Re: Driver Tips
 

100% You want all the water you can get.

I try to think it steps, and not look at the big picture:
1.Get to the next ringer
2.Pick it up
3.Score it

And repeat
If you drop a ringer, don't sweat it and just go to the next one.
And have fun.

Re: Driver Tips
 

ITS AWSOME
It can be a bit of a problem if your robot gets turned, but press forwards=forwards
pull back=backwards
pull right=right
pull left=left
It is very fun to drive around in, and being able to drive circles areound people is great. 8D

Re: Driver Tips
 

We had mecanum this year and it's great. While practice driving it at school, I kept instinctively thinking I was going to bump into chairs and things in the hallway because I couldn't swerve fast enough, but I could pull sideways instantaneously. :cool:

Re: Driver Tips
 

Some tips for coaches: When I first started, I could scream and scream at the drivers telling them what to do and they couldn't hear me at all. They just went into that gaming state where nothing else exists. After that match, they were kind of mad at me because I "didn't say anything."
Our coach for last year told me a really great tip.

GET IN FRONT OF YOUR DRIVERS. Stand beside them and when you have orders, get your hands out in front of them. Point at where they're supposed to go. This will usually break them from thier zoned-out state and the orders will get through.

Also, i've seen many teams doing this before, they get into a match and run around aimlessly. If you dont have anything to do, at least defend.

Re: Driver Tips
 

The best advice I can give is to have confidence in yourself. once you lose confidence in yourself you start second guessing everything, and second guessing wastes time and usually causes you to make the wrog decision. So just stay confident. If you make a bad decision shrug it off and forget about it. Just get back out there and do what you know how to do, DRIVE. And don't forget to have fun =D

Re: Driver Tips
 

When playing offense, score on the rack where you'r opponents are not defending. If you are working on a row in the middle, and a defender is harassing your teamate who is trying to score on the right side of the field, don't try to score two columns over in the middle of your side of the field where the defender could easily change strategies and come after you. Buy yourself enough time by scoring farther away from the defender, and then when you get another ringer and go back to the rack, chances are that defender won't be in the same spot he was 10 seconds ago and you might be able to score where you originally intended to. Rather than focusing on scoring at one particular point each time, just try to keep a constant flow of pick up, score, pick up, score going. As long as you keep to a rough gameplan, such as scoring on only the middle, you can fill in the gaps when your opponents go back to their side of the field to ramp.

Mike C.

Re: Driver Tips
 

I learned this as doing the "wrong" thing correctly now is better than doing the "right" thing poorly later.

that is gaming stratagy not life stratagy...:)

Re: Driver Tips
 

Do this against defense (watch Robot Casserole #1736 on the red alliance)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWdJc3sJHY

Re: Driver Tips
 

As sweet as that is, if you're gonna try to pull that against a skilled mecanum driver, you're going nowhere, fast.

How do I know? Because I stopped someone from trying to spin around our robot.

Which brings me to another point. We have mecanum drive, so we're no match for say, a tank-bot in terms of traction, but we (quite literally) drive circles around them. Whenever we played against a mecanum bot (the Henrico triad comes to mind), we went against them, and well, defended them aggressively. Think sumo wrestling, not cage fighting. Stay in contact with them, and use your omni-directional drive to keep changing which direction they're facing. You don't have to shove them off the field, you just have to change the direction they're pointing enough to irritate the other driver.

Re: Driver Tips
 

On the flip side, if you're the one that's being nudged out of the way, feel free to be flexible. With regards to this year's game, your coach might be screaming for 4-high, but if you're being pushed, be ready to switch strategies and go for 3 or 5. In a couple of our matches, the defending team became so obsessed with us not getting a certain one that they actually pushed our tube practically onto a different spider leg.

Oh and I definitely want to agree with the water bottle comment... great way to cool down, it relieves stress for some reason.

Re: Driver Tips
 

Just like there are plenty of skateboarding and mountain biking (and every other extreme sport) videos out there, someone out there needs to make a compilation of sweet moves pulled off on the FIRST fields and set it to some good music.

Although, something tells me that this has been done before.

I need to try ths water bottle idea. I was thinking about bringing my Camelbak to VCU, and then I realized that water and electronics don't mix. That, and the security guards at the Siegel Center are..... well, to put it nicely, EXTREMELY strict about outside food and drink. Thank God for backpacks with extraneous pockets, since I didn't eat lunch out of the pits at all at VCU.

Re: Driver Tips
 

Driver Tip #1 - Don't Do This!

Re: Driver Tips
 

I have been the driver for Frog Force, 503, for two years now. One of the most important things to do before you set a foot on the playing field is to get a strategy together with our other parts. See what your strengths and weaknesses are as a whole, and then figure out who you are up against, come up with a game plan that all of the drivers and coaches know, so there shouldn't be any confusion on the field. This helps the drivers, me, know what I have to do and what my team mates are doing.

Also another important, very important piece, is use all the time that you have, do not rush, take your time, right at the end. Like driving up ramps, I would take the few extra seconds to line the robot up, and then go balls out up the ramp knowing that I am centered and wouldn’t fall off. A lot of matches that I watched the robots tipped over with 4-5 seconds still left in the game because they thought they had no time.

MOSTLY HAVE A TON FUN and DRINK TONS OF WATER
Good Luck