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Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
I've keep reading contradictory reports like this. Does it mean that they blindly pretended that the vision tetra was in a particular spot and just got lucky?
I saw some of the VCU webcast. Autonomous mode was, to put it mildly, boring. In the matches I watched, I never saw any robots come close to picking up a vision tetra.
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Those teams at Sacramento who capped in auto mode did so with the starting tetra on their bot.
Other observations from Sacramento...
Auto/Human Loader: It seemed to be a mixed bag of both, however if you auto load and the opposing alliance interferes with you, they get the 30 pt penalty - which is brought a lot of teams down to zero points. Unfortunately, if you play a clean game and your opponents get penalties and end up with zero point then you get the win, but take away zero QP. Kinda bites - but winning is the most important.
Stack High vs. Stack Fast: Stack Fast seemed to be what it takes in the end to win it all. 766, 1072, 245 (if I remember right) won mostly because they could all stack reliably and quickly. Whereas the Finalists 254, 1097, 114 struggled to keep up because 114 just played defense, while 254 and 1097 stacked.
Strong/Fast Bots: Toss up here, when trying to stack you may get pushed around so you had to be able to maintain a position, likewise you had to get those tetras quickly from the loading stations, so being fast helped. I didn't notice a huge advantage to having two speeds though.
6 Robots on the field: It seemed OK - very busy and hard to follow all 6 teams.
Scores: First half of Friday, had a lot of low scores due to all the penalties. By the end of Friday and into Saturday, average scores went up into maybe the high teens to low twenties, but some good stacking alliances were getting scores into the 40's and 50's. High was I think 78?
Robot Damage: Some teams had some complex mechanical systems from the get go - but all in all, most teams stayed operational at least in driving. Arms were the biggest thing getting damaged. Some bots flipped over like we did, when a bot with a now popular wedge design tried to push us over when stacking on the center goal. They got DQ'd. I think this scenario happed a total of 3 times in the two days. Beach Bots, 330, had a retractable wedge shape which was the smartest approach to using a wedge.
End Zone: Very few bothered to get back to the end zone due to the lack of space and more importantly the communication / coorperation between three drivers.