Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

What are the key lessons learned for the Week 2 regionals to know about?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Minibots can win a match, if you can actually properly deploy them in time. I noticed a lot of teams, even "good" ones, trip up and miss the pole, or have the minibot fall off the deployer, or not engage, etc.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I wanted to wait until the regionals for this weekend were over but I decided to list my observations so far. Like the above stated minibots are an important factor at the moment. I also noticed that there was little defense played during the matches which really shocked me, however I feel this might change in quarters. Lastly I predict that the winning alliance will have two good hangers on their team and one reliable minibot. This should at the least earn 60+points, I believe that the robot that is relied on as the main deployer will be the one who plays defense or herds tubes to their side of the field.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

To still need to watch out for the second day of the regionals. Because their might be some new strategies that develop from the elimination rounds that could he useful.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

1. If you don't have a roller claw on your robot (and are not the Thunder Chickens), seriously consider replacing whatever manipulator you have with a WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE roller claw.

2. Throwing tubes is a great idea if you offensively outclass your opponents. However, if you are offensively outclassed by your opponent, throwing tubes onto the field is a bad idea. The number of times I saw alliances enthusiastically feeding tubes to their opponents is stunning. I know that human players feel the need to be *DOING SOMETHING*, but this was a repeated tactical mistake that made difficult games completely one-sided.

3. Make sure the firmware on your driver's station is the latest version. The inspectors were sloppy at FLR, and lots of teams had the wrong version. The FTA will disable your robot for the match if this is the case, and this will be a sad thing for you!

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I disagree with this. I saw many teams today that scored effectively without a roller claw (67). I also saw a roller claw break and make the robot useless besides the minibot.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

A well built manipulator should work most/all the time...
25 doesn't like your reasoning.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Other than hype, what makes 217's claw different from most clamping claws?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

It seems that the alliances at FLR throw the white tubes out first.
It looks like that the white tubes roll into the zone on the other side.


And what is a withholding allowance claw?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Honestly, I saw more poorly implemented roller claws than amazing ones. It seems they are a degree of difficulty harder than a solid pincher.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I think that what he meant was that you should bring in a roller claw within the withholding allowance (that rule which allows teams to bring in fabricated parts if you didn't know) to replace whatever you might have for a manipulator.

At least, that is my interpretation.

But anyway, what I've been seeing in the stream is that there is no part of the match that is overwhelmingly important. If you have a great minibot, that will make up for a sub-par manipulator or just lack a manipulator anyway. Otherwise, having a great manipulator can do the opposite, making up for not having a minibot in the first place (although the attempt to have one should occur anyway).

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Minibots only seemed to decide the game if one team had it and the other didn't/couldn't deploy.

As for manipulators, i saw a great many good pincer manipulators, and a great many good rollers. It comes down to each teams implementation of the feature. some did it better than others. I think 2 or all (i don't remember which) of the blue alliance from finger lakes final had pincers, and they did EXTREMELY well in the finals. the minibots decided the last two matches. Blue made a comeback in the second round just by minibots, but lost the next by the same. Great regional for anyone who watched.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

One of the two scoring methods (good manipulator or minibot) will get you into elims. However, you need both of those things on at least two alliance partners to win elims.

But can we really say we didn't already kinda know this?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

5/6 #1 seeds won the regional.
1/6 #3 seeds won the regional.
It appears the ranking system is doing its job.

Few others:
Having two minibots will make you a great alliance.
Having two sub-2 second minbots will make you an outstanding alliance.
Ubertubes are really worth 12 points because any decent alliance will score a logo over the ubertube.
Like minbots, scoring two ubertubes on the top rack will make you great, 3 and you are near unbeatable.

The only time you will ever see a scoring rack completely filled up is at the end of the day.

Go for the top rack or find some other way to help the alliance.

Many alliances never entered the lane. I suspect this will change in the coming weeks.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

At NJ, it looked like the tubes were still quite overinflated - many teams had difficulty floor loading for this reason. FIRST said that a template was being used to regulate this, but I'm not sure that was the case (or perhaps there is some confusion over the proper way to use the template).

Either pray that this was an isolated incident, or start planning now about what you would do if you encounter tubes that are larger than you had designed for.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Echoing Jared's statement. The tubes in NJ were indeed over-inflated.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

We were watching them repair tubes, they were using wooden gauges as per Bill's Blog.

Edit: I saw them in use from the stands, don't know if they were used properly. However, I'm building gauges tomorrow and checking our tubes.....

