How did autonomous go?
Although some teams had a semi-working autonomous mode, most didn't have anything yet.
How much contact was there?
meh, not too much, especially compared to previous years.
What strategies were sucessful?
if you can shoot, and you can hang, you can win.
What strategies weren't?
pushing balls wasn't as big as I though it would be.
Was hanging big?
Oh yeah. When my team hung, we won (haighest score of the day! w00t!). Those 50 points add up.
How important were the smalls balls and the big balls?
Not as much as I thought, but still very important, particularly the small.
What sorts of mehcanisms proved effective and inneffective?
lots of the big ball grabbers weren't working right (ours wasn't even attached yet) however I think it'll have to wait until the first regionals.
What were the common characteristics of high scorign robots?
hang, climb, and not break.
What were the biggest challenges for most bots?
Getting the robot to work. Not many autonomous modes worked, and there was a lot of unfinished robots.
How important was speed? Torque? Control?
I guess it all depends on the strategy involved. Balls were everywhere, so speed wasn't a big deal there because you didn't really have to fight for them. Most robots kept to their own side.
Were alot of people able to get up the ramp?
I didn't see that many doing it.
One thing that I noticed that was majorly different from last year was the penalty system. It killed a lot of teams (we were penalized for part of our robot entering the corral, buzz had part of its bot out of the field and was penalized, lots of teams got into some trouble)
My team will be putting up information for individual teams (with their permission, of course) that we gathered at the scrimmage on our website (
http://www.team96.org is the main site, and out scouting database is
http://www.team96.org/scouting/) and some teams have already registered and put their information up themselves. It;ll give you a better idea about what other teams are doing.