Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

So it seems hard to believe, but there are some of us who have yet to play Logomotion. (We're up this week, with the rest of the Columbia area teams up next week.)

I was able to catch some of the Week 1 event webcasts, but was shut out on Week 2 due to work. We know the GDC didn't change the game up for this week, but has the game changed itself from the power of observation? Are minibots still dominating tube strategies? Are yellow cards still being given out like AOL demo CDs in the late 90s?

Enquiring chickens minds want to know!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Minibots are still super important. At waterford in elims, the speed of minibots became really important. We had only 1 minibot on our alliance and in the semifinals our opponents had 2. Lucky for us our one minibot was the fastest at the district. We were able to outscore them on tubes and win the minibot race to get the win. If you have a consistent deployment, I would suggest getting your minibot under 2 seconds to stay super competitive in elimination rounds.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Got penalties? I watched WPI on Friday and attended on Saturday and I was shocked at how many penalties were committed! A few quals had none most had 1 or several and the elims saw a couple of DQ's that cost one alliance their shot at an upset.


Lesson learned- read the rules... again.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

We learned that even if your robot can score an ubertube and 6+ tele-op tubes, if you dont have a fast minibot you still get beaten.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

If you want to control your destiny, you must be able to play all aspects of the game well. If you have a consistent minibot, you will do better in qualifications than if you just have good tube scoring.

Minibot speed doesn't matter as much as consistency in qualifcations, but it definitely matters in eliminations. If you don't have all three aspects of the game covered in your eliminations alliance, you will be at a disadvantage.

Defense can be and was effectively played, even with all the penalty possibilities. The middle of the field can be hard to navigate with lots of robots, and smart driving can definitely hinder a good tube scorer.

Watch the yellow cards. It's a fine line between pushing someone into a zone on accident, and pushing them to draw a penalty and getting yourself a yellow card. Especially in eliminations, if you do that twice you're gonna lose yourself the match, no matter how good your defense is. The refs at WPI gave the benefit of the doubt for first offenses, but if you repeated the offense in the second match they assumed it was purposeful and issued red cards.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

It seems to me that Logomotion is really two games masquerading itself as one. There is the tube placing game, and the race. Winning either of them is good enough to get you playing on Saturday afternoon... but you need to win at both of them to make it out of the quarterfinals.

It's extremely difficult to place enough tubes to guarantee that a minibot (or worse, two minibots) won't flip the winner. If you can't place tubes, it's hard to play effective defense without getting penalties/DQs, even if they are accidental.

Watching WPI, I did see some great defense in the middle of the field. Far and away the most entertaining defensive play I've seen in quite some time, because there wasn't any of that ramming while scoring business. It was all about heading robots off at the pass and juking and jiving to make it to the rack.

However, most of the defense near the yellow line was a lot more painful to watch. Having been on the wrong end of the 2005 human loading penalty, I would want anything to do with a robot on the rack side of the yellow lines.

Also, it seemed like many teams weren't really aware enough of the lanes. Often times tubes would get shoved in the lanes or a team would drop a tube while attempting to place it. They would then run after it, seemingly without realizing they had just got themselves a lane infraction penalty.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

There was a double red card at Florida in the quarters and 2425 got the decisive red card the next match doing the exact same thing.
I know it's hard to see the lines but you really shouldn't be going over there whatsoever if you have no idea where you are at. It's way to easy to make an alliance killing mistake over there. Just cut them off in the middle where you're less likely to attract a red card.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

^THIS

Watching the Waterford webcast, I heard a lot of teams getting called on zone violation. You got to know where the line is and to not drive into it.

Also Human players need to be careful when feeding tubes. I heard a few of those penalties also.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I visited NYC and watched the webcast of the finals today and have to agree with Ian and Nuttyman, you need to effectively master both parts of the game if you wish to make it to the end of the elimination matches. Minibots are truely paramount and merely having one doesn't mean much.
Teams need to be able to deploy quickly and consistently to be effective. They may get selected or be selecting with just a minibot, but in the elimination matches you'll need to be able to place tubes also.
I can't imagine, well yes I can, what it is going to be like at St. Louis in the finals on Einstein.

BTW NYC had excellent coverage of the competition. Cameras switched to coincide with the announcer's commentary.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I watched as much of Pittsburgh and Florida as I could, and I think this post stands:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...24#post1036324

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I think at WPI, especially in the final, a lot of penalties were called because defence was being played by teams that don't usually play defence, haven't played defence or are ill-suited for defence. If you don't have maneuvrability or pushing power, don't defend or you are likely to concede a penalty.

We played defence a couple of times in the qualifications for practice, and we conceded a couple of penalties. By eliminations, we knew how to avoid those penalties.

Human player is important in strategy. Make sure he/she knows the game and strategy well.

