Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

Did anyone think of a design where the robot just locks itself (drive like 71 in 2001) under the opponent ball feeder and just shoots the balls to their zone?

Would that be legal?

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

Building off of this, how long it takes a robot go get to the tower will play a role, seeing as that equates to more or less time that robot can attack or defend. Teams will have to decide if going for the tower will be worth it based on factors that will obviously change depending on the game.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

This. I think there will be too many variables in play when deciding whether or not to hang from the tower. We can make up as many situations on an electronic message board all we want, but it will ultimately come down to each individual game.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

As long as it does not "carry" the ball at any point in time, it should be fine. In other words, if your mechanism gets stuck, you get penalized along with not being able to do anything.

Also, your mechanism must be below the bumper zone otherwise you will get a penalty every time a ball goes through your mechanism.

After answering this, I would like to remind everyone that the topic is what is important to keep track of and not what is legal or what strategies will be best. Basically what would you want to record when scouting. Odds are you will want to be broad in your specification (e.g. can it traverse the field rather than "can it swing", and only then if so, how?).

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

My team overall is thinking the same thing. And, while for the most part I agree with you, the key to these games is that it is not a system. There are many factors that can alter gameplay entirely. Perhaps your "defense" bot gets a dead battery and becomes useless, or it so happens that the other team is so good at ball control that you don't have any balls on your side anyway, and so your "offense" bot may want to cross to a new section and help either get more balls or begin the hanging. I do agree with you though for the most part.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

It can't be.

Since the ball has to be touching the carpet, and can only be 3 inches under the robot, you can't catch it and have it roll down a ramp into a mechanism, as it's being funneled and thus its direction of travel sticks with you when spun.

Also, metal on carpet.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

one thing I don't think I saw much was, strong autonomous. I wouldn't say off the bat that there is one or two particularly "good" autonomous plans, but having the ability to readily change autons would be key in a game like this were teamwork is essential.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

Not only for the teamwork, but for the purpose of not being too predictable for your opponents, a strong autonomous would be good. Especially since you'll have so many options with the ability to chose the ball's locations.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

I believe the key robot tasks will be to be able to score, to elevate yourself, to "kick" balls across the bumps, and to be able to take balls from opponents.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

What will be important is that a team is able to do one thing "well".

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

I am a huge supporter in making one or two aspects of the robot perfect over "doing everything", but this year I think the robots will need strategic flexibility with a "specialty function", allowing them to do different things with different alliances without compromising a primary function.

I believe one aspect of the game is more important than all the others at this point. I won't say what, partly because my opinion changes every day.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

If your strategy is to never hang if your in the other team's offensive zone, then you don't need the tunnel or the bump. However, if you want to try and get all 3 of your alliance partners off the ground, at least one of your teammates needs to travel over a bump or through a tunnel.

-Brando

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

I wouldn't be too worried about opponents strategies during autonomous. I would more worry about being able to cooperate with your alliance partners.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

True, although there's still nothing against say, making the top of your robot such that a ball will bounce off of it in a given direction (i.e. angle the top of your robot). This is not an active mechanism, so we don't have a problem there (It's not even really a mechanism). It is in fact a method to avoid carrying balls as it will cause them to roll or (more likely) bounce off.

It is difficult to determine to whether a ball rolling down a ramp (with no side boards) is carrying because if the robot turns, the ball will probably remain in approximately the same absolute position (pulling a tablecloth from under glasses if you will). In addition, any movement in the other degrees of freedom (moving forward, back, left, right) would certainly cause a difference in relative position. As such, I would suggest that a ball rolling down would not qualify as possession, and therefore does not qualify as carrying.

As for the metal on carpet issue, that is not arguable because it is explicitly stated in the rules.

Re: What do you think will be important this year?
 

That is true, and I expect a lot of robots to incorporate this kind of thing into their designs. Without direction, it seems having a ball consistently land in a place close enough to a robot that it would not need to move in order to score would be impossible.

The "metal on carpet" was referring to locking into the carpet.