Week 2: Any new lessons learned?

[Eagleeyedan]

Be carful of those lane penalties. There were quite a few in the matches at the Wisconsin Regional Also, human players, remember not to feed tubes to the opposing alliance! I saw that happen a few times. Funny incedent happened too. In one of our matches, the human player of the opposing alliance scored a triangle on our grid in the right place to form a logo! What happened was when she threw the tube, it bumped the top of the wall and tumbled right onto our peg. We had some good laughs about that

[Chris is me]

Tube starvation and intelligent tube throws are very important in qualifications, and sometimes eliminations. If your alliance has the only minibot, you can win the match by holding all of your tubes back and just choking the field. If you have a scoring disadvantage and want to cause some disruption, tube starvation will get (floor loading) opponents tubes right out of their hands and give you a leg up that could just beat them.

Using the feeder lane is by no means impossible. 177 effectively took advantage of the lane with their very agile and competitive robot.

Don't push tubes right in front of the scoring pegs, especially if you don't have a long arm. You won't be able to score on the pegs without moving them.

Strafing, 3553-style defense is some of the best defense you can play.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

In San Diego, we DQed in the Semifinals because we were repeatedly being pushing into the opponent's scoring zone because we only used 2 CIMs.

Being pushed into a zone is not grounds for disqualification. On the contrary, it disqualifies the opponent for pushing you.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Being pushed into a zone is not grounds for disqualification. On the contrary, it disqualifies the opponent for pushing you.

We have been gypped! One quarter final, the opposing team extended its deployment mechanism onto the tower at around 25 seconds. There was no penalties that match apparently and we lost. But we still made it to Semis because we beat them, but the match we DQed, we apparently attempted pushing the robot out of that zone, but due to the lack of power, we could not. The past is the past though

We will have a working arm, faster minibot and autonomy by LA regional, we hope to win it all.

[Cyberphil]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

It is not all about just plain offense. Hear my case out...

We were with 179 and 233 where both of them could create 2 logos very easily as well as deploy their minibots. We could create 1 logo.

During quarterfinals we all went on offense to see which alliance can put up more points. The scores of the matches weren't differed by a very huge amount. In semi's we went against 103's alliance where they have scored over 100 points during quarterfinals. We simply didn't want to take the risk of going pure offense and not be able to put up enough points. After further discussion with the all drive teams, instead of going offense, we tucked our claw and arm in and went to the other side of the field and got in 103 and 86's way; pushing the tubes into our lane dividers and blocking them from coming towards the tower; we didn't attempt to push them, we just got in the way as well as try to create room for 179 and 233 to give them access to as many tubes possible. It seemed to work out very well. I had to put enough trust in my driver to make sure that he will not break any planes and get us a penalty. Our driver did his job very well.

Very excellent point! I noticed the change in strategy immediately, and I had a feeling we could not keep up. You did play some amazing defense, and getting in our way was just enough to slow us down that little bit.


Btw
Excellent job guys! I am really glad you won the regional. After seeing all of the hard work getting the robot working, it was great to see you compete, and compete very well! Best of luck for the rest of the year!

[George A.]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Being pushed into a zone is not grounds for disqualification. On the contrary, it disqualifies the opponent for pushing you.

We had something like this come up in Jersey. A blue team pushed a red team into another blue team which was in the zone. The red team got DQ'ed (and eliminated as a result) and the blue team got a penalty. I didn't believe it until the refs showed me the rule sheet to read off of.

[Tyler Olds]

Know how to create a FIRST Logo. I saw at least five occurrences where teams either attempted or completed a backwards logo. I have to admit I lol'd quite a bit when this happened.

[boomergeek]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

The irony is that is exactly what I did. I have no idea why anyone would still not see the point. In fact, the one in charge of the minibot actually modified the gearbox, he was on my side. But the team captain said no because it is "illegal". He just personally hates me though; he actually told me "Stop telling me these thing David, you know whatever you say to me come out my other ear."

I can't do much but just say "I told you so..."

I find putting disagreements on rules down in writing (with urls) on your team forum starts to lower emphasis on opinion and move the conversation toward fact (and finding more facts). I would never suggest "personally hates me" as an appropriate thing to put down in writing, even when somewhat in jest and certainly not to thousands of people on CD that don't know whether you are serious or not.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by George A.

A blue team pushed a red team into another blue team which was in the zone. The red team got DQ'ed (and eliminated as a result) and the blue team got a penalty.

As they should have, it was the right call.

<G32> Neither ROBOTS, HOSTBOTS, nor MINIBOTS may break the planes of the vertically projected borders of the opponent‟s ZONES, including a GAME PIECE in their POSSESSION. Momentary incursions by a POSSESSED GAME PIECE will not be penalized if they do not make contact with anything in the ZONE. Violation: PENALTY. G61 does not apply to this rule, however strategies aimed at taking advantage of this exception will result in a YELLOW CARD. If a ROBOT enters the opponent's ZONE and does not make immediate effort to leave OR if it contacts another ROBOT (or GAME PIECE in its POSSESSION) also in the ZONE, then the intruding TEAM will receive a RED CARD.

Emphasis mine. <G61> says that an opponent can't cause you to get a penalty, which very clearly does not apply here.

So, if you are dumb unfortunate enough to get pushed into an opposing zone, you've got a problem.

Stay Far Away!

[George A.]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

As they should have, it was the right call.

Emphasis mine. <G61> says that an opponent can't cause you to get a penalty, which very clearly does not apply here.

So, if you are dumb unfortunate enough to get pushed into an opposing zone, you've got a problem.

Stay Far Away!

I agree with Don here, you're playing with fire if you're close to the zone. Do the safe thing and play defense towards midfield to insure that you don't get Red Carded.

[GaryVoshol]

Regarding which alliance gets DQ'd, it depends on the actions that cause the Zone incursion with contact. Read Team Update 16.

[A_Reed]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Regarding which alliance gets DQ'd, it depends on the actions that cause the Zone incursion with contact. Read Team Update 16.

Correct. If you aren't "playing the game" and are taking advantage the of G61 exception you get the red card in that situation and it has precedence over theirs, you get DQed/Eliminated.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

So, if you are dumb unfortunate enough to get pushed into an opposing zone, you've got a problem.

You would never get a yellow card for being pushed into an opposing zone, though.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Tyler Olds

Know how to create a FIRST Logo. I saw at least five occurrences where teams either attempted or completed a backwards logo. I have to admit I lol'd quite a bit when this happened.

This is good! Along this line is keep track of time and work with your partners! When it came down to 40 secs a bunch of teams had completed a logo and started working low and placed one or lucky ones got two tubes each and then had to do minibots. Singles in the middle aren't worth much but a logo helps as a cushion going into the race.

[davidthefat]

If you see the video, it was 2 robots pushing us. It was one at first and then another came and started keeping us in the zone. We were really helpless. But I do agree that we were too close to the scoring zone, but we were still out of the yellow line. We just lacked the power. We wanted to be productive and not just park next to the tower the whole match. (In the qualifying rounds, we were parking on the tower, but we felt the "duty" to actually do something in the eliminations)