Also I found (as Coach) that I couldn't pay attention to our rack at the same time as their rack and watching the human player. The Analyst is actually useful. Who knew?

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Make sure that when your mini-bot falls back down the tower that if it lands on part of your robot it is not above the deployment line. Our solution is to just back up and let it hit the deck.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

We played defense in several matches, and never got any penalties... But then, we were using our maneuverability to try to deny tubes of specific colors to the opposing alliance, to prevent them from hanging logos.

Of course, it didn't work all that well, but it worked better than robot-to-robot defense did!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

One major issue:


Make sure the host bot doesn't stay in contact with the mini-bot once the mini-bot it past the deployment line.

For an example, if your mini-bot is 1" underneath the line and it's on a 3" tall piece, when you deploy the mini-bot will be above the line while still in contact with the piece.

I saw numerous teams not thinking about this small fact, but it could hurt you really badly if a referee catches it.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

It is not all about just plain offense. Hear my case out...

We were with 179 and 233 where both of them could create 2 logos very easily as well as deploy their minibots. We could create 1 logo.

During quarterfinals we all went on offense to see which alliance can put up more points. The scores of the matches weren't differed by a very huge amount. In semi's we went against 103's alliance where they have scored over 100 points during quarterfinals. We simply didn't want to take the risk of going pure offense and not be able to put up enough points. After further discussion with the all drive teams, instead of going offense, we tucked our claw and arm in and went to the other side of the field and got in 103 and 86's way; pushing the tubes into our lane dividers and blocking them from coming towards the tower; we didn't attempt to push them, we just got in the way as well as try to create room for 179 and 233 to give them access to as many tubes possible. It seemed to work out very well. I had to put enough trust in my driver to make sure that he will not break any planes and get us a penalty. Our driver did his job very well.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

From a volunteer point of view:

-If your minibot doesn't come down at the end of the match, you need to get to the pole right away as soon as you're given the okay to get your robots. While most minibots can be easily taken down by setting the hook on top of it and pulling down, there were a few teams who told us to pull on the wheels instead, or some other part. Until you tell us how to take your minibot down - at least the first time it happens - we can't do anything. We don't want to break your minibot, but we also can't spend forever standing next to the tower.

-Tubes can be popped by pushing them really hard into the tower, or a wall, or another robot. Avoid crushing them.

-It only takes a tiny tiny tiny hole to pop a tube. You would be very surprised. I'm going to echo every inspector and volunteer out there when I say PLEASE do not have ANY sharp edges on your robot.

-Regarding tube inflation: it seemed that the tubes deflated slightly with use. They may have been placed on the field initially as brand new and fully inflated (using the guide), but after a few matches, they will be slightly smaller. Keep in mind that the crew simply doesn't have enough time between matches to re-pump all 42 tubes on the field, and that you may get ones that are up to an inch smaller.

-There were a lot of minibots that fell off of robots during teleop. Make sure they're secure until deployment!


EDIT: FIRST (or maybe FiM, but I assume it was from the folks in Manchester) sent us a nice package of parts and instructions to fix the tower triggering problem. It works very nicely. There weren't any false triggers at Waterford, to my knowledge.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Clean your minibot's wheels between matches. We used Clorox disposable wipes (because that's what we had lying around in the shop, and it evaporates very quickly. Also disinfects as it cleans!).

The difference in grip between dirty and clean wheels is substantial.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

More of a reminder for the next few weeks, but make sure that everything on your robot and minibot is secured and tightened (batteries secured, bolts tightened, minibot correctly attached to the mounting pegs, etc.). Our last qualification match, we would have won and possibly been in the top 8 had the rubber bands holding the minibot battery been attached. The battery fell out, and even though we climbed the tower, we broke the 12"x12"x12" rule, and our tower points were not counted.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

In San Diego, we DQed in the Semifinals because we were repeatedly being pushing into the opponent's scoring zone because we only used 2 CIMs. I had warned of this from the beginning of the build season and that we had to use 4 CIMs. We made it to Semis with only a working minibot. My mentor said not to use the arm at all because the drivers never practiced with it. We had great drivers, I believe that our code was next to undrivable but my mentor did not authorize uploading of new code. We knew the problem and fixed it in a minute, but we never uploaded it because the drivers were on a roll. I was very very surprised we made it this far with a dysfunctional robot. At first, we were even worried that we would be even able to put the robot in the field.


We learned that speed of the minibot has to be upped. We left our fast motors at the shop because our mentors and the team captain did not want to "cheat" (they still believe it is illegal... Even though I disproved it weeks ago)

So in other words, no one ever listened to me because they thought I had no idea what I was talking about because all I do is program. NOW they believe me and we will dominate in LA

Listen to David, he may not seem to know what he is talking about when he criticizes the robot, but he is doing it for the good of the team and to improve the robot.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I'm not sure any of this is really news, but here I go...

