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Unread 23-01-2017, 09:33
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Re: Is the Boiler worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by GeeTwo View Post
Actually, I read this the other way. Assuming that the indexer for this counter is of the "gumball machine" style (as seen in some of the kickoff home videos), it will run more slowly with only a few fuel, because some of the holes will be empty as they feed to the counter.
This. If we understand the mechanics correctly, getting less than 5 fuel/second is straightforward (put less fuel in). Getting more depends entirely on how they came up with the "average". Is 5/sec the average processing rate you measure after 20 trials of dumping 150 balls into the high goal from a trash can all at once? Did they estimate the range of what they thought teams' actual rates of putting fuel into the goals would be? How? Did they weight this range? Did they just take the minimum rate (in which the boiler is still the bottleneck), add it to the maximum rate, and divide by two? Did they only use one exact or approximate input rate (that isn't 150 via someone on a ladder) but understand it can be somewhat faster? Did they just put the word average in so no one sat there with a stopwatch? What's your experimental methodology here, folks? It's going to directly inform how much effort some teams put into optimizing their shooters and aspects of their autonomous routines, and even in confusion it's probably already informed higher-level design decisions.
2017 Manual 3.11.4: "A BOILER processes FUEL in to [sic] steam at an average rate of five (5) FUEL per second per GOAL, but actual rate is dependent on the amount and packing of FUEL in the GOALS (i.e. the tighter the packing in a GOAL, the faster the FUEL processing rate)."

Jasmine Florentine, Boiler Field Tour Video: "Our testing has shown a range of a 4-5 fuel per second for each of the goals in the boiler, so 8-10 total fuel per second."
I too cannot reconcile these two statements. How can the range be 4 to 5 and the average be 5? (Do note that there was one mistake in this video that's already been corrected in the description: the dimensions of the high goal opening. But this issue is not mentioned.)
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