Week 2: Any new lessons learned?

[Eagleeyedan]

Originally Posted by 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

Oh yes, if you have a pit that requires a ladder to be set up, you are going to have to find a different way to do it because ladders are banned. They did have one at pit admin to borrow but use of it was spread pretty thin.

P.S. Standing on boxes is even less safe than the ladder.

[AmoryG]

It seems like even the most prestigious and experienced teams are sometimes getting red cards in the elimination rounds. I won't be surprised if a regional favorite or even a championship favorite is eliminated due to disqualification.

[davidthefat]

I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks.

[TD912]

A minibot can help you win many qualification matches, as long as it can be deployed reliably and consistently. Tubes play somewhat of a lesser role here, but they can help when minibots fail to deploy, or to break close scores.

In elimination matches, most alliances will have reliable minibots, so actual minibot speed and tube placing are important. Even a bottom-row logo or incomplete middle row may be just enough to win a close match.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks.

Now that is one thing I love about this years' game. Most years, a bad offensive bot could double duty as defense. Not anymore.

[45Auto]

I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks.

If the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, I'll do it every time ......

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by 45Auto

If the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, I'll do it every time ......

You know what I meant, it was my mistake

[nocapitals]

Things I learned from Waterford:

1. Strategy is the name of the game, our elimination alliance had to go up against the team ranked #1 during qualifiers, but by planning out our ideas and playing to each team's strengths, we managed to score higher. (This means making sure drive teams get a chance to communicate between matches)

2. Alliance selection is crucial, an alliance made up of all tube-hanging teams is not necessarily the best. This sort of alliance can end up crowding the scoring zone, reducing effectiveness of each robot. Make sure to fill in gaps, like if your robot can only hang tubes, find the team with the best minibot, etc.

3. While minibots are crucial, don't forget about logos (they did name the game after them). Let's break it down:
6 points (hanging ubertube on top row) + 6 points (hanging a game piece over the ubertube) + 3 points (game piece on top row) + 3 points (game piece on top row) * 2 (hanging in a logo) = 36 points
While a 6 point lead isn't large, it beats a first place minbot. Some teams can consistently and effectively do this.

4. Lane violations are not as devastating as they sound. These only incur a single penalty, a deduction of 3 points. Let's say a team needs a square to complete a bottom-row logo. There is one just to their left, they try and pick it up, but their arm pushes it into the lane, again they try to pick it up, this time they are successful, they race over to the scoring zone again and place it to complete the logo. This gains the alliance 6 points, minus three for the penalty is a gain of 3 points. <G33> states that this penalty exists to allow robots to approach the feeder station without being hindered. Thinking about it, removing a tube from an opponent's lane would actually help them get to the feeder. hmmmmm.

5. "Starving the field" is only effective if your alliance is made of defensive robots, if it depends on minibots or if you have a slot-fed "shuttlebot". If your alliance partner (or your team) can hang tubes well, giving them less tubes will not help. Hanging tubes requires tubes. Especially teams that can pick up off of the floor, generally if a tube is beyond the minibot poles, they will reach it in time. This is why throwing tubes is essential. Even if the opposing alliance "steals" your tubes, one of the human players has access to at least one more and can replace it easily.

6. Pit crews make a difference. Especially this year with the often devious defense being played, as well as that all-too-sensitive arm joystick, breaks and damage are bound to happen, don't leave home without someone who can fix them.

7. Ranking (or "seating") during qualifiers does not define eliminations. At the end of qualifiers, our team ranked 5th, and our partners ranked somewhere between 10th and 20th (sorry guys, my memory is not that great). In the end, we managed to bring home the gold. I cannot say this without crediting the RoboStang's minibot/tube hanging or the Average Joes' defense/tube shuttling.

Sorry for the huge post...

[boomergeek]

"I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks. "

Has anyone ever done well with a 2 CIM drivertrain in any year OTHER THAN Lunacy (where lack of traction precluded drivetrain power)???