Wall loaders are at a disadvantage because there are almost always tubes in the lane that make it hard to reach the feeding slot.

A premature minibot deployment will ruin your whole match.

The lanes are really hard to avoid when you have two or three hangers trying to pick tubes off the floor just outside your zone.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Watching week one (GSR) tubes were flooding the field. 90% thrown. Week two (WPI) the field was starved of tubes. The tubes that were delivered were thrown.

Starving the field of tubes made the mini-bot super important.

Bottom line...mini-bot makes or breaks the match.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Strategy is the key to the game. You could have the best robot out there, but if your strategy does not hold up you will lose. No one has the ability to keep focus on everything needed to survive, use your analyst well. Make sure you have some good scouting information. 1114 knew that starving the other alliance of tubes would work because their alliance could get across the field quicker. When they know the other team lost the race they let loose.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

At Pittsburgh most of the mini-bot races went off without a hitch with a few hitting the target but not registering with the FMS. Then we had three extreme cases where the mini-bot would hit one of the bolts holding the target together, make an audible thud and slide back a few inches. During qualifications these were counted as a finished race and went up for an alliance score.

During the Elims this rule was subject to a phone call from the top and was changed so that if your mini-bot doesn't press plastic you don't get points regardless of how many refs are watching to back up/confirm the race and the FMS.

Lesson learned: Don't have large flat spots on the contacting face of your mini-bot that could stop progress on the head of a bolt. Redesign if needed to adapt to something that was changed as of last Wednesday. Add a random pin or something to counteract the randomness the GDC just added to the mini-bot race.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

One team at our regional had 42 points then canceled them all pout with 16 penalties. It helped us win but it sucked for the team. Most of them are also lane incursions. At our regional we had some extra fabric on our bumper and it slightly touched the red tape and we received a penalty.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Two of those penalties (possibly three) were red cards.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

How did you make "fast motors?" You are using the Tetrix motors, aren't you?

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Maybe he was talking about motors without their gearboxes.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Gearbox modifications. Our minibot guy said it was "too fast" and that we would get "caught"... :( Only if we had used it, we might have survived till the finals

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

"So in other words, no one ever listened to me because they thought I had no idea what I was talking about because all I do is program. NOW they believe me and we will dominate in LA"

Learn to spend the effort to quote the actual manual and the Q&A with actual links and citations.
(Mentors have more trouble arguing against undeniable documentation from accepted experts as compared to just the easy oratory of "just programmers" that sound confident. )
;)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

The irony is that is exactly what I did. :confused: I have no idea why anyone would still not see the point. In fact, the one in charge of the minibot actually modified the gearbox, he was on my side. But the team captain said no because it is "illegal". He just personally hates me though; he actually told me "Stop telling me these thing David, you know whatever you say to me come out my other ear."

I can't do much but just say "I told you so..."

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Be carful of those lane penalties. There were quite a few in the matches at the Wisconsin Regional Also, human players, remember not to feed tubes to the opposing alliance! I saw that happen a few times. Funny incedent happened too. In one of our matches, the human player of the opposing alliance scored a triangle on our grid in the right place to form a logo! What happened was when she threw the tube, it bumped the top of the wall and tumbled right onto our peg. We had some good laughs about that :)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Tube starvation and intelligent tube throws are very important in qualifications, and sometimes eliminations. If your alliance has the only minibot, you can win the match by holding all of your tubes back and just choking the field. If you have a scoring disadvantage and want to cause some disruption, tube starvation will get (floor loading) opponents tubes right out of their hands and give you a leg up that could just beat them.

Using the feeder lane is by no means impossible. 177 effectively took advantage of the lane with their very agile and competitive robot.

Don't push tubes right in front of the scoring pegs, especially if you don't have a long arm. You won't be able to score on the pegs without moving them.

Strafing, 3553-style defense is some of the best defense you can play.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Being pushed into a zone is not grounds for disqualification. On the contrary, it disqualifies the opponent for pushing you.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

:ahh: We have been gypped! One quarter final, the opposing team extended its deployment mechanism onto the tower at around 25 seconds. There was no penalties that match apparently and we lost. But we still made it to Semis because we beat them, but the match we DQed, we apparently attempted pushing the robot out of that zone, but due to the lack of power, we could not. The past is the past though :mad:

We will have a working arm, faster minibot and autonomy by LA regional, we hope to win it all.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Very excellent point! I noticed the change in strategy immediately, and I had a feeling we could not keep up. You did play some amazing defense, and getting in our way was just enough to slow us down that little bit.