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

The tubes were being struggled into the gauges. I lol'd.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

The middle becomes full of tubes so if you can pick up off the ground, that's great but if you can't, you really need to be able to. Also, if a tube gets stuck in the safe zone and you can't pick it up, you are kinda stuck..expecially if it's an uber tube in which case you won't be able to anyway.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

G16 only penalizes you for hanging an ubertube in teleop. There is no rule preventing you from possessing one.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Using them and using them properly are two very different things.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Oh, that is true. I just didn't have the most recent version of the manual. Thanks!

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Some of you who are harping on my comment ignored the qualifier, "seriously consider"...

I didn't say "OMGZORZ YOU NEED 2 REDESIGN UR ROBOTZ!!!11!!!1!!elebenty!!"

For what I saw, I stand by my initial assessment. I am quite certain that some people will disagree -- and that's okay.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

The third thing that stood out to me at FLR was the huge spread in driver skills. Many teams seemed to be just learning how to drive their robots. Driving into the tower bases while picking up a tube or knocking down another tube while placing one are just not good signs. The few teams that had their driving skills down to a science did really well.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I believe somoene in the live chat noted how some of the teams "just sit confused" in the field.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Minibots are more important than tubes. If you don't have a minibot, go make one. If you don't have a deployment system, go make one of those too. Seriously.

Even though the game is called "Logomotion" in most Qualification matches I played in and saw, Tubes could not, and did not offset the points scored by a single minibot.

The tubes aren't a constant size. Make sure your gripper can grab anything between 6" and 9".

(Seriously though, I really hope that Team update 17 comes out and devalues the minibot race by at least 1/3rd. 30 points is way too much for first place, especially considering that you need to make two complete logos on the top row to offset ONE minibot going up the pole and getting first place. Why call the game Logomotion if it's not about making the FIRST logo? If we wanted to play with mini robots then we'd go play in FTC or VRC.)

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

But that's what FIRST wants, remember? They made the minibot race dramatically huge so that we'd invest in the FTC kit, hopefully competing in the 2011-2012 FTC game.

It's too bad the most competitive minibots involve modifying Tetrix components to the point of uselessness in FTC, and that it effectively turns Logomotion into a coin flip (if heads, your team's minibot doesn't combust halfway up the pole and cost you the event!)

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I'd be surprised they did change that, even if it was to a 20-15-10-5 scale. That fundamentally changes the game and you would be unfairly penalizing the teams that focused on the minibot.

Teams made decisions on strategy based on the game described. While we didn't focus all our attention on the minibot, there are teams that did and would be significantly handicapped if point values changed.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

A couple of things I've noticed:

Lane incursion penalties are very common, and difficult to avoid. Nobody was immune, it seemed. They don't necessarily decide a match, but they can and have.

Minibots are huge. I only saw a few matches where a match was won on strength of tubes vs a minibot.

There were way more minibots present then there were reliable ways to deploy them. Deployment was, far and away, the missing element for a lot of teams. Till finals there were very few real races decided by minibot speed, but plenty decided by sticky or otherwise slow deployment. Reliability is paramount, with speed a distant second.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

The funny thing is that all of the "super fast" minibots that I've seen use 4 tetrix parts at most - Motors, batteries, and the on/off switch.

I understand that devaluing the minibot would hurt some teams that focused on that, but what about the teams that focused on putting up tubes? You're telling me that all of the work that my team has done to score 5 game pieces should be erased by one robot that didn't score any tubes and put up a minibot? Something's not right there.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

There just may be a reason for forehead protectors this year. After watching Blair get bopped by a tube, that was the first thing that popped into my head. :)

Jane

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I disagree, vehemently. At FLR, this simply was not true.

...and this I agree with 100%.

While this was mostly true, if one wants to be a truly competitive, top-tier team, it simply wasn't the case. FLR had many matches that were 60+ points to not very many points, with most of those points coming from tube scoring.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

And how many teams did you see an alliance win the minibot race and lose the match?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

So a lack of, or incorrect, analysis of the game requires a change in the game to make it more advantageous to your lack of, or incorrect, analysis of the game? Interesting request.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

It seems that minibots are like ramps were early in '07. It was extremely hard to win a match against a double ramp if you had no ramps. But, once both alliances had ramps, matchs were decided by tubes. As more and more teams get consistent minibots, tube scoring will become more important.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

If it was a 30 point bonus for minibots, I would agree. But the "race" nature inserts so much entropy into the match results that the winner of the match is rarely decided on by factors you could have actually designed for.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Line tape problems

I saw a team identify tape problems before a qualification match, it looked scuffed or dirty from the stands. The field crew made a quick repair that the team appeared not to like and had to leave the field under protest. During autonomous their robot deployed the uber tube way prematurely.

