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Unread 26-03-2013, 17:08
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Nemo Nemo is offline
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AKA: Dan Niemitalo
FRC #0967 (Iron Lions)
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Re: Climbing and dumping not winning?

The 68 point strategy is great (18 auto + 50 dump). The trouble is that it's quite difficult to pull off. We tried to build that robot, but we decided to abandon our 30 point climber in favor of a 10 point climber for our next regional. Our climber was fairly complicated and took a long time to put together, so that led to some issues.

The thing that made the climber design extra hard was having a shooter in the way of everything. Our shooter is curved with an 8" wheel, and that takes up a ton of space, especially with the smaller frame perimeter. We were very close to the limit on all of our starting configuration space constraints, and that made it hard to create something with some margin for error.

We worked a ton on that climber, and I think we came pretty close to getting it working. But I don't think it would have been fast enough to justify its existence given how fast it's possible to score a volley of four discs. Our design would have taken more than a minute to climb and dump - at that rate, it's possible to make 12 point disc runs and have nearly as much point scoring potential. 3 pointers are way less risky, both in terms of robot damage and the risk of losing 80% of the points you were trying to score if you aren't fast enough. The fast scoring surprised us about this game - we thought it would be slower to get back and forth from the feeder and score discs, and we thought defending robots would be more successful at slowing down shooting robots than they are in practice.

So here's why I think climbing and dumping isn't winning:
1) A frisbee shooter with a 10 point hanger can outscore a pure 50 point dumper, and the former is quite a bit easier to build.
2) It's really hard to build a 50 point dumper that can also shoot 3 point shots, whereas a human loading 10 point hanger + shooter is within the reach of most teams.
3) A 50 point dumper is all or nothing (or close to it). A shooting robot can experience minor issues or defense and still score a significant fraction of its expected points.