Btw
Excellent job guys! I am really glad you won the regional. After seeing all of the hard work getting the robot working, it was great to see you compete, and compete very well! Best of luck for the rest of the year!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

We had something like this come up in Jersey. A blue team pushed a red team into another blue team which was in the zone. The red team got DQ'ed (and eliminated as a result) and the blue team got a penalty. I didn't believe it until the refs showed me the rule sheet to read off of.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Know how to create a FIRST Logo. I saw at least five occurrences where teams either attempted or completed a backwards logo. I have to admit I lol'd quite a bit when this happened.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I find putting disagreements on rules down in writing (with urls) on your team forum starts to lower emphasis on opinion and move the conversation toward fact (and finding more facts). I would never suggest "personally hates me" as an appropriate thing to put down in writing, even when somewhat in jest and certainly not to thousands of people on CD that don't know whether you are serious or not.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

As they should have, it was the right call.
Emphasis mine. <G61> says that an opponent can't cause you to get a penalty, which very clearly does not apply here.

So, if you are dumb unfortunate enough to get pushed into an opposing zone, you've got a problem.

Stay Far Away!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I agree with Don here, you're playing with fire if you're close to the zone. Do the safe thing and play defense towards midfield to insure that you don't get Red Carded.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Regarding which alliance gets DQ'd, it depends on the actions that cause the Zone incursion with contact. Read Team Update 16.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Correct. If you aren't "playing the game" and are taking advantage the of G61 exception you get the red card in that situation and it has precedence over theirs, you get DQed/Eliminated.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

You would never get a yellow card for being pushed into an opposing zone, though.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

This is good! Along this line is keep track of time and work with your partners! When it came down to 40 secs a bunch of teams had completed a logo and started working low and placed one or lucky ones got two tubes each and then had to do minibots. Singles in the middle aren't worth much but a logo helps as a cushion going into the race.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

If you see the video, it was 2 robots pushing us. It was one at first and then another came and started keeping us in the zone. We were really helpless. But I do agree that we were too close to the scoring zone, but we were still out of the yellow line. We just lacked the power. We wanted to be productive and not just park next to the tower the whole match. (In the qualifying rounds, we were parking on the tower, but we felt the "duty" to actually do something in the eliminations)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Thank you for this info. Where exactly is the bolt-head located? [On the metal pipe, I assume...how far from the top of the tower?]

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

There aren't bolts on the metal pipe below the plane of the bottom plate, but there are four bolts holding the two pieces of plastic "together" (you can see them here). I don't have an exact measurement of where they are, but I would guess about an inch or inch and a half from the edge of the circle. I wouldn't risk hitting the plate anywhere but within two inches of the pole, just to be safe.



EDIT:
You're right that the bolts don't move with the bottom plate (I forgot to mention that), but I'm pretty sure that those bolts have been there from the beginning. I was the one who modified the towers at Waterford, and I don't remember adding them.

For those wondering what the fix was: we were sent a package with replacement parts. The limit switches were removed and replaced with aluminum plates. When knocked into what used to be the limit switch mounts, the plates shorted against each other.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

They added four bolts to the sensor assembly to act as linear slides. These bolts don't move with the lower plate and create an issue when a mini bot hits them instead of hitting the plate itself. It adds to the randomness of what should be a simple yes or no decision of saying the mini bot hit or not. I know order of contact could be an issue with human interaction but a unexpected bolt should not keep you from wining a match.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned yet is the issue with the towers mis-triggering has been fixed (or so it was at WPI). They still had refs watching the towers as a backup though.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

It wasn't fixed entirely at WPI. We would trigger some poles but not others.
We were still awarded the points though.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Also with those towers, referees are having a difficult time determining the legitimate deployment of a tower. There is a LOT to look for:
1) Did the minibot cross the plane of the tower base before 10 secs
2) Did the robot provide power to the minibot
3) Did the minibot begin creating energy before 10 secs

We had a qualifying match where our tower was disabled for deploying too early. Even with a video showing the minibot as it reached the tower, I couldn't tell if it deployed early (it didn't affect the match, but I like knowing when I screwed up as a driver). I saw one referee almost disable a tower when a team started deploying at almost 5-6seconds left in the match before realizing the tower was solid and not blinking. With everything in the match going on and then having to pay attention to all of the things with the towers and minibots and the exact time left, its got to be towers.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Defense is hard to play without getting penalties. :(

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I was driving at WPI over the weekend and it was unbelievable how many penalties teams were getting. It was commonplace for alliances to have 3 or 4 penalties EACH in the qualifications rounds (although that dropped off significantly in eliminations). At the front was lane violations - it was commonplace for some teams to have one or two lane violations. Penalties got so bad that it got to the point where the announcers would say something like "It's a miracle guys, we have a penalty free round!" Amidst a sea of lane violations, yellow, and red cards, a few matches did actually have no penalties. A shame, really.

