Multiple tetras

[Andrew Blair]

Has anyone been able to dominate the game while only picking up one tetra at a time? I know at our competition the robots who did extremely well could pick up more than one, well.

[abeD]

Yes....179 swampthing

[MattB703]

Teams 66, 67, and 68 won the Great Lakes Regional. They all pick up 1 at a time. (Well I guess 67 could do 2 if they wanted but they usually held 1 at a time.

[Swampdude]

I have to say 1402 was impressive to watch. I saw them put 3 stacks of 4 up once, they may have done it more. That's 36 point's plus the row 10pt bonus (46). It's definitely a tough hole for the other team to dig out of. But for us, I think our lowest scoring matches were in the 50's only because we didn't bother scoring the same goal twice. Scoring on the opponents corners while owning your home and midfield is key. We were part of 5 matches where we scored every goal on the field with our alliances help. One of them with 845 cutting edge and 180 spam we scored 113pts - almost made it back home in that match but bumped into spam and finished half over the line. Anyhow - I watched the vidoes 108 was giving out on CD (THANKS 108 - YOU GUYS ARE AWSOME!) and I saw repeatedly teams capping over goals that were already capped, giving up the possible bonus rows for a 3pt cap. I can understand if they don't want to risk getting hit on the opponents turf but it's definitely how to dominate.

[cfox2008]

1023 only picks up one tetra at a time, and we did pretty good, same thing with our alliance partners that we went to the finals with at GLR

[Koko Ed]

I think the question should be: has nay of the robots that pick up more than one tetra dominated a competition? It looks like quality is ruling over quanity (doesn't matter if you have alot of tetras if you can't score them but what does matter is how quicly you can get them placed on a goal. That's what the winning robots have in common).

[Yan Wang]

I thought 233 was very high quality, fast, and efficient. They picked up 2 at a time... either from autoloader or HP. Probably the best example so far of a very effective multi-tetra-holding bot.

[Masterfork]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

I thought 233 was very high quality, fast, and efficient. They picked up 2 at a time... either from autoloader or HP. Probably the best example so far of a very effective multi-tetra-holding bot.

thanks but i have to agree swamp does good and also don't forget the bionic tigers 1592 they are rookies but they stack an average of 4 to 5 which is still a good amount and ohh yeah i had a great time driving with you tytus great job

[Rick TYler]

Almost forgot... although they didn't score the vision tetra (which I predicted they might), team 492 picked a tetra from the autoloader and scored it on a corner goal in autonomous. They then proceded to cap as many as five other goals per match -- one tetra at a time. Their record was 15-0-2, with a second consecutive PNW regional win. They had a low, fast, smooth robot that only held one tetra at a time and probably couldn't stack the third tetra on the center goal. What they could do was split the field like an NFL running back, and never fumble a tetra. NOBODY at our regional handled as well as 492. Their driving team was exceptionally skilled, too. I want to be them when I grow up.

More congrats to our down-the-road pals at Titan Robotics.

[Crash852]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

Almost forgot... although they didn't score the vision tetra (which I predicted they might), team 492 picked a tetra from the autoloader and scored it on a corner goal in autonomous. They then proceded to cap as many as five other goals per match -- one tetra at a time. Their record was 15-0-2, with a second consecutive PNW regional win. They had a low, fast, smooth robot that only held one tetra at a time and probably couldn't stack the third tetra on the center goal. What they could do was split the field like an NFL running back, and never fumble a tetra. NOBODY at our regional handled as well as 492. Their driving team was exceptionally skilled, too. I want to be them when I grow up.

More congrats to our down-the-road pals at Titan Robotics.

We originally had planned on capping the center goal with the vision tetra in the autonomous program, but in the end we decided not to because we were always about an inch or two off from being able to cap the center goal properly, so on the last weekend, we decided to change the autonomous to capping a corner goal. If we had another week, we would probably have been able to figure out the coding to cap it.

Our driver and arm controllers are actually both new this year (well our driver was the arm controller last year but that's another story). The key to driving really well is to start training really early in the year. Even before the game was unveiled, they had taken out our robot from last year and started to practice and practice. By the second or third week into the season, we have a basic running chassis in which they can use to practice on. If you practice often and early, your drivers can probably achieve the same effectivness as our drivers can.

[Donut]

Our regional only had 1 multiple capping robot, who started to fair badly when teams discovered they could beat them by simply hitting them when they tried to cap multiple tetras at once. The competition was split between single capping robots (980, 498, 1492) and robots that could only cap under goals or had no arm at all (555, 842).

[Paul Copioli]

Key to this game is being able to disperse tetras to multiple goals in a match. Whether it is one at a time, two at a time, or three at a time is secondary (note, I didn't say not important). It is my opinion that a good robot can cap between 4 and 5 goals in a match (including auton), a great robot can cap between 6 and 7, and the "super powers" can get 8 or 9 goals in a match.

We felt that it was a trade off between multiple tetras and multiple goals and decided on the single tetra on multiple goals strategy. You must be able to score on more than 4 goals in a match to be competitive at the Championship (my opinion, of coarse ... where's CarNack when you need him?).

Maybe the best situation is a combo of one multiple tetra scoring robot and two multiple goal scoring robots (i.e. more than 4 goals), but who knows.

It sure looks like the common denominator for regional winner alliances is multiple goal scoring robots.

-Paul

[Revolverx7]

From what I saw at the SBPLI Regional its not how many you can stack at once, its how fast you can stack. Once you become efficeint at the loading stations you can get a large number of stacks. I was able to average 6 caps per round carying one tetra at a time and refilling at the HP station.

[fredgie]

I know most of you have seen the midwest regionals footage. Teams 71, 111, and 537 won and we were all multiple tetra bots. The advantage is that in the last few seconds we could all cap multiple goals thats 18pts, plus whatever rows we garunteed ourselves. Also if you stack a goal full of tetras fast enough, eventually no one can cap it because it is simply too high. Also in a few of our qualification matches, we would go to the opposite side of the field with 3 tetras and place them all on opponents goals rather quickly. THis strategy is further augmented by our design. From what i've seen we are similar to 469, but can only stack two at a time max but we can both store 4 on ourselves.

Having a fast single stacker is good, but having a fast multiple stacker bot will always be better.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Masterfork

thanks but i have to agree swamp does good and also don't forget the bionic tigers 1592 they are rookies but they stack an average of 4 to 5 which is still a good amount and ohh yeah i had a great time driving with you tytus great job

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Yeah, well, we stacked an average of four tetras per round (except for the three rounds when someone who will forever remain anonymous immobolized our arm...) and didn't even get picked for the finals.
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