[Ted Boucher]

Auto/Human Loader – The human loader was more popular at Finger Lakes. There were many teams that would attempt to load at the auto loader and receive a penalty for it. The most common penalty for the human loader was the human player loading the robot without having both feet inside the triangle box.

Stack High vs. Stack Fast - Many matches were won with a robot that could stack a lot of tetras in a short period of time. Occasionally there would be high stackers vs. high stackers and a “Stackfest” would happen at the tetra goals in the middle row of the field.

Strong/Fast Bots - I think speed became a non factor during the main play of the game. The only reason to have a fast robot was to run across the field and stack at the very end of the match or to drive back to your end zone in the last seconds of the match. Strong bots were more important during the elimination rounds. They really helped most alliances win match.

Autonomous Mode - 237 came very close to stacking a vision tetra in autonomous mode. Our major problem was the placement of the vision tetras at the beginning of the match. Most auto modes delt with knocking down the magnetic tetra or starting with a tetra and stacking it on a goal using dead reckoning. I heard that at Finger Lakes 5-6 CMU vision cameras were destroyed and left in many pieces on the field

6 Robots on the field - I liked the 3 vs. 3 game play for this season. There was a lot of space on the playing field to move around in as long as you planed your strategy right.

What happened vs what you planned - Most strategies worked out well if they were planned well. The game play of the match would change every couple of seconds. You really had to pay attention to what happened on the field and then act accordingly to make your strategy work.

Robot Damage - Most robot damage happened on the base area of the robot. Most robots were protected well and suffered minor damage.

Scores - Most scores were in the 20 to 40s. Penalties really decided who won or lost the game in most cases.

How fast is the setup/take down of every match – Setup and take down of the match took about 2 minutes on Friday. On Saturday during the elimination rounds it took longer since they triple checked the score of each match.