Was the team correct or was it a field issue. I tend to believe the team because after the match, the field crew carefully repaired the tape.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Us. Over and over again.

We were the most consistent minibot at the regional, with claw gremlins that kept us out of the tube-scoring quite a bit. We lost most of our games in spite of winning every minibot race we entered.

(...and I will maintain to my dying day that our last semifinal match, we did not deploy our minibot early... It wouldn't have made a difference (beyond pride) anyway, but dang it, the refs got that call dead wrong! Video will vindicate us, I do declare! :D )

I saw quite a few matches where the alliance that won the minibot race also won the match, but by a greater margin than the minibot points... There weren't that many where a successful minibot actually made a win/loss difference (though some of them were critical, of course).

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Make sure your minibot stays on your hostbot. I'll say it again: if you care about getting the minibot bonus, and if you value the work you put into building it, then make good and sure it doesn't fall off and get run over by a hostbot. It feels like watching your pet turtle try to cross the freeway.

A minor correction - the winning alliance in NH was 175/1519/176, which was the third seeded alliance.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Did any of the other regionals have issues with their fields detecting minibots? At FLR, almost every minibot to reach the top was undetected by the touch sensor. We had to have referees keep track of which minibots were scoring, and that wasn't good when things got close at some points.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Based on webcasts I watched, I think all Regionals had issues with minibot detection issues. All had refs holding up fingers and jumping/throwing arms up to indicate when hit.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Well everyone has said it a million times but minibots are extremely important. Ours carried us to the finals but our manipulation wasn't key.

Make sure that your manipulation can pick up tubes without any error from the floor. Aside from that, figure out how to have a fast minibot. We are actually trying to make ours faster which is almost impossible

Tubes + Minibot = Elim Wins and Champions

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Just an observation from going to FLR today: I was very surprised by the amount of teams throwing tubes. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but for some of the matches, especially with powerhouses 217 and 2056, it seemed like the human players throwing tubes were doing nothing but feeding their opponents. If you throw a tube into the middle, you're basically giving it to the team with the best manipulator.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

You must have a working mini bot to win.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

One extra is a must. They do break.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

If you were talking about the NJ regional, yes this occured near the end of the qualification matches to team 1647. They protested, one of the refs moved their hands over the tape to see it was still down, then the teammate was sent back after protesting it because there were tire tread smudges on the line. The smudges did, in fact, cause the tube to deploy prematurely. After the match, the team spoke to the referees, and since the lack of ubertube did not change the result of the match, they opted not to replay it.

So teams that use the line trackers -- make sure your line is good, and speak with the referees before your match, and give them the time they need to fix the problem.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I disagree. i saw plenty of matches in both FLR and Alamo where the winner of the minibot race lost the match. Correction: you must have a consistent manipulator and minibot DEPLOYMENT to win. Normally if the match finished with the winning team winning the bonus, it didn't matter because they would have won anyway, even if their opponents had won the race. The teams that could get into a rhythm when scoring tubes were the ones that won because they were simply able to starve their opponents of points. and a lot of them didn't have the greatest handling manipulators, they were just consistent and well practiced with using them. The deployment system is definitely more key than the minibot, because if a fast sub-two-second minibot can't be deployed, then the slower 5 second minibot wins every time if it is deployed.

TUBE + MINIBOT DEPLOYMENT = WON MATCH

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

This is correct, to an extent.

Ramps in 2007 were independent of the other alliance. You could score your 60 points regardless of any bonus points the other alliance scored. Minibot races live up to their name, they're races. The winning minibot is not only scoring points for their alliance, they're denying potential points to the opponent.

Even when both alliances have multiple, quick, consistent minibots, the race will still have the potential to win a match over tube placement. Especially if one alliance can manage to grab first and second place, which results in a whopping 25 additional points over getting 3rd and 4th.

The potential exists for minibot races to almost be a matter of luck when both alliances have lightning fast minibots and deployment systems. Whoever happens to execute the best (or have the most fortunate series of events) in each particular match could win, almost regardless of what happened in the 2:05 of that match leading up to that point. Any number of small mistakes or freak chances could result in an extra second or two added to the climb time or a dropped minibot, which could very easily result in a lost match.

If you played a 100 matches in a series between teams with similar minibots, sure the alliance with better tube scorers would likely win. But in a series of 3 matches, I can't say that's always going to be the case.

