Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

I know 832 modified their shooter during the regional to allow for shooting downward. If that makes it a dumper, then they did the trick (and quite well too) they won the regional with it, along with 2655 and 2415.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

I think this trend just reinforces my statements earlier in the year. Any robot whether they are a shooter or a dumper will not do well with a poor execution of said shooter or dumper. Also there will be more successful dumpers than shooters simply because creating an effective shooter is much more difficult than a dumper. To be a good shooter requires a lot of programming and careful design to increase your throughput until it is nearly similar to a dumper. I think we are starting to see that the hybrid robots, very high throughput "shooters" are starting to do very well and I think will become even more effective as the season progresses.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

Does anyone have scouting numbers from the regionals they've attended as to how many moon rocks individual robots have been scoring? Not average match score, or OPR, but an actual count that the robot itself contributed to their alliance?

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

Our main problem was with the lighting, even after discussion with the NI rep (thanks Steve!) we had glare issues, made worse by having our camera aimed upward enough to see most of the vision target at close range.

I don't know if we'll be able to make the camera work, it seems that programming changes end up taking a long time to debug, and time is a scarce commodity at a regional.

Here's our "dumper" conversion, complete with bunny ears

(I don't have our scouting data, I should have grabbed the clipboard...oh well)

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

we also had to modify our shooter into a high speed dumper.

The adjustable turret angle allows us to shoot anywhere from 0 to 16ft
We found that in a match, adjusting and shooting is NOT a realistic option. without some DARN GOOD and FAST autotracking code.

So our robot is set up to shoot 1-3ft in front of the robot. We pull up next to a trailer and "shoot" Our 2nd driver can pan the turret as the enemy trailer moves.

We averaged 8-14 balls a round with robot and 15 balls from our human player. We are hoping with experience, our drivers can improve skills and get it up to 20 per match
I believe this is what 832 and 1771 did also?

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

I would suggest that what this thread comes down to is execution & driver skill, much like most FIRST games. A shooter with high throughput can beat simple dumper. A power dumper can beat a shooter. It doesn’t matter which design you decided on what matters is the speed in which you can score 10+ balls. If you need 25 balls to score 10+ in one shot (power dumper) or you need 15ish balls to score 10+ (power shooter) it still comes down to how fast it happens. If your robot shoots/dumps too slowly your target will be gone. If your co-driver can’t easily operate your mechanism, your target will be gone. If your software doesn’t react quick enough… stop me if you’ve heard this, your target will be gone. Many of you will say that your target will not be gone if you are pinning them. That’s nice if the robot pulling up to your trailer doesn’t deliver the balls faster than you.

What this game comes down to is how fast can you deliver the balls you have? The longer it takes the farther away your target just got, or the more balls that just got unloaded on you.

Execute or lose.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

We did end up basically shooting with our hood all the way down and within about 1-3ft of the trailers. We had an incredible autotracking code working under flourescent lighting which was about 95% accurate, but we never had time to adjust it for the lighting and thus it never worked the same. At times we would see it lock on but it was jittery at best. With some more time I am sure we could get autotracking working and our ideal situation would be to track robots within 5ft and adjust on the fly. We designed our shooter to have an adjustable hood to control distance as well as a turret. Luckily for us our shooter is very high throughput and we can shoot down at the same velocity.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

I have read all of the posts and I pretty much agree with some small parts of posts, but in general disagree with most posting here. Why? Let me explain.

This game is about the little things. Here are the sum of little things that I think you must have mastered by the Championship to be on Einstein.

Teamwork & Strategy:
This game is about teamwork and fluid strategy, more so than every other game in the 3 v. 3 era, including Aim High. Compared to last year when the drive coach was a glorified cheer leader, this year's game is a game where crafty coaches and talented drivers will make a big difference ... but not the only difference.

Super Cells
I can't believe how many people just don't get it. There are so many teams that do not use the super cell. There are 60 points per alliancethat teams are leaving on the table consistently. An average volume scoring alliance can beat a massive volume scoring team if they effectively use the super cell.

Robot to Human Interaction
This is the most neglected part of this game by teams. I often hear people say, "humans outscore robots" or, "if your robot can't score as much as a human player, don't bother". The ability for an alliance to use robots to lure trailers to strategic points on the field is a huge weapon to have in your arsenal and the ability for skilled human players to lure trailers to robots is just as powerful. I see barely any teams doing this.

Smart Human Player
Notice I did not say accurate human player. If you have a human player that is not very accurate, but really smart, then you can use this to your advantage. If they are both, then look out. I will take a smart human player that is a little less accurate than a laser accurate human player that makes dumb decisions.

