Feeding VS. Throwing tubes into Play?

[cbeavers6790]

it depends on how your robot recieves the game pieces. If your robot grabs better from the slot then use that idea, but if you can throw the piece over with accuracy than use that option

[davidcone315]

Remember, the alliance wall is 6.5' high, you would need a really tall human player to throw the tubes over the wall efficiently. It would be better if you fed the tubes to the robot instead

[Chris is me]

Outright tube throwing is beneficial in only a few situations:

First, a blowout match. You've got 67 and 1114, they have 3XXX, 3XXX, and that one team that hasn't moved all regional. Throwing tubes will allow them to score more, but you'll almost certainly still beat them, so you'll get more ranking points. I expect this to rarely be the case for my team but something to consider.

Second, when your alliance has at least two more ground loaders than the other alliance. Throwing tubes becomes strategically advantageous if 2 of your robots both score better than the sole ground loader.

I do think if HPs are good enough to throw tubes in a dead straight line that throwing them to the end of the lane is beneficial.

Other than that, loader all the way, and never ever drop a tube.

[thefro526]

My personal opinion is that Handing the Tube to the Robot, either via the Feeding Slot or over the Wall, is the best method. You can control the orientation of the tube with the Human Player, and you effectively negate the possibility of losing the tube to the other alliance.

If your robot can pick up the floor, and that is your preferred method, then dropping the tubes on the floor, or lightly tossing them into the protected lane is probably also a decent idea.

There will be cases where throwing tubes out of the lane would be worth the risk, either as a Buzzer Beater sort of play, or during a blowout match where every tube will not matter. But more often than not, I'd say don't throw tubes.

[robotic321]

Id personally make it depend on the type of robot. What if (if your "feeding") you had a system that allows some tolerance of where its put into play? I.e. make an area designed for the tup to fall into, like a laundry chute? if your throwing, Make a wide area on top for the tube to fall into kinda like in lunacy. These are just my opinions. Whatever your doing, hope it works great.

[Mustangs]

One thing i dont think anyone has mentioned
or at least i havent seen them mention,
is that these tubes do not throw very far unless somehow you can frisbee-throw it through the gap i doubt you would wanna throw because it would be unreliable in hitting the same place everytime and if u were off with ur aim someone else from the opposite alliance could easily pick it up
now i do like the sound of punching the tubes through the wall if the person passing them could get used to hitting it the same amount everytime so it goes just to the end of the lane
i would have a lot more to give but our area didnt have a field at our opening so im going on just what i saw in the stream and from the measurments of the field
hope this helps someone

[arkangle]

Feeding because if u throw it and miss it is fair game.

Team 639

[awesomeguy1235]

we decided to feed it into play

[Saqtown]

Each team gets 18 inflatables and if an alliance decides to ignore the bottom row, than that leaves an extra 6 inflatables. That would mean that there would only be a 2/3 recovery rate required to score 86.6% of the max points from the pegs. That doesn't seem to unreasonable to me....

if you throw the game piece out of bounds does anyone know what happens?

[zfadness]

Originally Posted by Saqtown

Each team gets 18 inflatables and if an alliance decides to ignore the bottom row, than that leaves an extra 6 inflatables. That would mean that there would only be a 2/3 recovery rate required to score 86.6% of the max points from the pegs. That doesn't seem to unreasonable to me....

if you throw the game piece out of bounds does anyone know what happens?

It is put back into play nearest where it went out.

I'd say if you had a fetcher of any kind on your alliance, it would be a good idea to consider throwing.

[Saqtown]

If your actually thowing it would mean that you would need to refocus the design of a fetcher. Since their total travel would be in the environs of 20ft rather than 50ft the focus would have to shift a lot towards picking up the game peice and on turning around.

IMO if they have no defensive player a fetcher becomes useless in such a scenario since 20 ft is such a short distance the "scorer" robots would come out and pick up the game peices themselves.

just my rookie opinion...

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Saqtown

if you throw the game piece out of bounds does anyone know what happens?

I know, because I read the rules:

<G36> GAME PIECES may not be intentionally placed out of bounds. Violation: PENALTY and YELLOW CARD

Don't wildly throw GAME PIECES about, lest your strategy be deemed "intentionally placing" them out.

Accidents are accidents. But too many accidents, and it looks like it was planned. Or at least not enough care being taken to avoid tossing GAME PIECES out.

[JamesCH95]

If a fetcher team wanted to be slick they'd have their robot able to carry and "hand off" tubes at the same height as the player station. It'd be a shame to not be able to get the tube to a great scorer because the tube was on the ground.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

If a fetcher team wanted to be slick they'd have their robot able to carry and "hand off" tubes at the same height as the player station. It'd be a shame to not be able to get the tube to a great scorer because the tube was on the ground.

According to the rule G49, this would be illegal - assuming that this would be some sort of direct hand off. (Fetcher Holds Tube, Scorer Grabs Tube, Fetcher Releases Tube).

<G49> ROBOTS may not attempt to POSSESS a GAME PIECE that is being POSSESSED by
another ROBOT.
Violation: PENALTY

I was hoping that this would be amended to allow the passing of game pieces between Alliance Partners, but it hasn't happened yet, so I wouldn't count on it.

[JamesCH95]

You're right, I was assuming the spirit of the rule was to prevent malicious stealing of tubes, but the letter of the rule forbids this obvious cooperative strategy.