[moogboy]

I've been working my keester off trying to perfect balancing over my team's competitions. My teams and teams we work with have had a total of two robots, one at each event, fall off the bridge, but each time it was for forces outside our control.

Here is what I look for from my teammates as well as whoever I am coopertitioning with:
-If a team can and does shoot, how accurrate is it?
-Can they lower the bridge, and if so how effective/quick/controllable is that operation?
-How effectively can teams communicate with each other?

Those three are the absolute most important pieces, and really the third one is BY FAR the ABSOLUTE, MOST CRUCIAL ASPECT!!!! I cannot emphasize enough how much it helps to talk it out with alliance mates.

I ask about shooting because those points are still important in winning matches, also to get a better idea of what kind of timing is going to be necessary. Most of the time, if a team can shoot very well, I have them spend about half of the match shooting and then focus on the balancing. That has been working extremely well so far.

Bridge manipulation is obviously imperative in this game. Teams that can effectively lower the bridge and get on it have tended to focus on this aspect even if they are good shooters. Once the bridge is lowered, it becomes a matter of how to get (hopefully) two robots on without causing damage/flips/etc. What has been beyond helpful here is having one robot lower the bridge, and then have one of the alliance bots just push the first one up the bridge SLOWLY. Slow and steady definitely wins this race.

COMMUNICATIONS!!!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!!!! ALLIANCES MUST CONTACT ONE ANOTHER IN GAME!!!! Here I give a huge advantage to my pardners because I happen to be very, very, very good at yelling effectively. When getting on the alliance bridge, it is sooo soooo sooo helpful to have the two teams working on balancing communicating or at the very least working towards some plan. What I've noticed is that as long as the two teams know what they need from each other, things work out better. For example, the first team up the alliance bridge (most of the time/in my experience) needs to let the second team get right up on them, to the point that the second team should be pushing the first one up the bridge. Once the two of them are on, a lot of success was had by just stopping and allowing the bridge to fall as it may. Throughout this process, there needs to be as much meaningful back-and-forth communication as possible. Like, the first team up needs to be telling the second team to push and keep pushing or whatever. With regards to plans, having them is fantastic, and remembering them is nigh on impossible. I always, always, always, try to have a rock-solid plan within the three teams on my alliance. Then, during the match, I always try to remind my teammates of the plan we agreed on so that everything works.

With regards to coopertition, this part of the game has become astonishingly important. Here plans become vital. With the coopertitioning teams, I always stress the importance of deciding on a single, firm time in the match to start working on the balancing. Anything less gets to be messy, unless the two teams doing it are so good at the process that they can do it in no time flat. During today's matches, my team focused on coopertition, so I have gotten a ton of fresh insight. Our best results came from having a set-in-stone time that we went for the coopertition bridge balancing act. At that time, it takes a certain amount of pre-determined choreography to make things work. Today, when it worked, which was about 5 times for us, the key was getting the two teams coopertitioning to drive together (i.e. both touching, one pushing the other, however it makes sense). Once both were solidly on the middle bridge, it was perfect. I am not kidding when I say that we were able to balance in a matter of 15 seconds at the most, and there was essentially no worry of multiple bots balancing at once.

Speaking of active balancing...I admit I stole this from another team, but it's fantastic advice anyway: only ONE robot can be the active balancer at a time! This revelation has been saving teams lives in competition. Most of the time, what I've been advising my alliance pardners to do is get the robots solidly on the bridge and then stop moving. Let it fall where it may, and whichever robot is in the air is the only one that should move, and it should move very, very slowly and carefully.