Definitely an issue in NJ as well. Sometimes a strong blow the pole or tower base would accidentally set off the sensor, as well. This issue adds another element of "chance" and potential for human error into the minibot race. Hopefully they can get it resolves and/or incorporate a more fool-proof method of seeing who won minibot races.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

:(

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

1. Everyone should put 7.5A fuses in their minibot batteries if they don't want their motors to burn out.

2. Minibots change the game more than I believe they should. Under many qualification matches, if you won the race, you won the match. This also occured in MANY of the elimination matches.

3. That said, if you are going to a week 2 regional and don't have a minibot built yet, you have 5 more days to do so. USE THEM WISELY. Find out successful systems and BUILD ONE. I kid you not, it is the most important thing for you to do as an FRC team to make sure you have a working, consistent minibot. Minibot speed is great, and all, and it may make the difference in later weeks at the higher end of the competition, but many teams with "Tricked out" minibots had issues.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

About the minibot stuff, KEEP THEM SECURE!!! In one of the first matches, a minibot fell off and then it got bashed to death really, so watch out. Also another thing, watch your manipulator, roller or claw, be able to pull it up quick, i saw team 27 rush, get their one of their side aligners for tubes get decimated and bent, it looked bad but i think they fixed it. So all's good, but watch it and teams will not be afraid to hit it. Also a team with a solid fast strong def bot with a minibot without a arm is very effective. Team 3536 yea a rookie got 2nd seed because their minibot was very consistent, maybe slow but it got their and they did very well. Also the good teams will have dead programming for autonomous, or watever you call it, thats how its done, the lines are iffy and robots shake a lot when they get close to the poles when going fast so cameras get messed up. Do what works and make it work. Another thing teams with a beast of a hp lik us will not pick feeders, they will have no need for you so you might want to change your robot a little because we had a feeder bot at kettering 314 big mo basically they went down out scouting choice for the fact that they are a feeder and we didnt need them. AUTONOMOUS IS A DEFINITE NEED!!! Minibots will play less and less of a role when teams have a auto robot and a robot that has a good hanging arm. Also YOU DONT HAFTA SCORE ON THE TOP MIDDLE PEG IN AUTO, ITS THE SAME AMOUNT OF POINTS ON ANY OTHER PEG AND THE OTHERS ARE LOWER!!! SO DO THAT!! instead. Also be able to score in the middle of the two racks because most teams don't have that option and its not that hard its just turning how high you raise the arm a little and just lining it up from a different spot. It can be done. And minibot isnt required by me, but if your a rookie team, do that instead of an arm, follow in 3536 footsteps, they got seed 2 just because of a slow but consistent minibot and a very good defensive robot. Hands off to their driver who definately has gotten the hang of it. Also logos logos logos, they are key but if you have no time to score a logo just got top rack even if its 3 triangles because no matter what its not a big deal. Anyways thats all ill say for now until week 3. Thanks for reading and a shout out to the electro eagles, loved meeting you guys months ago, and love seeing you guys kick some butt out there.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Two words:

Minibot, Autonomous.

These two things seem to make or break a winning alliance. Doing both reliably seems to be the winning formula. Yes this may seem obvious playing the game is the secret to playing the game but in past games end game and autonomous sometimes seem to be very undervalued (in my own opinion). And now they seem more important then ever.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

how is it what Sean said, is incorrect? I believe he is implying working as able to score. Part of your argument is agreeing with him.
2 working minibots vs an alliance with none, I'll take that every time.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Another lesson: Those of you with bumper skirts, make sure they are very well made. The FTA has been instructed to disable robots that have any of the wrong color showing, or any suspicion that the skirt extends outside the bumper zone in either direction -- without warning to the team so effected.

I have this on very good authority, what with our team having a bumper skirt that almost got us red carded from every red match we played! :eek:

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Very, very true.

For whatever reason (gremlins?), ours was released early in tele-op. Watching it sit on the field, with all of the robots racing about, was definitely high-stress.

It would have made a captivating youtube video had it raced across the field, ran into something else and then released whatever magic smoke it had left. Luckily, we were relieved to find only minimal damage after the match.

