Quote:
Originally Posted by berrybotics
First, let me state, we are not using floor pickup as a strategy, we are strictly feeding station loader.
I am not sure how this is a huge blow to floor pickup strategy. Yes, it changes the strategy and the amount of time to score, but I fail to see that this changes everything as that seems to be the theme for a floor strategy.
The rule states
"DISCS may be fed onto the FIELD only under the following circumstances:
A. during TELEOP through the FEEDER SLOTS for any DISCS and
B. during the last thirty (30) seconds of TELEOP over the FEEDER STATIONS for Red and Blue DISCS."
Though it will be a little bit more tricky to pick up as many times to shoot, frisbees can still get on the floor through the feeder station and then they can be picked them up from the floor. You can only hold four at a time anyway, so it is not like you can drive around looking to pick up more than that. Those of you picking up from the floor, you will be able to load much faster over us that are loading from the feeder station (at least ours). We have to slow down, make a turn, line up, load and then go. It will take us longer to get four in, from what videos I have watched.
Now part of the strategy has changed slightly that you have to fend off another team trying to take your frisbees being dropped by your HP but once they get four they have to move on. For a true rookie team, by true rookie team I mean having no one on the team that has ever done this, I see this as helping us be more competitive. Maybe it is a little naive to simplify this issue, but I for one want to be able to watch a match with out also looking for flying discs coming at me.
I am open to hear what I am missing here, since I am newbie and could only help us understand better game strategies in the future. I have been around enough complex issues that there is always a way to over come a set back like this and will be looking forward to the creative ways those of you that have been doing this will over come this one!
My views don't necessarily reflect that of our team. -Cyle (Asst. Coach for BerryBotics)
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Part of what this analysis is missing is a marginalized wholistic game strategy perspective. What I mean by this is that if your goal is to maximize your robots scoring potential, you should always look to what will add more additional points to your score when analyzing different parts of the game. For example, with the old rules you may figure the following scoring during the end game:
No floor pick up, spend last 30 seconds or more climbing for 30:
30 points
(possibility of additional 20 pts here too)
30-50 points total
Floor pickup with 10 point hang in last 30 seconds (field littered with discs):
12-24 points from frisbees
10 points from hang
22-34 points total
When deciding that trade off, we said the second option gave us an advantage in autonomous, didn't hurt us much in the end game, opened up a variety of wonderful alliance strategies for any alliance we're a part of, and significantly simplified the design of our robot. We designed our robot such that it shoots and hangs from the same location on the field, so it's not even about collecting two rounds then hanging, it's really just collecting two rounds of discs and the hanging will happen because we won't need to go anywhere.
I personally believe that good strategy and general game play will result in a field with lots of discs anyway, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. However, there will still be some matches where the rate of our robots scoring in the end game is limited by the number of discs on the field, whereas by the old rules this wouldn't have been the case ever.
The frustration comes out of making a significant design trade off decision based on the old rules, and now having them changed in a manner that makes the decision less of an advantage, or possibly even a greater disadvantage, we will never know.
I understand FIRST's decision and while I think there may have been better solutions to explore (no upside down throws allowed???, hammer throws are still allowed so as far as I'm concerned the safety hazard is not mitigated), it is for the best to have a safer environment at the events. All we can do as teams is try to do the very best we can to work within the new rule, take it in stride, and work toward continuous improvement of our robots and strategies to be the best we can within these new parameters. Anything less would not be gracious professionalism.