On a lighter note, we noticed that during the qualifications having a minibot was generally enough to win you the match. Tube hanging rarely made a difference because the matches were so one-sided. There were matches where if your entire alliance made a single logo you would have won. Several robots could make two or three logos single-handedly if given the chance.

In eliminations everything changed because mostly everyone had minibots. The race might have left teams with a 25 point deficit on occasion, but sometimes it was closer and it was up to the tube-hangers to make the difference. The alliances that were most successful had everything covered - minibots, tubes, and autonomous.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

As the alliance captain of the alliance you're accusing of misconduct, I'll attempt to assure you that your incursions were not a result of our intentions. 1540 and 399 were focused solely on placing game objects, not keeping you in the zone. We reviewed our match footage afterwards (for the exact reasons that you've expressed, to verify whether we should have incurred a red card), and affirmed that the referees got the call right. We were playing the game. The penalties were called after 589's robot did not immediately attempt to get out of our zone. Per <G32>, by playing defense in the red zone, 589 received a red card. I realize that you may ignore this post, but at the very least, this is what I observed from the other side of the glass.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I forget to mention this in my previous post but if your having any problem connecting to the field or your robot shuts down in the middle of the match, please talk to your FTA. Team 108 was having the same problem where we would lose communication for a while and get it back and then lose it again, sometime just completely die. We spoke to our FTA and she was really helpful. She looked through all the errors in one match and saw that we had "Watchdog" errors. We fixed it from there and never had an issue with our robot connecting to the field.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

First of all, congrats for all your team's accomplishments. But it too was our design flaw. The motors were stalling and overheated to the max (one motor per side and having a match every 5 minutes got the motors burning hot. and at one point in the match before we got DQed, the motors stalled on the middle of the field) and the combination with a buggy code (our mentor did not allow us to upload any code to fix it due to the success of our drivers, he wanted everything to be the same. So essentially, we were running the same buggy code for 2 days. It was a fix that was fixed after the first match of the first day. But we never got to upload the code.) We physically could not get out. We were pushing the robot full speed and stalled the already burning motors. It took us a while to regain control and we got pushed again into the zone.


Well the bottom line is that the past is teh past and all we can do is fix our problems for LA and dominate.

edit: where can we see the videos?

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Thank you!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I love and hate that last phrase. I love it because it feels good saying it; I hate it because our arm was still too slow to be effective in Teleop, and our minibot never, ever worked, and thus we lost.

Minibot's are the name of the game. If you can deploy the fastest one, you're bound to be on the best alliance.

Edit: Plus, never take a win on the towers for granted. Our #2 alliance at Lake Superior should've won the Finals hands-down. They had a small point disadvantage at the end of the second match, but their minibot easily beat the other teams by over a second. Unfortunately, the towers glitched out, and never registered who was first or second. As a result, their supposed victory at Lake Superior turned into defeat as they lost the next two in a row.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Don,

See TU16.

Blueabot1 Pushes Redabot into the Blue ZONE, and eventually, into contact with Blueabot2. This series of actions, according to <G32> and exception to <G61> lead to a "one move win", because it would cause Red to receive a RED CARD.

TU16 fixed this by stating that this would be considered a violation of <T09> and give a RED CARD to the Blue Alliance, taking precedence over the RED CARD given to the Red Alliance, and the Red Alliance would be declared the winner of the match.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

TU16 doesn't apply in this case, it was the right call. TU16 introduces a very specific set of circumstances (in elims, Redabot exiting its lane, presumably after loading up a tube, pushed by Blueabot#1 into the zone & Blueabot#2) where the pushing bot (Blueabot#1) can be Red Carded along with Redabot. Red Alliance wins, despite all its members being DQed, because Blueabot#1 achieved the rare status I call "UberDQed", which trumps all other Red Cards and is clearly made of epic fail.
(Note: I apologize if you can't take the language in that last sentence seriously. Unfortunately, my head hurts when I try to think about TU16 logically and seriously :rolleyes:. This is my coping mechanism)

TU16 is there to prevent alliances from intentionally trapping an opposing offensive bot (minding their own business trying to score more tubes) into a "one move win". Defensive bots which seek contact on the opponent's side of the field should not expect G61 or TU16 protection, because they are utilizing a strategy that clearly involves the risk of penalties and cards. Remember, in scenario described in TU16 Redabot is assured a Red Card for contacting Bluabot#2. TU16 referees have the discretionary option of "UberDQing" Blueabot#1, if and only if they deem the pushing of Redabot to be particularly egregious behavior outside of normal game play. Do you think the refs will consider an offensive bot pushing a defensive attempting to reach its scoring zone to be "egregious behavior" or normal game play? Seems pretty normal to me, happens constantly in elims. Considering that, I would heed Don's warning:

Stay Far Away!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Oh yes, if you have a pit that requires a ladder to be set up, you are going to have to find a different way to do it because ladders are banned. They did have one at pit admin to borrow but use of it was spread pretty thin.