--Karlis

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

At least at kettering, matches were not won only based on minibots or tubes. The winning alliance had 2 robots constantly scoring and the same 2 robots had great minibots. The last team member was stealing tubes and bringing them to the home zone. Furthermore, 33s double ubertube autonomous worked very well and gave them 3 ubertubes in many elimination matches. If this shows things to come it will take 3 uber tubes, 3 logos, and 2 minibots to win at higher levels.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I would say make sure your minibot deployment system is very reliable and sturdy. At Traverse City some hard defense made robots' deployment mechanisms broken. No point of having a good minibot if during competition you cannot launch it because you did not count on a robot hitting you as you line up for the end-game, a fatal vulnerability point for some deployment systems.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Some of these mini bots should not have scored. Just because they hit the top does not mean they win. The rules state it should be able to push the plate not just hit it. Some of these fast little mini bots did not have enough power to push the plate up. That is a design flaw; they should not have gotten the points for it.

When a bigger mini bot hit the top the lights did go off.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

The best thing they had at the regionals is the fast pass. Make sure you get your robot inspected quickly. if you do then you can get in a lot of practice time.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Sometimes the trigger plates don't even work. I heard from a mentor that when testing a trigger plate, someone smacked it hard and it did not even trigger.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Mike, there is a known problem with the towers, FIRST sent put instructions on Friday on how to fix it, the next day we were told that it doesn't work. Minibots not triggering the sensor was a constant problem across events this week.

Also, please don't make two different posts in a thread within five minutes of each other.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

mike, we hit the top with a tremendous amount of force, and sometimes the pole didn't register due to the pole itself not being established correctly (I believe two poles at NJ hardly ever went off). I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I disagree. I don't think we want to encourage too much force at the top of the pole to damage the sensors or the mini-bots.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

OK physics folks answers me a question :)

Isn't it a matter of enough force, couldn't a light but very fast minibot deliver as much energy as a slow heavy one?

Of course a slow minibot would have more contact time but that wasn't part of the challenge was it?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

1st Year physics: Impulse/Momentum

Ft=mv

so yes, a large and a small minibot can apply the same force to the plate

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Although minibus nit triggering towers were an issue, I believe that it us also very important that FIRST specifically defines what is and what is not "playing the game". During elims our alliance received a red card that really could have gone to either alliance depending on the definition (which has not yet been established) of "playing the game". This red card cost us both the match and the tournament and although fairly accessed, we could have avoid a prolonged discussion over the specifics of the card which caused a 20-30 minute delay and was overall and unneccessary hinderance.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

At FLR on practice day the tower finish lights would trigger if you hit the tower hard enough with your robot. They basically all but disabled the tower lights for all poles at FLR.

BTW, our small but light minibot definitely crushes the top plate. Impulse - momentum (or work energy theory, too) shows that it is momentum, not simply mass, that dictates the contact energy. Believe me, if a minibot that is going up in less than 1.5 seconds it will hurt you if it contacted you. 4 (or whatever the small number is) Newtons of force does not hurt you. The claim about small, light minibots in the earlier post is based on no physics that I use.

Paul

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

His two posts were both relevant to the thread topic but addressed separate issues. There's no harm in what he did.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Something I observed from week one:
A good defense can ruin an ENTIRE team, if played correctly.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Especially if you load the team's zone full of tubes they do not want. e.g. If they have two top row squares already load the area with a bunch of squares as obstacles. If they get past the defending robot after it has already delayed them, now they have to deal with tubes in their way that they do not want.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I read through this whole post and theres quiet a few differences between the different regionals from week 1. There is one thing I did not notice in the entire post though.

There are very few autonomous with the Y-code, quiet a few straight line autonomous modes.

I will summarize NJ briefly here.... There were about 7-8 consistent minibots, there were about 2 or 3 really fast minibots. I think at NJ a lot of teams did loose the focus on the minibot and only focused on the main bot.

We had a working minibot, but it was not fast and nor was our deployment system designed till 3 days before NJ regional. The final minibot and deployment was designed within the week prior to the regional. The design for the minibot came from ideas and videos posted here on Chiefdelphi (credit goes to team 118*)

At NJ, if you had an effective minibot, it was game over, your alliance was probably going to win most qualification matches. (save some odd penalties)

Other than that, one of the biggest things I noticed with flooding the field with tubes, this is fine for qualification matches, however in eliminations the name of the game is to starve your opponents of tubes, especially if your opponents have a good tube scoring mechanism..

By around week 3 or so, most teams will have a minibot, by around week 4-5 most teams will have a consistent deployment and minibot. At this point I think the tube scoring will become extremely important.

Also if you could have an alliance with 2 scorers and one (defensive/scorer), along with 2 minibots, that was an effective strategy for us.

I am looking forward to seeing how this season progresses in terms of strategy.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

YES defense changes again in the eliminations, and can be played in a big way against a high-powered alliance. The first Final's match our alliance was way off-balance, everyone was trying too hard trying to out score them on tubes, we scored in the wrong order, ran into each other etc. causing major confusion even on my part. Mean time, our human players were tossing tubes to the opposition and making it easy for them to score. Someone posted earlier about Human Player discipline- absolutely! Don't get too excited & throw the game away because you want to do something!

