Notes from Portland, OR based on my experiences today. We had a frustrating day, but are doing well.
-- The number of penalties called per match seems to have fallen throughout the day, but not because behaviors changed.
-- Protection for hurdlers under <G42> (I think) is a joke.
-- If I can hear a midfield collision behind the player station, you might want to consider that it could've been "high-speed" and penalize the behavior.
-- Had some trouble with IR stuff early on, but it's working now. Probably an issue with our machine.
-- High score is 70 so far; not as high-scoring as other events, but that's not unexpected.
-- I was given the hard copy of our Bill of Materials back after inspection and told it was no longer needed; today they asked for it again from all teams and I hadn't brought it along. Frustrating.
-- Few teams knocking ball down in hybrid; we're pretty reliable. 1540 can get two balls in hybrid if unimpeded. They're 1st seed. Lots of drive straight stuff; a handful more with left/right control. Very few running more than two lines.
-- No idea what to look for from refs. regarding "signals to pass". I didn't see any impeding penalties, though.
-- Track is a mess. Teams designed to have small footprints and no items projecting outside their bumpers are best at running laps. Ball manipulators get caught up in things like crazy.
-- The track divider is very reflective and it's hard to see to the opposite corner of the field.
-- Driver's meeting this morning said that trackballs couldn't be used to "signal to pass," as I recall.
-- Be able to turn off your autonomous mode. I've spent a lot of time today coordinating autonomous modes and trying to figure out how to get the robots to avoid colliding with one another. Being able to turn off your hybrid mode so that another machine can run its own is a good thing to have.
-- You can place your robot against the fence. Honestly, I'm not making this up. Nobody seems to know this.
-- Fast lap running robots cannot draw any penalties if they want to be at all effective. If your control of the machine isn't perfect, slow down and do everyone a favor.
The game is playing out pretty well like I expected -- it's a mess on the field and the stuff people demonstrate in their practice field is almost meaningless. We've had one match today that let us really open up and score, but most of the time, all of the hurdlers are getting neutered by robots blocking the way -- sometimes their partners, sometimes not. Still, so far, they can't be beat by anything else.
Also, for the record -- arms are beating catapults.