P.S. Standing on boxes is even less safe than the ladder.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

It seems like even the most prestigious and experienced teams are sometimes getting red cards in the elimination rounds. I won't be surprised if a regional favorite or even a championship favorite is eliminated due to disqualification.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

A minibot can help you win many qualification matches, as long as it can be deployed reliably and consistently. Tubes play somewhat of a lesser role here, but they can help when minibots fail to deploy, or to break close scores.

In elimination matches, most alliances will have reliable minibots, so actual minibot speed and tube placing are important. Even a bottom-row logo or incomplete middle row may be just enough to win a close match.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Now that is one thing I love about this years' game. Most years, a bad offensive bot could double duty as defense. Not anymore.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

If the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, I'll do it every time ......

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

:eek: :rolleyes: You know what I meant, it was my mistake

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Things I learned from Waterford:

1. Strategy is the name of the game, our elimination alliance had to go up against the team ranked #1 during qualifiers, but by planning out our ideas and playing to each team's strengths, we managed to score higher. (This means making sure drive teams get a chance to communicate between matches)

2. Alliance selection is crucial, an alliance made up of all tube-hanging teams is not necessarily the best. This sort of alliance can end up crowding the scoring zone, reducing effectiveness of each robot. Make sure to fill in gaps, like if your robot can only hang tubes, find the team with the best minibot, etc.

3. While minibots are crucial, don't forget about logos (they did name the game after them). Let's break it down:
6 points (hanging ubertube on top row) + 6 points (hanging a game piece over the ubertube) + 3 points (game piece on top row) + 3 points (game piece on top row) * 2 (hanging in a logo) = 36 points
While a 6 point lead isn't large, it beats a first place minbot. Some teams can consistently and effectively do this.

4. Lane violations are not as devastating as they sound. These only incur a single penalty, a deduction of 3 points. Let's say a team needs a square to complete a bottom-row logo. There is one just to their left, they try and pick it up, but their arm pushes it into the lane, again they try to pick it up, this time they are successful, they race over to the scoring zone again and place it to complete the logo. This gains the alliance 6 points, minus three for the penalty is a gain of 3 points. <G33> states that this penalty exists to allow robots to approach the feeder station without being hindered. Thinking about it, removing a tube from an opponent's lane would actually help them get to the feeder. hmmmmm.

5. "Starving the field" is only effective if your alliance is made of defensive robots, if it depends on minibots or if you have a slot-fed "shuttlebot". If your alliance partner (or your team) can hang tubes well, giving them less tubes will not help. Hanging tubes requires tubes. Especially teams that can pick up off of the floor, generally if a tube is beyond the minibot poles, they will reach it in time. This is why throwing tubes is essential. Even if the opposing alliance "steals" your tubes, one of the human players has access to at least one more and can replace it easily.

6. Pit crews make a difference. Especially this year with the often devious defense being played, as well as that all-too-sensitive arm joystick, breaks and damage are bound to happen, don't leave home without someone who can fix them.

7. Ranking (or "seating") during qualifiers does not define eliminations. At the end of qualifiers, our team ranked 5th, and our partners ranked somewhere between 10th and 20th (sorry guys, my memory is not that great). In the end, we managed to bring home the gold. I cannot say this without crediting the RoboStang's minibot/tube hanging or the Average Joes' defense/tube shuttling.

:o Sorry for the huge post...

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

"I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks. "

Has anyone ever done well with a 2 CIM drivertrain in any year OTHER THAN Lunacy (where lack of traction precluded drivetrain power)???

Robots are like athletes on a field: soccer, football, hockey...

If you don't have strong legs, then you don't have a decent athlete on the field.

Have you ever seen a successful defensive lineman with spindly legs?

I can't imagine a game other than Lunacy that I would ever recommend a half-powered drivetrain for.

All one has to do is experiment with the drive-train spreadsheet (CD-20071127-Speed_Optimization) to figure that out.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

:ahh: I TOTALLY AGREE!!! Man, Thank God there is someone with the same mentality as me! (Coming from a football player) I recommend squats over all other lifts (except maybe for deadlifts)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Our robot could have played defense very well against the 179-233 alliance in the Florida regional. 179 could only pick up tubes from the alliance wall and our third team - 945 was not a weak scorer and we had the stronger drive train. Though our robot was definitely built for offense, we had the pushing power in low gear to shove bots that tried to defend us like nothing. Unfortunately, we lost high gear on our right side (for some reason, robots dont run well with one side trying to run at 4x the gear ratio as the other...) making it impossible to play any kind of effective defense as 179 and 233 could run loops around our robot. If you have the speed to catch a robot and the power to shove them, you can play defense (pay attention to those home zone markers though)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

What is humorous is the number of people that see shoulderpads and think football is an upper body sport. ...Or people that see large robotic arms and don't see competitive FRC robots as first about drivetrains.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

heh....our rookie year, 2006, we were slightly overweight and half of the drivetrain was part of the diet plan...we were left with only 2 CIMs, 2wd with omnis. Seeded 4th at Davis, won the regional.