Thanks to some great scouting/strategic advice from our friends 2337, in the Kettering Finals we switched to a stronger defensive posture in our 2nd match and had our alliance been able to shut 33's mini-bot down & deployed our own (we only had 1 on our alliance, 494's) we might have went to a 3rd match. It was certainly much better played than going point-point, even if we took out the confusion factor.

I have to agree with the earlier post, but will gear it more toward an alliance. Going forward, for an alliance to be highly competitive, scoring 2 or 3 ubertubes in auton, (can anyone score from the middle in auton, aside from 33, 148 doing a double... I see an opportunity if done correctly) and having at least 2 mini-bots for flexibility will be "must-haves". Execution on placing tubes is a given, do right, do it efficiently.

As for the "best gripper", active rollers are good, but so are claws (if your design ensures you get a good bite every time- we did not & it made it tougher especially when everyone gets excited during elims)

Load station... what load station? Never used it once, though we designed our arm to be able to use it, other-wise we would have used a 4-bar variation and made life a little easier. We didn't get our arm working effectively until late Saturday & it as well as the controls still have room for improvement.

Good luck to everyone competing in week #2! :)

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Have a STABLE robot arm- at traverse city, I saw a lot of teams that had a robot tall enough to place on the top rack, but whose arms would flex and bend up to 8 inches back and forth, making it much harder for them to place. A lower center of gravity and a light manipulator with a rigid arm helped enormously.

Also, a team that can score 6 tubes on the middle rack will beat out one who only scores 4 on the top rack, even though the top is considered to be a necessity for many teams.

And, of course, a fast and reliable minibot will get you at least to the top 8 seeds. I think that a t traverse city, 6 or 7 of the top eight teams had a minibot deploy at least every other match.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

If you are using a non-Classmate PC for your driver station, make sure you use a Windows login with the name Driver. The uppercase D matters.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

For us, this was a matter of sensor calibration. In order to follow the lines under FLR lighting conditions, we had to turn the gain on the line finders all the way up -- but because the center of the Y is also the center of the field, and the black tape they use to tape the carpet together is somewhat reflective, the sensors would then read the black tape *after* the Y, and thus keep on driving straight.

We verified this by putting our sensors right over the black tape during the practice day -- sure enough, it was triggering them!

Our autonomous worked fine on the practice field (which did not have the black tape), and fine at home, but would not work on the field itself.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Minibot + Deployment: Most know the importance of minibots and deployment, here's what i've got.

If you've got a guide system that touches your minibot, you're going to have to cut it down so your minibot doesn't lose you a match. We got called on it during our fourth match.

Also, make sure you don't burn up your minibot (Last match on Friday, BAE/GSR *COUGH*).

Deployment is crucial. Make sure the feeders guide you in unless you have a system in place to get you on 100% of the time.

Don't deploy at the Flintstone's feet sound (unless they change it, make sure to ask). That is the 5 second warning until the race starts. When the base of the tower changes colors back to the alliance color, go.

Manipulators: If you have something that can pick up off the ground, abuse it. A LOT of teams will be throwing tubes. If you don't, arrange with your alliance partners to make sure they save a few tubes for you, if they decide to use their human players as feeders.

Don't waste time trying to score high if you're having issues or consistently missing, move down a peg, and get on with it. There is 0 time to waste, especially if you are under tube pressure and/or deploying.

Work with your alliance to make logos. Don't screw up logos by putting them on so it looks like the actual logo TO YOU (If you can't bear to think of the FIRST logo backwards :rolleyes: then make something up in Paint. You're going to need it.).

Feeders and Defense are not crucial. BAE/GSR finals was 3 offensive bots vs. 3 offensive bots. They can skew results in quals, especially if your robot can effectively play D, but are not specifically crucial in finals.

Feeders/Analysts: Make sure your human player is almost at the level of coach knowledge and awareness-wise, especially if they are pigeonholed into analyst all weekend. Most analysts at BAE/GSR became a second coach to their team. Help out your alliance.

If you're aiming at a strategy to shut teams down, throw tubes strategically and AIM!!!! You have no idea how many teams threw tubes willy-nilly. If you've got the space, have your human player practice with all three tubes, and get good at aiming and distance. Make sure they know to be a sniper, but make sure that they can turn it to turbo if you need to start shutting down a section of field.

