|
Re: Fuel Seems Undercosted
I agree with the roughly 60-65% packing. That would be for both the robot capacity and for the capacity in the boiler. Operating on the assumption that the boiler is approximately 3.41 ft^3, we multiply (3.41 ft^3)*(.60 usable ft^3/ft^3) giving us roughly 2.05 usable ft^3. Since balls take up a volume of roughly 4/3*pi*2.5^3 that would give us a volume of 65.45 in^3. The boiler volume converts from 2.05 usable ft^3 to 3535.5 usable in^3. Dividing those gives you roughly 54 balls. So it is certainly safe to assume that at least 50 balls will fit within the boiler while waiting to be processed.
I would like to argue that balls are actually being incredibly under-valued in many discussions so far. I am going to operate under the assumption of 60% packing due to packing error and that a team can dedicate roughly 25% of their robot to ball storage which does not seem to be unreasonable. Assuming tall configuration (excluding bumpers is 24in x 26in x 36in tall), this gives us a total robot volume of 22,464 in^3. This gives us roughly 5,616 in^3 of ball storage. Multiplied by .6 to find usable space yields 3,370 usable in^3. Divided by the volume of a ball (65.45 in^3), gives a conservative robot capacity of 50 balls.
Now to calculate the number of cycles, I will assume a bad accuracy of 30% into the high goal. High achieving teams may have an accuracy of upwards of 90%, but 30% is a conservative estimate for your average team. Since 120 balls will be necessary to achieve the goal of a ranking point, that means that it would require that the team shoot 120/.3 balls which is equal to 400 balls. This would require 8 cycles for an inaccurate team.
The time for a cycle in this game I believe would be rather short allowing for that number of cycles without many problems. This is primarily due to the fact that many teams could find a way to increase their ball capacity. Additionally, with a fly wheel shooter, the amount of balls that could be fired off per second is large. This would mean that the only time-consuming portion of scoring balls is collection. Balls are very readily available both on the field and from feeder station-like inputs. All of these estimates are likely underestimates of both the capacity of a robot and the accuracy of a capable team. I, therefore, believe that it would appear to be an almost guaranteed ranking point for teams with high goal scoring capabilities.
|