Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
Since we did not have a full field we did a table top simulation. I also got a chance to play with the field that morning. Our simulation assumed that no balls would be thrown or bounced over the field (we may play around with this but unless you have an inbound station, bridge, and bump you can't rule it possible).
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That's a hugely important incorrect assumption. When running your simulations, you should always simulate the real game, not change the rules to your liking. There's no point in simulating a game that you won't be playing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
All you need is one robot to have a hard time going over the bridge and you have yourself a mess.
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Well, not quite. All you need to have a mess is one robot that breaks down on your bridge (as discussed earlier, game over already). If it has a hard time, you can and should design a strategy to minimize its crossings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
I never assume that my robot or the robots at my event will be stellar at one thing or doing something will be easy like crossing the bump or even driving. That isn't mean or saying everyone else is horrible, I'm just saying that I'm not going to assume my regional has 50 robots that can cross a bridge in 2 seconds.
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Neither did we; I mentioned earlier that our analysis allots quite a chunk of extra time for bridge crossing compared to bump crossing. Just as you can't assume bridge crossing time will be zero, I can't assume bump crossing time will be. I think a five second differential for every crossing is probably reasonable. You can go higher... but as per our team's analysis, a ten-second differential (whoa!) is still only ten wasted seconds per match at most.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
Following that same train of though while having one robot to funnel balls across the field is a good partner, I'm not going to assume that robot will be at my regional or in my matches.
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I should hope that there will be a robot like that at your competition--all it has to be able to do is pick up balls and throw them across the midfield gap for you to pick them up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
If I designed around this what am I going to do when I'm stuck with 2 other robots just like me or can't do anything?
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Start making bounce passes from the inbounder station or only send one at a time to cross the bridge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
If a partner breaks down on the ramp/is hanging off the side I'm not going to touch it unless it is absolutaly necessary out of respect for that teams robot. I will however design to go over the bump so I don't have to worry about the bridge until the end.
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See, the difference here is that you think you have to cross the bump in order to not have to worry about the bridge, and I think you can ignore them both altogether if your scoring mechanism is accurate enough. What it boils down to is that I assumed people would be throwing balls across the field and you assumed that they would not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
Our design should take around 1 second to cross the bump, unless I can make a bridge cross that fast including dropping the bridge I'd do it.
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See again my earlier point: A bump crossing mechanism makes any robot better, and of course you'd rather cross the bump than the bridge if you can, but for some teams it may not be worth the requisite engineering time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
Again I'm not going to assume the bridge is open the entire match. To say my partners are going to stay in one zone is out there because I can't control what they do.
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You can't? This is where pre-match discussions need to come in. Why wouldn't you tell your alliance partners to default to the most efficient possible configuration?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
Assuming you are correct and they are outscoring me does that mean I stop scoring?
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In none of my scenarios were they outscoring you, expect the one in which you are inaccurate. If you are inaccurate you haven't even started scoring, so I'm not sure this makes sense...
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
The way I see this game is that there are 18 balls which equates to 3 per robot which is all I can have. Each inbounder can hold 2 balls which means up to 6 on each side. If you take a moment and think that over and over you'll realize that there aren't going to be a lot of balls on the field (I'm not saying 3 balls will be in each robot at all times and each inbounder will have 2 at all times). Collecting the few balls that are on the field will be a huge factor in this years game which is another reason why we see the bump as a strategic point. If it is faster to cross the bump then the bridge we will cross the bump as much as we can.
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No, you won't... you will cross the bump as much as you need to. Crossing midfield for its own sake is silly because it's wasted time. If you think you need to retrieve balls from the other side of the field, why not have one robot stay on the other side of the field to retrieve them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
In short I'm not assuming the bridge is open all the time and I'm not going design my robot around what I think other teams can do.
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We didn't assume it either; we simulated it. Then, based on our simulation, we decided what was and what wasn't an important design objective and decided to postpone pursuing a seemingly unimportant objective that would have required meaningful investment of time on our part.