Strategic points to flood with tubes: opposing feeder lanes, towers, safe zone. Do it only if 2/3 teams on that alliance cannot pick up off the floor, and you can.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Can you explain your guide system, and the offended rule explanation?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

On the practice field while testing our minibot when it hit the top the pole would actually "jump" up a little from its slot. We, without a doubt, had enough force to trigger the top. Despite this, over half the time our minibot hit the top of the tower on the field towers nothing was triggered. I hope this problem is fixed for week two regionals/districts.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

The problem with the tower triggers is two-fold:

1 - False positives: The tower will sometimes trigger because of a hard hit by a hostbot on the pole or base, before the minibot even begins to move.

2 - False negatives: The tower will not trigger even when soundly smacked by the minibot.

At Kettering, the false negatives were associated with the faster minibots. It was noted that in order to eliminate the false positives, the sensitivity was decreased, and it was surmised that the fastest minibots did not provide enough contact time to trigger the tower. It was not a matter of force, but of time of contact.

Hopefully this can be addressed.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

We competed at Alamo Regional this past weekend.

We had a great time and were honored to be in the quarterfinals against 418, 16 and Rookies 3841. We were picked as the first choice for 3847 (rookies) at number 8. They were completely taken off guard when they moved into position to be an alliance captain. They then chose Cyberwolves, 647 as our alliance second alliance partner. 3847 had lost their tube manipulator early on Friday. Both of these robots showed Field communications before our second match started but lost communications right after the match started. 3847 regained it and worked extremely hard at pushing tubes in our lane at the Red alliance end. We chose not to throw any tubes into the field as an alliance to try and limit their opportunities to stray tubes. Our plan was to push tubes into our lane as there were entered with two robots and have one robot score tubes at the other end. 148 put up two ubertubes in Auto while 16 attempted but just missed. In both matches, 148 and 16 deployed their minibot resulting in 50 points for them. We were crushed both matches by these this powerhouse alliance of hall of famers, but by limiting the number of tubes on the field, the minibots were 50 points of each match.

Minibots proved to be the difference the later in the tournament it went. Rounds with four successful minibots did occur in the elimination matches a few times.

Many teams had minibots that would climb the pole but deployment proved to be very difficult. 118 has a very impressive minibot that is extremely fast, (if you have not seen it, check out Magic's minibot youtube) but they had difficulty getting it deployed during the matches. 118's early match loss was to an alliance(2158, utilizing a strategy of pushing tubes into the opposing teams lane to starve them from scoring. The opposing alliance also deployed a minibot I believe. The final match score was 30 - 24.

Alamo had 17 rookie teams in attendance. Many of the teams did not understand all the rules, so it was very important to explain the some of the basic rules before the match.

Key points I noticed:
1. You need the Driver Station update (bring it on a USB for others)
2. You need the correct CRio update (bring it on a USB for others)
3. Picking up off the floor is huge importance.
4. Do not just liter the field with tubes if you an underpowered by a strong offensive alliance opponent.
5. GET A MINIBOT that you can DEPLOY.
6. DEPLOYMENT IS KEY. Slow and steady will put you in place for high seeding or selection in the next week tournaments most likely. As the season progresses, the minibot times will improve as well as the consistency of deployment. This will most likely take a larger roll after week 2.
7. Defense can be played by limiting the number of tubes as well as working to limit your opponent alliances' from scoring logos by strategically removing the tubes they need to complete logos. Push them into your lane where they cannot be retrieved without incurring a penalty.
8. If you are opposing a stronger alliance, aggressive driving is a must to make it more difficult for teams to pick up tubes. Robot to robot contact in the bumper zone makes it more difficult for teams to pick up tubes in optimum position for deliver to the pegs.
9. Stay away from the opposing teams tower in the last ten seconds. Red card
10. Many teams received a red card for a possessed tube hitting an opposing teams tower. (G23)
11. Pushing/Herding of tubes resulted in penalties as well.
12. If you have a robot who cannot hang tubes, push tubes forward to your alliance zone but not much closer than the towers since it will cause difficulty to maneuver to pick up tubes.
13. It seemed some aliances who had two/three teams attempting to score in auton could have difficulty if two robots ran into the driver station wall at the same time. The driver station walls would shake and rattle. I believe this might have caused some problems with lining up with cameras via imaging and/or with range finding of some sort.

