Quote:
Originally Posted by Donut
This surprised me, I would have thought for sure we would see more low goal capable bots given how important capturing is for the playoffs. There were ~100 more high goals than low goals. Sounds like everyone went high if they were bothering with scoring boulders at all, and since most shooters probably can't be adjusted well for scoring in the low goal those that were ineffective just didn't score. Saw a few matches today where an alliance would breach and then not have much else to do until the end game.
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It's a confluence of factors:
-Most teams that designed for low goal actually can't score in the low goal (they can't intake a ball unless it is at a dead stop right in front of them and/or they forgot how that pesky batter makes it more of a challenge)
-Teams that designed for the high goal may have designed their robot to not low goal after it's brought into their high goal scoring mechanism. I wouldn't let Jesus take the wheel on that one, but teams decided they could live with it.
-Willful ignorance of how captures work and/or drive teams at Palmetto conspiring to hospitalize me by forcing me to watch them leave rank points on the board to do silly things. It's Week 0.5 so only a few teams actually have bothered to make an educated guess at the meta and design and coach day-by-day around its development. It probably won't be uncommon to run into a drive team at early events that thinks they're really sticking it to the other teams at the event dropping the opponent tower to 0, -1, etc., while forgoing an easier 5 points that would then help transfer into an RP.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marshall
The defenses are brutal on drivetrains and I'm not of the opinion that the wooden team versions provide the same difficulty that the actual ones provide. We managed to crack some versa hubs ( https://twitter.com/FRC900/status/703693490752978945). Thanks to 1296 for graciously providing us with some aluminum replacements. Team 900 loves #TeamIFI!
Matches ran WAY behind schedule and I really think the defense selection process will be changed before too long to help the match reset times. This field is quite the process for volunteers too. |
You weren't using those hubs as the primary support and capture point in a live axle environment were you? That would make JVN sad
We killed a lot of those alongside a large chunk of my soul last year, then I remembered VEXpro has a neat website that tells us to do and not do all kinds of things with their products, like throw them on a mecanum drive wheel and think you are an expert engineer (I'm an accounting major).
I hope/expect that FIRST conducts some sort of pow-wow with head referees weekly (chain email? conference call? I'm not inclined to care how) to make sure at the driver's meeting the teams know
-G5 G5 G5 G5 G5 G5 G5 G5 G5 G5
-How defense selection works
On our team, we will have our own defense coordinator. The student build lead will transition into a role that includes selecting and communicating the selections to the drive coach.
I think I am going to break my personal best for needlessly long post but I guess I'll shoot my mouth off and people can judge me on my observations. I considered this to actually be a pretty above average event for its place on the calendar; I'd say about 1/4 of the teams here would definitely meet the (ever-declining, not their fault) bar of a championship caliber program. Some regression should be expected going into week 1. Here we go:
-I did not expect the Moat to not only have fewer selections than the rampart, but also fewer successful traversals. I guess that teams were not gunning it appropriately over the moat and turned that into a tragedy of immobility a few times, but the rampart is almost always guaranteed to be annoying. Every other series of selections makes sense. I'd say the breach count was about on par with expectations.
-While teams still have to get used to the field, they are going to pick low defenses as much as possible (audience selections and busted CDFs aside) to handle a level of visibility that is probably a half step above 2010. That plays into A+C class defense selection and its relative success rates being what they are. I don't know if the stats are available but I imagine the drawbridge and portcullis will get less and less frequent by the end of day 1 then surge back by the end of day 2. Rock Wall vs Rough Terrain seems like an observation teams easily made on the fly.
-Breach and Capture objectives were completed about as expected. I envisioned a success rate of breaches maybe 3-4% lower than observed. We'll obviously never hit 100% but Dean help you if you're a team at champs that bombs an alliance's chance at a breach and effectively crash their rankings.
-I honestly can't peg how defense will progress throughout the season, but seeing it in qualifications except under specific circumstances would be perplexing. Quals and Playoffs still have the same objective they do every year: rank high and beat everyone else, respectively. You go into every match wanting 4 RPs. You go into every playoff round wanting to stop the opposition from completing
just one 5-point objective to snuff the light out of a potential 20 or 25 point bonus... right?
-Challenge vs Scale vs Sit on the Field Looking Sad Because You Left 5 Points on the Board panned out pretty close to expectations as well. LF pointed out how low Week Zero C/S rates were, but it's easy to chalk that up to teams a)not even on the field and b)tuning everything else but going up a ramp. However as we noticed in some failed attempts, maybe teams should really test that whole going up a ramp thing.
-G18 as it is can be pretty weak. Some climbers and other things were obviously out 15 inches+. On-field bumper enforcement is about as light as usual, that war is fought in the pits. I didn't personally see any missed scoring, so that's nice. Looking Forward to the TU, Week 1 events, and to get more time in the shop... we took a couple days off and I'm still antsy from that.