touch it (the penalty is disable & disqualify). It isn't decorative, and it isn't for accessibility.

Re: Coaches keeping track of score
 

Maybe I'm just crazy (what a novel concept!), but in my mind the knowledge that the scoring is exponential could be enough for a level-headed coach to work with after some practice. I think it would be easier not to have to worry about dry-erase boards, etc. The only issue is visibility, but there's no guarantee that ringers will be visible enough to mark down anyway.