[Brad Voracek]

I drive a four wheel, wide drive base robot. We have no sensors for traction control. Our sticks were converted to a cubic function in programming, besides that, it's straight drive. 12.5 to 1 reduction from the kitbox, straight geared to the wheels.

I received compliments all weekend long in LA for my driving, one person even came over to us and asked us what we did chemically to our wheels to accelerate so fast. In qualifying matches I was only scored on once by 599 after getting in a bad position. The only other time I had more than 5 balls in my trailer was because we were dead for half the match in front of an enemy human player. (match 13)

Ramp the sticks up slightly if you dont have traction control. Unless you're turning, then just gun it.

It's easy as sin to make a complete 180 with the trailer, keep that in mind. Just start soon enough so you don't run into a wall.

Always move, unless you're homing in on a trailer, then slow down. If you ram into a trailer too fast it'll bump away from you and you can't score. Unless the trailer is against a wall of course.

I drive this game just like overdrive. I drive circles around the court until we have enough balls (the balls collect along the edges) then go for the kill.

It's easy to get pinned in corners, avoid them. Driving against walls its easy to avoid pins and "juke" someone. Just have your coach paying attention to if someone if coming towards you. Then stop moving, accelerate past them, or go backwards and flip around using the trailer.

Human players are deadly. Our autonomous mode collided with 207 in the semifinals, and we kind of got stuck over there. Their human player was loading our trailer, and by the time i got out of the pin, we were full. Sadly, our human player was loading our robot because thats what we usually do (968 style) but we told him if that ever happens again, score on the enemy trailer. Points in their basket are better than you scoring them later.

Elimination and qualifying matches play COMPLETELY different. At least in LA, we had 60 teams there and only got 7 matches. It's a completely new ball game when all of the robots can at least maneuver a little.
To Elaborate:
There will -not- be as many balls on the field to gather up.
There will -not- be "nonmoving" trailers as much.
The human players will know what they are doing
Super cells are probably more useful. In LA, there were no super cells in the finals. However, they could have changed matches. We made a mistake in our matches and never went for empty cell delivery. However, this would have been better for us. There were not enough balls to collect and score. The only qualifying match we lost was because we delivered an empty cell instead of scoring more moon rocks, and thus, we figured they would be equally as useless in eliminations. Looking back at our matches, we could have delivered an empty cell and won with the super cell if we prepared for this. Keep it in mind. Eliminations and qualifying are completely different games, this year more then ever.

Not related to driving, but alliance selection is super important. Have scouts. The most important statistic (imo) is how full their trailer is at the end of the match. If your trailer is near empty, you're pretty decent. If it's full, you must have been doing something wrong.

DON'T GET SCORED ON. That's the biggest thing. If one robot can score on you you're out of luck. to get scored on, it should take one robot pinning you and the second scoring. If it doesn't, you're doing something wrong.



I hope some of this was useful. *shrug*