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Unread 25-01-2004, 22:49
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Petey Petey is offline
Strategy & Gaming
AKA: Chris Peterson
None #1073 (Team F.O.R.C.E.)
Team Role: Alumni
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Rookie Year: 2002
Location: Hollis-Brookline, NH
Posts: 644
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Re: Where to buy Balls?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aidan F. Browne
Petey -

If you practice basketball at school with a leather bastetball, and your team shows up at some school to play - and they use rubber basketballs - can you play them competitively? Can you play flag football with a leather ball and a nerf? If you always practice with green Wilson tennis balls... and you show up to play someone who brings orange Penn balls... can you still play?

As humans we can adapt very easily and quickly. I don't see this as being a huge problem for human players (yes, on planet Utopia, all human players would practice with the right ball... but they will deal... and still do well).



Aidan
With all due respect, your analogy is completely off.

The tennis balls you mentioned will be have the same weight and other dynamics as their counterparts.

Sure, you can play basketball with a street ball and football with a nerf ball, even if you are used to leather balls for both.

But in both cases--especially in the latter rather than the former--you will have a very hard time of it. Have you ever *thrown* a Nerf ball as compared to a real ball? They are extremely dissimilar. In fact, you can't even play the same game with them.

You can play. The question is: how well can you play? I know that our team's human players will probably come out of the S&G subgroup on our team, and we are spending 6 days a week practicing with those balls. Come competition time, we may be able to shoot with 90% accuracy. That's a darn good rate.

Now, say with those other balls--allowing for differences in weight, rebound, aerodynamics, and interaction with the robot and the goal structure itself--you drop down to (I'll be very generous) 60% accuracy. That's a 30% drop. Are you trying to tell me that there is no substantial difference between making 6 out of 10 shots and 9 out of 10 shots? That's 15 points, assuming there is no ball-capping going on.

My team leader said that human beings can adapt as well. So? I don't know about you, but I can't throw off preconditioned muscle memory that easily. There is a half pound difference between the balls. That's like the difference between a baseball and a wiffle ball.

I mean, obviously we're going to deal with it. But it doesn't make me happy that we won't be as prepared as we can be, nor does it fill me with joy that FIRST didn't do enough planning to stockpile the balls beforehand.

Sure, FIRST included a regulation ball in every KOP.
<begin sarcasm>
And that'll be just fine for performing a simulated game or for trying to figure out how many balls you can realistically shoot in 1:45, and with what accuracy. And, of course, it is really great if your team's regulation ball pops.
<end sarcasm>

--Petey
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Bio:
Team 1073 alumnus, now Admissions Officer at MIT.

Thanks to all those who have helped me through FIRST over the years.