BAE Granite State Regional

[MattK]

Hey Guys and Gals,
I could find a thread about the '06 BAE Granite State Regional... but if there is one please let me know... anyway...

Who is planning on attending? Where are you all staying? Has your team made any special plans while you are in NH? There are a few good places to eat around the Verizon- there is this new place (since last regional) a few blocks north of the Verizon called JW Hills... I recommend you check it out.

[Jeff K.]

Team 1138 will be coming all the way from Los Angeles to compete there. I believe we're staying at the Marriot, which is apparently across the street. See you all there.

[Ian Curtis]

1276 will be there, as will I. If your team wants a place to eat, go to Brother's Pizza. It's really good, but sadly our team has outgrown their facilities.
Is anyone interested in a mini webhug of sorts on Thursday or Friday during lunch, assuming they don't cancel lunch like they've been known to do to keep on schedule?

[Jay Trzaskos]

I will be in attendance for Saturday, and possibly Friday afternoon/night.

JT

[Greg Marra]

I plan on being there Saturday to get a feel for how the game is played. Also I have a few friends up North that I plan on visiting, as well.

[Jessica Boucher]

I'll be Ambassaodor-ing it up at BAE on Saturday. BAE is such a great regional, I'm really excited for it!

[Rosiebotboss]

To Anybody up in Manchester:

Can you post the early leaders? Help keep us folks at work happy and informed.

Thanks

[Greg Perkins]

OK.....here's my gripes about BAE and the game after seeing it played for about 8 matches:
This game is NOT a spectator game
I could not keep track of who was on defense, who was on offense, penalties (although after each match were clearly stated by Benji), and just the overall gameplay was so fast that you blinked twice and the table had turned.
I was sitting in front of some parents and relatives of my 2 former teams, and and between the 20 of us talking amongst ourselves, we eventually kind of knew what was going on.

All in all, very confusing game to watch, but since I'm not driving, I'm going out on a limb and saying it's an easier game to drive.

As for what to expect....Chaos. I think at BAE I only witnessed 9 or 10 bots actually use thier shooter to their potential, meanwhile...all the other teams were focusing on the 1pt balls and DEFENSE. Some teams look fantastic; Kaizen Blitz has one of the most accurate shooters I saw all day, along with 296 from Canada...WOW is all I can say.

Accuracy, is just not there; I know its only friday, and tommorow could and should be a whole nother story, but robots who got out of trajectory were rapid firing balls INTO the stands probably 10-15 rows back. Defense is key in this game (as it usually is in every FIRST game), but I think the amount of defense being employed is really putting the good shooters out of the game. It's sad really, a team who focuses thier robot to shoot balls accuratly, can be beaten by a wooden box that has great traction. Again, it's not an appealing game to us, the spectators.

******THIS IS MY OWN OPIONION, I AM NOT ASSOSICATED WITH ANY TEAM, SO THAT GIVES ME THE RIGHT TO CONSTRUCTIVLEY CRITICIZES THIS.

Let me know what you all think too.


Edit: Joe J: I copied these message here Week 1: Thoughts, Comments. if you want to respond to it please to it there. Thanks.

[Ian Curtis]

After coaching all day, I have a couple things to say. First off congratulations to Andy Grady for winning WFA. Secondly, the ramp is a nearly insurmountable bonus in the qualifiers. If a team manages to get all 3 robots on the ramp, you've got problems. Another sad thing is autonomous shooting is so rare, and for most teams that do it just going straight from your box is enough to throw them off. And not surpisingly, defense is very important. It becomes darn near impossible to do anything when you've got two robots on you as you try to go up the ramp, and one robot with a good driver does the same thing. Also, there are many balls on the field. On a side not, does anyone have the rankings, as the regional didn't show them for the last half a day?

PS. The ramp at the regional was steeper than ours, and I heard the same comment from various other teams.


Edit: Joe J: I copied these message here Week 1: Thoughts, Comments. if you want to respond to it please to it there. Thanks.

[Alex Cormier]

Any standings and such for BAE, it's not listed on usfirst site.

[Francis-134]

From what i could gather, there have been some problems with the ranking system at BAE. I think that they are going to work out the bugs tonight and have it up in the morning.

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

Any standings and such for BAE, it's not listed on usfirst site.

The scoring system has been having problems all day - the standings display has been out of commission since noon.

We have no data on team rankings, so as you can imagine it's making alliance-picking strategy somewhat difficult.

As for the gameplay itself, I can tell you that autonomous 3-point goal-scoring is the make or break factor in this game. The teams who can do it well are winning their matches, no matter how badly they do in the human-control portion.

Also, I'm a bit annoyed that a fair number of balls are bouncing out of the centre goal and not being counted. We've shot ten in a row directly into the goal and had two or three bounce back out.

[Petey]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

The scoring system has been having problems all day - the standings display has been out of commission since noon.

We have no data on team rankings, so as you can imagine it's making alliance-picking strategy somewhat difficult.

As for the gameplay itself, I can tell you that autonomous 3-point goal-scoring is the make or break factor in this game. The teams who can do it well are winning their matches, no matter how badly they do in the human-control portion.

Also, I'm a bit annoyed that a fair number of balls are bouncing out of the centre goal and not being counted. We've shot ten in a row directly into the goal and had two or three bounce back out.

Quoted for truth.

And good god, man. Your team is absolutely insane. I mean really that shooter of yours that scored 40 in autonomous is just unfair.

Another thing about this game:

Teams are either great at it or horrible. There's little middle ground. At BAE, I'd say there are about 5 or 6 teams--296, 138, 1276, and a few more--that can dominate and win practically by themselves. There are several teams that can do ok, but lots that tip easily.

