Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

Scores were a lot lower than I expected but I can definitely see that getting better.

If teams get their cameras working then they have an excellent chance of scoring a lot more points. Team 25 in NJ has a working camera which locates and shoots a ball that scores 75% of the time from the middle zone.

As for penalties, they are crazy but in NJ the refs have been excellent in my opinion. The penalties just come with the game rules and most of them are from design errors such as allowing the ball to be caught under the robot.

The most penalty points I saw was 71 in an early qualification match :ahh:

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

I'd argue it would be more beneficial for your team to learn how to score. Continuous improvement isn't rocket science.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

I'll put a big caveat here that I was only watching webcasts, and do believe that the competitions will get more challenging each weekend.... and with the BIG caveat that there are always a few great rookies teams (those aren't the ones I'm talking about) but....

Is it possible that FIRST has expanded the number of teams so quickly that the average level of robot competency has dropped?

I expect to see a certain number of incompetent robots (meant in the sense that the robot is not competent at playing the game... not as a slight to those who built it) on Friday morning... but I was watching elimination rounds at several regionals and saw an unusal proportion of robots that appeared to be... playing like it was Friday morning rather than Saturday afternoon.

It is also possible that the rules this year prohibit a team from building an uber-capable, ultra-dominant robot of the kind that 1114 built for Overdrive. I have to say that after watching 148's video, I'm looking forward to seeing them play. Or perhaps I have underestimated the difficulty of the challenge... or maybe I'm just getting grumpy in my old age ("Back in 2004 we had to climb steps... not these sissy ramps! And we had to do it with just two robots! And we had bigger ba..." oh, never mind.)

So yes, the scores were lower than I expected, the matches were less exciting than I expected, and (some of) the robots (in semi-final action) were less impressive than I expected (for robots at that stage of the tournament).... BUT.... BUT.... I want to make really sure that I leave myself lots of room to change that opinion once I've tried playing the game.

Jason

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

I watched webcasts on Friday, paying attention to see when my team was on the field.

I was disappointed, 3 out of the 4 matches I watched, they did nothing (lights blinking but no movement). I also remember that during one of them, another alliance member was also disabled. I'm not sure if it's just our team (i.e. our programming was bad), or it was the field.


I expect that regionals in weeks 3-6 will have high scores of around 20-25 points, and that there will be one outlier of 32 points (six, really really good robots pumping one goal full of balls).

Also, penalties are too much in this game. Seeing that in attempting to score one ball, a team can get 2-3 penalties, is just outrageous. A point value of 3-5, with penalties being 1 would be more appropriate (reminds me back in 2005 when tetras scored were worth 3? points, yet penalties were 10 each, killing scores).



Teams need to remember: defense does not help you at all when qualifying.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

Am I the only one who thought stuff like KC elims scores weren't really that low? 10-5 sounds like a good match to me...

32 is impossible, basically, given time and bot constraints.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

I just don't understand how 3 teams can only score 1 ball in 2 minutes. I mean most times you are starting with 4 in your home zone (the freebie plus the ones your opponent/partners miss).

What are the issues on the field? Is it exceptionally hard to drive this year?

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

Ball control without a magnet is impossible, basically. If the back kickers miss and your front robot has no posession mechanism, it's tricky to push the balls in.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

I don't think that 10-5 is a bad score, if it were to happen a lot but, most teams have a hard time scoring 1-2 times, even though they are given 6 balls right in front of them.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

We determined it is quite difficult to get a ball away from the side of the field if you do not have a superior ball magnet, since the bumpers limit your proximity to the wall.

Balls against the bumps were also tricky, as a miscalculation would result in the robot overrunning the ball, and vision is limited.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

It's possible, but this year is a very different year, as stated by the next thing you said:

Yes. It is very possible, and I think it's the case, though I'm not ready to pass judgment. I actually find this year to be a lot more cumbersome then it needs to be. Imagine if the tunnel was wider and there was less bump, so the platform could hold two robots rather then one. That would change the game SO much.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

In general from what i saw teams struggled with balls getting stuck on the edge of the wall and they could not get it from their to the goal easy. A big challenge is the simple fact that they are driving toward themselves. THis is making it hard to judge robots in the front zone. On top of this deffensive bots are making it impossible for teams to score unlesss they have an effective way to control the ball. In general people overestimated how quickly they could kick and score. Accuracy is low in comparison to what it could be and i have a feeling teams underextimated how easy it is for a ball to bounce out. Mteams aren't hanging, which is fine, but they can't score two points in the last twenty seconds like they thought they could. Also teams aren't allowing enough time to hang becuase some get almost all the way up but time runs out.....

I was at the KC regional and overall saw a lack of team work among bots. In autonomus so many bots blocked teamates shots. If your bot is not accurate in autonomus, then don't risks blocking your teams. Also there was minimal passing. A sound strategy would be clearing all the balls from the middle zone into your scoring end then crossing the buymp for a two on 1 in your scoring zone. This makes the deffensive bot only able to block one scorer and the other can just push balls in. Also it virtually eliminates the middle player becasue he can't do anything with a very small numebr of balls. Finally the defender can't clear all the balls if there are two attacking robots, and if you delay your ball re turn by makign it roll slow, your alliance won't be scored on to much. Strategies like this are worth considering but it seems that no one used strategy, they just played their game their way.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

I personally have been surprised by overall lack of a cohesive strategy between alliance partners, many matches that I saw in qualification rounds appeared to demonstrate a lack of communication in either pregame strategy or in-game between drivers. It looked like a lot of individuals rather than an alliance.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

Towards the end of the qualifying matches, one of our alliances decided to go for coopertition points. Our driver had been hesitant to try the idea earlier, but everyone had been talking about it during the day. So the teams decided to try it. Nothing else was working. Five robots were trying to get balls into the same goals. One opponent robot stayed on defense. They still only managed 3 points and 2 were from our alliance. It was very frustrating.

Ball handling is an interesting engineering problem, but that subtlety is lost on the audience. We also need games with the drama to draw them in, and I don't think they got it right this year. The finals were more exciting, but for the first day and a half it was about missed kicks and trying to get balls out of the corners.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

Balls that roll into th wall are near impossible to get without a magnet, and good ball handling devices were few and far between. Way to go for anyone that got the ball magnet down, and if you don't, I hope you have weight because i think for week 3 and beyond I think it will be as tough to get selected in an alliance if you dont have a handling mechanism. About as hard as getting the ball away from the wall without a mechanism.

Re: 2010 week 1 low scores
 

Our robot, by just being a large, flat front, was able to motor balls away from the wall much easier than other teams. The memory foam in front of our kicker also stops balls from bouncing off of us. In fact, I would call it a passive ball control system, as opposed to an active one, such as the vacuum at FLR.