It happens, but luck is required. Lots of it.

(Lunacy...top seed and regional winner at AZ. 2 CIM drivetrain. I detect a trend)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Actually come to think of it, we didn't do too shabby either: seeded at #4, made it to semis and we didn't even have a working arm or drive (it was next to undrivable)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Why yes, yes i have.

Team 968/254 used 2 cims in their drives and they were shifting two speeds! Team 254 made divisional finals in Atlanta and team 968 made it all the way to the finals on Einstein!

Drivetrain picture used for both robots: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/31597

Team 1519 used 2 cims on our 2008 hurdling robot fezzik which was highly competitive in a fast pace game of speed and traction. It was very easy to drive also.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

It depends on what you mean 'not made to play defense'. You can play defense with Mecanums etc. It's more about the driver and strategy. Defense isn't all about blocking/pinning/pushing...

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

In the past mecanums have been able to get in front/between the opposing robot and objects. This year with zones and penalties for contacting a tower if you are trying to keep hostbots from towers, mecanums are toast! With no pushing power you will get zone violations.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Jim and Brendan-

Thanks for setting me straight. 2 CIMs with 2 or more speed transmissions can work for some games.
Do you have an idea how prevalent it is for top robots for the different games?

I can understand the value when a robot is mostly driving around a track or when the field has little traction.

But the race to an object and then race to somewhere else (and maybe push some bot out of the way) type games seem to me to be more conducive to 4 CIMs. (But I'm relatively new to this)

Thanks again.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

If it is legal next year, I will push for a 8 or 6 CIM drive... Yep thats right, 6 or 8 wheel drive with a motor powering each wheel.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

2006 and 2009 seem to be the years in which 2 cims were popular as 2009 didn't need cims and 2006 saw a lot of teams using the cims for their shooters.

Every once and a while a top robot may have a 2 cim drive but it depends on the game and it is rare.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

in 06 both 968 and 254 actually had 2 CIM's and 2 FP's in the drive. It was a miserable year in terms of drive reliability. We smoked more FP's than I can even remember and swore from that moment on we'd never use them in the drive again.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Was it the FPs that caused the drive issues or the CIMs? I can't remember us having issues in 08 but our transmissions weren't shifting which I'm sure adds to the likelihood of malfunction.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Defense this year is not always about robot defense. We had a non-functional lift at Wisconsin this week and were forced to play defense. We had a mecanum drive, with aggressive gearing. Even with this "disadvantage" we were able to play a good defense. Tubes can be moved out of position, robots can be hit while trying to acquire the tubes, and robots can be blocked as they travel towards the minibot tower. Its not always about the shoving match, its about hitting them at the right time, moving the tubes, and getting in the way.

During eliminations, we were on a primarily defensive alliance. We managed to almost tie the number 2 alliance based solely on defense and minibot.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Pretty sure it was the FPs. I remember 968 picking up at least one FP at Spare Parts in L.A.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

The FP's were the problem. Part of the problem was due to seizing AM planetaries, if I remember correctly. AndyMark has since made improvements to the transmissions that would probably yield better results today.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

My reading of the CD spreadsheet on motor/drivetrain simulations does not bode well for much improvement for 6 to 8 motors over 4.
With 4 CIMs, a bot can accelerate faster than a real athlete. Typical distance to target is 5 to 30 feet.
Special Gearing and traction are probably more useful than more weight on generating force/work into the drivetrain.

If your strategy is to push robots and not much else, then being ALL legs might be useful- if you can do it without ripping up the carpet.)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

This has yet to be legal in FRC.

Even if it was, you have serious considerations with battery loading, current draws, etc. You also have to consider that because FIRST robots are traction limited, you have a hard limit on the amount of pushing power you can add.

The net effect of adding more motors to a drive is allowing you to gear a robot to be traction limited at a higher top speed. At 2 CIMs, gearing for ~3 FPS makes you traction limited with roughtop at 40 amps. 4 CIMs gets you there around the ~5.5 - 6 FPS range. 6 CIMs takes you up around 9 FPS.

