So its been a long day and now that were back at our hotel I will share some thoughts about the event. I was the drive coach for this event in place of Dan so I will try to hit most peoples questions.
Firstly, I want to thank our alliance partners 4451 and 1369 for being part of our alliance. We were expecting 4451 to be good and we were not disappointed and we couldn't have been luckier to get 1369 as our 3rd pick who came with a purpose built defense mechanism.
A couple of notes about the matches and conditions of the game:
- The balls were in decent condition throughout the event, and the field crew was good about replacing balls when significant damage was brought to there attention.
- Billfred did a great job with the defense selection process throughout the event. During qualifying our experience was smooth. The rules with selecting defenses during elimination matches are a little confusing as they do a new audience selection between rounds so your expected to have a representative choose your defenses, get your robot on the field, and be ready to start the match simultaneously which is difficult for everyone but the field crew understood and gave everyone enough time to tether and set up.
- The steel defense are brutal on your robot, much more so than the wood team versions.
- The ranking point for defeating the defenses every match of qualifying can't be overlooked.
- Defense is real and finding safe places to shoot or being able to shoot while being pushed will get more and more important as the events go on. The outer works was not a "safe" zone at this event.
For anyone interested in our robot specifically, we had a number of technical issues to work on throughout the event, mostly with our vision tracking, so we feel that there is lots of room for improvement throughout the season. There was a few things mechanically knocked lose by driving over the defenses. If you forgot to use locking fasteners or locktite ANYTHING this game will find it.
Overall we had a great time at Palmetto and were thrilled to have qualified for championships after missing out last year with the help of our amazing partners. Were looking forward to the rest of the season and seeing how the game develops.
Anyone with specific questions let me know and I will answer what I can.