--Petey

[platypus]

My thoughts after scouting all day Friday:

1. Shooting is extremely difficult outside of autonomous. Autonomous is vital this year for the very fact that it's the only time your robot is not covered. After autonomous, the other bots are all over you if you're any good, and since a gentle knock is enough to make you miss every shot, a full push will keep you from ever scoring in manual.

As a side-note, anyone without an autonomous would be very wise to write one that just moves forward, because, as proven by my team (166), knocking a team that shoots well in autonomous can win games by stopping a 20-30 point swing (and often changes the winner of the autonomous bonus).

2. Any robot with a scoring autonomous is probably worth picking (with a few, very obvious exceptions). Any pusher that dumps its load in autonomous is strong, possibly picking, and any shooter that can score consistently well in autonomous is almost definitely picking. Additionally, if a team can score in autonomous, then it's a safe bet that they can score decently enough in manual (though shooters will have difficulty doing so unless your opponents actually leave them unblocked). If you're picking teams THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE, PICK THESE TEAMS BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE.

3. Autonomous is big. REALLY BIG. So big, that this is my third blurb points out just how big it is. These 10 seconds tend to sway the entire game.

4. The scores are LOW in this game. I expect them to be much higher on Saturday during the elimination rounds, but during the qualifying rounds, scores were generally no higher than 30-40, and anything above 50 almost always won the game. This means that getting all three robots up the ramp is indeed very valuable, though let it be known that the ramp is VERY defend-able and the ramp bonus rarely swings games unless all three robots climb it for the full 25 points.

5. Despite the fact that scores are low, penalties rarely swing games. All the relevant ones are 5 points, and unless team incurs a lot of them (by doing something silly like not having a backbot for a while), then they usually don't change the outcome of the game. Last year, penalties were swinging games left and right because they weren't particularly hard to incur (especially that 30-point one for knocking a robot in the loading zone). THIS YEAR IS DIFFERENT.

6. Push bots are good if they work, though many push bots have difficulty unloading balls and (believe it or not) accurately. The ones that work well though are consistently (something shooters have trouble with) scoring 10-20 points (which is very sizable in many matches). In the absence of an accurate shooter in autonomous, they can win autonomous easily (with an autonomous mode so easy to code that even the bad ones have it) for the 10-point bonus.

7. Balls are everywhere, because human players that don't have to load bots up try to score in the corner goals as fast as they can (and sometimes score 5 or more points if they're lucky). Balls are literally everywhere, so if you have an efficient gatherer, you're in luck, and if you manually load your bot, you're at a disadvantage.

8. Pushing power is important but not as much as one would expect. Since you only need to knock shooters off target, you don't need to have the world's strongest robot. It sure helps, but you can easily get away with just being strong in general.

9. Your 10 ball starting balls are important. Use them well. No matter how efficiently you can load your bot, you'll probably never collect more than 5-10 (and that's really stretching it) balls regardless of which way you load.

10. Small play mistakes often become big, game-changing mistakes. 'nuff said.

11. Most shooting autonomous modes simply move forward and shoot. No fancy sensors or cameras needed. There is a real problem with consistency and the fact that lining the robot up poorly (and that doesn't take much) can make you score 2/10 instead of 8/10, but in general, these simple autonomous modes have the effect of giving the opponent a nearly insurmountable disadvantage score-wise.





That pretty much covers it all. My team, team 166 compiled a database of our scouting information (with many rounds recorded from both Thursday and Friday) and we've been making it available over the sundial network. The address to access it will be given out in the pits ASAP tomorrow morning (probably via two team members walking around telling teams about it, as we did today). Our database includes balls shot and scored, result of the game, and other useful info on every team (except ourselves, who we didn't really see any reason to scout), so hopefully, it will help. As a side-note/advertisement to teams attending the Granite State Regional in contention for the top 8, don't overlook my team, team 166 because of our 3-4 win loss record (and resultantly lower than desirable rank); we've won 3 of our last 4, we're strong on defense, and have a proven defensive autonomous mode

[kaszeta]

Originally Posted by platypus

As a side-note, anyone without an autonomous would be very wise to write one that just moves forward, because, as proven by my team (166), knocking a team that shoots well in autonomous can win games by stopping a 20-30 point swing (and often changes the winner of the autonomous bonus).

Indeed, Team 95 had two matches where the other side carefully set up their autonomous to hit us before we could unload our "fusilade of balls". We do quite will in the practice pit, but it's very easy to get whacked out of alignment.

During matches, our shooter was designed to unload very, very quickly (like we did on a ref during a practice match...), since we realized that you have a very short window in which to align yourself and shoot before someone hits you.

2. Any robot with a scoring autonomous is probably worth picking (with a few, very obvious exceptions).

I agree. We've got a few autonomous routines that are workable if we don't get hit, and we're getting better at not getting hit (Especially since we found a flaky radio connector that caused us to have two autonomous-only matches).

3. Autonomous is big. REALLY BIG. So big, that this is my third blurb points out just how big it is. These 10 seconds tend to sway the entire game.

Indeed. We had two matches today that were decided by our team getting a single ball in during autonomous (while the other team had none, making that single ball worth 13 points).

5. Despite the fact that scores are low, penalties rarely swing games.

Yes. Most penalties I saw were actually on the team that was losing anyways.

7. Balls are everywhere,

Yes, if you have a good gatherer, you should have no problem whatsoever getting balls.

As a side-note/advertisement to teams attending the Granite State Regional in contention for the top 8, don't overlook my team, team 166 because of our 3-4 win loss record (and resultantly lower than desirable rank); we've won 3 of our last 4, we're strong on defense, and have a proven defensive autonomous mode

Your bot is pretty cool. I hope you like ours as well.