Robots are like athletes on a field: soccer, football, hockey...

If you don't have strong legs, then you don't have a decent athlete on the field.

Have you ever seen a successful defensive lineman with spindly legs?

I can't imagine a game other than Lunacy that I would ever recommend a half-powered drivetrain for.

All one has to do is experiment with the drive-train spreadsheet (CD-20071127-Speed_Optimization) to figure that out.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by boomergeek

"I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks. "

Has anyone ever done well with a 2 CIM drivertrain in any year OTHER THAN Lunacy (where lack of traction precluded drivetrain power)???

Robots are like athletes on a field: soccer, football, hockey...

If you don't have strong legs, then you don't have a decent athlete on the field.

Have you ever seen a successful defensive lineman with spindly legs?

I can't imagine a game other than Lunacy that I would ever recommend a half-powered drivetrain for.

All one has to do is experiment with the drive-train spreadsheet (CD-20071127-Speed_Optimization) to figure that out.

I TOTALLY AGREE!!! Man, Thank God there is someone with the same mentality as me! (Coming from a football player) I recommend squats over all other lifts (except maybe for deadlifts)

[Chris86]

Our robot could have played defense very well against the 179-233 alliance in the Florida regional. 179 could only pick up tubes from the alliance wall and our third team - 945 was not a weak scorer and we had the stronger drive train. Though our robot was definitely built for offense, we had the pushing power in low gear to shove bots that tried to defend us like nothing. Unfortunately, we lost high gear on our right side (for some reason, robots dont run well with one side trying to run at 4x the gear ratio as the other...) making it impossible to play any kind of effective defense as 179 and 233 could run loops around our robot. If you have the speed to catch a robot and the power to shove them, you can play defense (pay attention to those home zone markers though)

[boomergeek]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I TOTALLY AGREE!!! Man, Thank God there is someone with the same mentality as me! (Coming from a football player) I recommend squats over all other lifts (except maybe for deadlifts)

What is humorous is the number of people that see shoulderpads and think football is an upper body sport. ...Or people that see large robotic arms and don't see competitive FRC robots as first about drivetrains.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by boomergeek

Has anyone ever done well with a 2 CIM drivertrain in any year OTHER THAN Lunacy

heh....our rookie year, 2006, we were slightly overweight and half of the drivetrain was part of the diet plan...we were left with only 2 CIMs, 2wd with omnis. Seeded 4th at Davis, won the regional.

It happens, but luck is required. Lots of it.

(Lunacy...top seed and regional winner at AZ. 2 CIM drivetrain. I detect a trend)

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by squirrel

heh....our rookie year, 2006, we were slightly overweight and half of the drivetrain was part of the diet plan...we were left with only 2 CIMs, 2wd with omnis. Seeded 4th at Davis, won the regional.

It happens, but luck is required. Lots of it.

Actually come to think of it, we didn't do too shabby either: seeded at #4, made it to semis and we didn't even have a working arm or drive (it was next to undrivable)

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by boomergeek

"I learned that if your bot was not made to play defense, it should not play any defense. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks. "

Has anyone ever done well with a 2 CIM drivertrain in any year OTHER THAN Lunacy (where lack of traction precluded drivetrain power)???

Robots are like athletes on a field: soccer, football, hockey...

If you don't have strong legs, then you don't have a decent athlete on the field.

Have you ever seen a successful defensive lineman with spindly legs?

I can't imagine a game other than Lunacy that I would ever recommend a half-powered drivetrain for.

All one has to do is experiment with the drive-train spreadsheet (CD-20071127-Speed_Optimization) to figure that out.

Why yes, yes i have.

Team 968/254 used 2 cims in their drives and they were shifting two speeds! Team 254 made divisional finals in Atlanta and team 968 made it all the way to the finals on Einstein!

Drivetrain picture used for both robots: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/31597

Team 1519 used 2 cims on our 2008 hurdling robot fezzik which was highly competitive in a fast pace game of speed and traction. It was very easy to drive also.