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IV. General Tips
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-Keep your robot healthy!
Due to the intense nature of the matches, a fair amount of alliances lost matches because of “technical difficulties” (or in plain words, died on the field or broken parts). It take a pair of healthy robot and great strategy to win all eliminations matches. So make sure you do a check up before every match to make sure everything is all right. You really don’t need to lose a match because your battery wires weren’t tighten down enough, or forgot to plug in the motors.
Check out this thread about dead robots…
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&threadid=3075
Remember, after the regional, you have until Wednesday midnight following the regional weekend to fabricate whatever new parts you need. So make use of that if your robot is damaged during competition.
-Keep your battery healthy!
Even when you can get additional batteries and chargers, you should still take care of them. Teams have all sort of problems of battery because they didn’t know how to take care of them. Here are some advices from a Wildstang engineers
“It is possible to damage this battery by drawing well in excess of 100 amps for a long period of time. A high current (either in charge or discharge) will permanently distort the plates and cause an internal short… Also, this years competition appears to be a more physical one for robots than in the past. Although these batteries are built pretty well, they are not immune to "g forces" and can be damaged by a hard hit.” - Al Skierkiewicz
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&threadid=2963
-Don’t tape the Circuit breaker with a screw driver, or you will be sorry…
Turns out the main circuit breaker’s performance can be reduced dramatically if it is under a lot of shock. The 60 amps circuit breaker is supposed to last the whole 2 minutes even if the robot draws 100 amps… But teams’ experience tell us that you can trip the circuit breaker if your robot take a strong hit. So, protect the breaker carefully, make sure it doesn’t flip to “off” accidentally by other robots, and you will have a functional robot that will last through every match without shutting down on the field.
http://chiefdelphi.com/forums/showth...5174#post25174
-Look at your partners/opponents ahead of the matches
This year FIRST will release a schedule that has all pairings for matches. That mean you will have all the time you need to find out who your alliance partner is, and which alliance you are playing against. I suggest teams to take advantage of this and do the work in scouting each of those robots. That way, you will be prepared when going up for the match, and have a planned out strategy for your driver to follow clearly. Talk to your partner before you have to go up the field, figure out how your two robots can work together…
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...?threadid=2972
-Remember the Tie breakers
Turns out tie breakers are very common this year. So, make sure you remember what they are, so you don’t end up getting the loser QP because you didn’t have enough goals in scoring position.
Here are the tie breakers, where teams win in the following order:
1. The alliance with the least penalties or warnings during the match
2. The alliance with the most balls in scoring position
3. The alliance with the most goals in scoring position
4. The alliance with the most robots in scoring position
5. The alliance with the most balls on the opposite half of the field.
6. Flip of a coin
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&threadid=2985
Oh yeah, #4 tie breaker seems to be impossible…
Take a look @
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&threadid=2774
-Scouting is very important
Strategy is everything in this competition, whether you are in qualifying rounds or elimination rounds. Know what your partner can do, so you can plan out a strategy that would work BEST for your alliance. Know what your opponents’ weaknesses are, so you can look for ways to defeat them in a match. Yup... Knowing exactly what each robot is capable of will prevent a lot of surprises you might get on the field when your opponents perform a move you’ve never seen.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...?threadid=2953
-Know and understand your scouting data!
A tip about scouting… It is really important to know ACCURATE data of robots, because a lot of times teams would tell you what their robot COULD do, and ended up not being the case on the field. It’s not that they are intentionally lying, just that it is really hard to tell actual performance of a machine will do just by looking at its design and blue prints. So, there is a fine line between pit scouting and field scouting. You can only tell so much before you have to go down the field to watch actual matches and see how robots are. Mean while, make use of data from both sides. Look at the robot design for an objective overview of what their robot is capable of, and look at actual match performance to double check the data at hand. Be smart about this.
“This thread should be mandatory reading and EVERY team under three years should have to sign off as having read it in order to compete.” -Kevin Ray
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&threadid=2886