If you are a massive power dumper that can puke 20+ balls at one time, or are a strategic shooter that can strafe on the run, then good for you but you better get some more tools in your arsenal because that will not be enough to be the best. Who's better? Shooters or dumper? I don't care because there is a way to win with any combination. In this year more than any that I can remember, average robots with excellent execution will beat out excellent robots with average execution.

What we should be doing a trade study on is what strategies work in what situations, but that may get way too complicated.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

Paul is very wise, as always. Once again this is why the good teams are usually good no matter what the game is.

As far as dumper vs. shooter goes, I don't think it matters that much. The real issue is throughput. If your robot has a rapid fire, the shooter can achieve the same quick score capability as a dumper (see 217's robot).

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

The robot is your tool, and you built your tool. I dont care if you built a 200 function swiss army knife if you cant use it to its strengths it is no better than a simple butter knife. Paul is right.

The Key to this game is making the other alliance play to your strengths, If you have an ace human player, pin a robot in his corner and make his job easier, and get him as many balls as possible. If you have a 40 ball dumper have the kitbot with bumpers pin for you. If the other alliance has a 20 foot accurate shooter, position yourself in front of it. so it shoos into the side of your robot. The other team has a awesome dumper pin it, or dance face to face with it, it cant score if it is only in front of your trailer. MAKE THE OPPOSITION PLAY TO YOUR LIKING.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

I like Paul's advice. Every team has its strengths and weakness and the COACH matters way more this year. No more front row seat. The only difficult part is executing strategies. We found this out at LA. Some teams have a hard time executing, others do it with ease. If I really had to redo this game over again. I would stick with our bot as most would and just tweak it (but isn't that what the comps are for?).

Good Luck Teams and

Dumpers = Shooters. Just depends how you set up your bot to be honest and how well YOU CAN EXECUTE.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

keep in mind also that you had a lot of help with the schedule in quals. im in no way denying that you had a great robot, b/c you did, but the 82 points was not all yours. for example... our average points per match was 56, but we personally scored (guessing) anywhere between 15-25 rocks each match.

i also agree with paul though. it's scary how many upsets that i have seen this year. at peachtree, the finals consisted of the #7 seed vs. the #8 seed with the #8 seed winning. this proves that what kind of robot you have does not matter as much as the percision at which you execute your strategy.

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

we're about to change our shooter into a high speed dumper before atlanta....

probobly gonig to just mount a plate in-front of our shooter...

and speed up our STOD...

Re: Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study
 

Heh, a definite revamp of our moonrock output mechanism is in order for us before Atlanta. I would say that gravity feeding is plenty fast, so long as the balls do not jam themselves up. It's not as fast as, say, 2 FP's geared properly but it sure is a lot less weight. Also, it seems that shooters that fire downward seem to do better than arched or horizontal shooters.

Hmm, I strongly disagree with Paul regarding the small things when it comes to Qualification matches. Strategy execution in qualifications is too dependent upon luck and the alliance partners... sure one's own team can execute but perhaps the alliance partners simply can't do what Paul has described. I can only speak from my own experience on the field.

Many times at regionals, our alliance simply couldn't match our opponents capabilities offensively, so we'd discuss a strategy around human players. Sometimes, autonomous left us in with such terrible field position (or even worse, bots were already pinned against the wall with terrible field position) that it became very difficult to mount a comeback. For qualifications, we couldn't expect to dictate to our alliance anything and have it actually happen, even with the simple things and with veteran teams (Match 47 -- Team #25 scores ~10 balls into their alliance partner's trailer during autonomous). I can't count the number of matches where our alliance came up with a strategy, we began executing the strategy, then for whatever reason the alliance partners deviated, failed to come through or kept getting in the way. Maybe it had to do with luck, or the opponents' counter-strategies, or ... whatever. It was nonetheless extremely difficult to fend for our self when that happened since our bot isn't a strong scorer as an arched shooter, which makes the little things moot and a 'dumper vs shooter' trade study perfectly necessary when doing scenarios & design at the beginning of the season. I wish we could have had more forethought into this during weeks 1, 2, & 3. To be honest we ran at 100% this build season and I have no regrets about it; we will simply upgrade for Atlanta.

Now, for eliminations I agree with Paul ... in elims, I agree that 'shooter vs dumper' doesn't matter so long as the moonrocks go into the opponents' trailers faster than the alliance's. Actually I think we need to examine 'what strategy when' type situations. Sure, it will get complicated, but it's better to be shared than to not. Even the FTC students on our team who have barely seen the FRC game have come up with some creative and effective solutions when asked. For example, when your primary scorer has a catastrophic scoring mechanism failure 30 seconds into a match, what do you do? We did 3 empty cells in a match when we were only supposed to do 1, while the broken team swapped roles with us and played defense (though all three super cells missed their targets thereby losing us the match ... heh).

Food for thought I guess.