LOGOmotion is a fun game for not the teams but the fans. The minibots are a huge fan favorite at the end game.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

3. I agree after seeing all those tubes on the ground at Traverse City.
12. If you cannot hang I would prefer defense unless your alliance is a scoring machine.
13. Encoders work fine for driving the robot in autonomous. I find it the simplest solution. I think it was the Killer Bees that had an autonomous that hung 2 uber-tubes with only encoders.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Two encoders and a gyro.

(that does not include sensors in the elevator).

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

A rebuttal is in order... The inspectors were not sloppy. They were given information to use on Thursday for inspections that proved to not be valid on Friday. They were fastidious in writing down the version each team used on the inspection forms and were able to identify which teams had which versions.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Fair enough. I was told that the inspectors were sloppy by Rob (the lead inspector), so I thought that was a reasonable statement.

It wasn't meant as an accusation -- Thursday was difficult for everyone!

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Average Qualification Scores were a LOT lower than most predicted. While there were some great matches, there were plenty of penalties, minibots falling off robots, and robots that just couldn't hang that tube...

They were higher than my original prediction, but not by a lot!

FLR: 33.19
BAE: 30.36
NJ: 26.30
ALAMO: 18.13

Overall Average: 26.52
Red Alliance Ave: 25.59
Blue Alliance Ave: 27.46
Winning Score Ave: 40.63
Losing Score Ave: 12.42

My observations:
1. Picking up the Floor was VERY valuable, essential for Eliminations teams.
2. Minibots were overpowered in Qualifications, as 75% of teams struggled to put up more than 1 or 2 tubes, minibots became very valuable. In Elims it was a bit more balanced. This may even out as teams get more practice.
3. Reliable auto mode will be very helpful.
4. More teams went for top rack scoring than I expected by the math of the point values (and many struggled).
5. Defense was rarely played effectively, it will hopefully get better as the weeks go on.
6. Line incursion penalties were flying EVERYWHERE. I really wish the rule was only active when a team was in the lane...

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

That would be a great rule change.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I think changing the rule to only be in effect when another robot is in the lane then will allow it to be abused easily. This is week one, I believe in Week 2+ drive-teams will have learned from Week 1 to avoid enroachment of the zones if they can help it.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

There were a lot of lane-incursion penalties, but there were a lot of teams that didn't incur any, either.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Call me crazy, but it seams that human players have amazing aim this year. I would say that at least half of the tubes thrown hit the little pole in the middle of the 27ft wide field. :yikes:

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I didn't go to see the matches, I watched them from youtube but what I noticed was that most of robots couldn't get to the tower during the minibot race because of the other robots.

I think defending the opposite alliance's towers is a great idea because they won't get high points for it.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I saw human players chucking alot of tubes that went flying towards the scorers table.
Teams should be discouraged from just throwing tubes wildly that could take out the scoring equipment. A yellow card might do the trick.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Even if the team win the race and lose the match, it'S not a bad thing because the team will win if they got two other strong robots that can get a lot of points on the tube.

My mentor said the minibot is the biggest not only because it can get high points but also because the other strong teams will want to get your team in their alliance because of your minibot.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

There is the rule <G36> , though I am not sure if throwing wildly constitutes on purpose out of bounds.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

They weren't doing it on purpose (I saw one human player's toss goo straight up to the ceiling of the Gordon Fieldhouse and end up behind the driver's station) but when team's robots get stuck and they keep running the robot til they burn a hole in the carpet they get smacked upside the head with a card for doing it and I think it should apply to this action as well.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

that's right, and the feeding is safer than throwing.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I mentioned this previously: if you are going against opponents who are better at retrieving tubes off the floor than you are then don't toss the tubes out there and make it easy for them.
That's why scouting is important. You need to know the capabilities of your opponents and your alliance partners so you know how to use your tubes properly so you don't get thumped.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Minibot is big, but you don't have to deploy 2 minibot. If 1 minibot is faster than the others, you have to deploy the fastest minibot and the other robots should go defending.

Autonomous is not that big but you should get points, it doesn't matter if the ubertube is in the lowest low, you can still get points.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I would say autonomous is pretty big. Top row its worth 6 points, middle 4, bottem 2 without the bonus for logo pieces during teleop. If your alliance can get 3 uber tubes up that is 18 points automatically. 9 additional points for scoring over them. Its almost the equivalent of winning the minibot race during a time period where the other alliance cannot stop you.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Defending is a good point and the most important thing is you have to defend the towers during the minibot race.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

most of teams think that during the autonomous the lowest row is not that high so they stay there for 15 seconds doing nothing.

My mentor told me that if you can't get to the top row, you shouldn't move during the autonomous (this is not what I'm thinking).

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

So don't we get points for towers not triggering?