Of course, few teams do this as most of those numbers are quite slow. 2791's drive this year is traction limited a bit above stall - not designed for pushing. our 6 motor configuration is traction limited at about 55 amps.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

our 2007 bot was a brutal defender with only 2 CIM's. Good gearing, AM shifters
and the ability to transfer the power to the ground efficiently was they key.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Thanks! Learn something new everyday and if it is FRC learn two new things a day! :p

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Are you sure about this 6 point thing?
I count the score for a single ubertube LOGO to be 30 points and not 36... am I reading this wrong? 6 for the autonomous ubertube
one ubertubed score plus two non ubertubed scores in a logo would b 6 + 3 + 3 = 12
which is doubled to make 24 ... now add the original 6 points in and you get 30 points for that single ubertubed logo.

We hope to be able to do this...and in practice we can get it done in just over 1 minute so far. We hope to bring that speed up during competition... so perhaps 2 logos are possible..

So a single ubertubed logo would be worth exactly the same as the fastest minibot.


Your second comment is a good one (along with your other observations..:0))

I agree that IF you are short on time and you can complete a logo... it might be worth the penalty... the complete logo (assuming it is NOT an ubertubed one....) would actually give you 3 points for the tube and then double the other six points... so your 3 pt penalty could net you + 3 for the tube and + 9 for the logo bonus... subtract the penalty of 3 and you get a net benefit of 9 points...

Definitely something to think about.

Of course all of the above scenarios only hold for the top rack... diminishing returns as you move down the rack...

good points!!

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Just had a question. I apologize if it was already answered before...

What if your opponent robot rams you with full speed resulting your robot lift off the ground and your arm break the plane of the lane, should you get a penalty?

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

By the rules? Yes.

Will it be called? I'm not sure.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

They sure called this in Wisconsin. Here's an example. In match 22 we took a pretty big hit at 0:34. This is an example of what I would call incidental contact. Neither robot was trying to push the other into the lane. 2039 got in our way, we made contact and bounced into the lane (we sheared drive shaft during the collision...watch the front left wheel bounce up just after contact). We immediately left the lane and continued with the game. They called a G33 on us for entering the lane.

Logically does it make sense to throw the flag in this case? Probably not. By the intent of G33 should the flag get thrown? Probably not. By the letter of G33 should the flag get thrown? Probably.

The rules clearly state that we are not to break the plane of the opponents lane with anything for any reason even if we're forced into that position. Those are the rules that we have been given, and those are what we have to play by. There have been much worse rules in years past ;)

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

As to the minibot part, remember that ties are solved by the team whose minibot makes it up first! Not match score.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

I'm a little late to this thread, but the bolts are NOT NEW as Kara's photo points out. I took THIS PHOTO at the actual Kickoff, AND shared it in this thread. It clearly shows the four bolts that were there on the day of kickoff.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Why isn't it logical to throw the flag? The intent of G33 is very clear there is no probably about it.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Because it was inadvertent, caused by contact with another robot, and they got out right away, plus there wasn't anybody in the lane at the time.

According to the rule, yes, flag. But that kind of thing is what <G61> would prevent if it wasn't specifically excepted from the rule.

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Every single "1 sec" bot I have seen impacts the trigger plates within 2 inches of the pole, far from the bolts on the outer perimeter. Our 1.5ish minibot triggered every time with impact about 2 inches from pole on same tower faster minibots sometimes didn't trigger in San Diego. To me this suggests contact time does play a role...but why trigger one run and not another if same minibot, same speed, same basic contact area? Suggests the variable is part of the trigger mechanism, right?

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

Just to be clear, we were correctly given a penalty based on the text of the rule. I'm not debating that. I'm also not making excuses. Our drivers know the rules and play the game with those in mind.

I agree that the intent that is spelled out in the blue box in the manual is very clear.The point that I was trying to get at was that based on that intent alone, I don't think that we were hindering a robot from getting tubes from the feeder therefore we were in compliance with the intent of the rule.

The reason that I think that it isn't logical to throw the flag is because it was an incidental contact situation. There was no intent by our driver to enter that lane. There wasn't even an accidental movement that caused us to cross the line. It was purely the physical reaction to a collision (not even a pushing match).

I've always been against ticky-tack rules like this that have no bearing on the outcome of the game. Look at how many matches ended up with one or more alliances having 0 points because of lane violation penalties. How many of those matches actually had robots hindering another getting to/from the feeder. I would guess very few.

The same goes for DQs of teams that bump an opponents tower during endgame when there isn't even an opponent trying to deploy a minibot or if the a tube that they're picking up brushes against the opposite side of the tower from where deployment is taking place. As long as there is no intention to interfere or contact with a robot, I don't see why this is a DQable offense (I'm fine with just a penalty).

Re: Week 2: Any new lessons learned?
 

One thing I learned in week 2.
Those stupid bodysuits are already played out.