2012 Match Initial Observations

[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by Hebrew

Our robot is on the lighter side (75 pounds with battery) and our two drivers who managed to get on the bridge found it very easy to balance. The negative part is it is next to impossible to balance with another robot since they are much heavier than ours.

This is our team's rookie season by the way.

I would politely suggest finding a way to strap some barbell weights onto your robot to get much closer to 120lbs.

[Mike9966]

Hi all,
I was at the Simley event in Minnesota.
My off the cuff thoughts are,
1. Too many tall robots, there was lots of tipping, and I didn't see anyone except us even try to cross the bump. Of course, I in no way saw all the matches.....
2. There was a really good dumper team, 3007, that could consistently dump in the 2nd tier both in hybrid mode, and during the match. Of course, I'm wondering if that will work when there is defense to be had......
3. balancing should be easy if drivers are practiced at it, and balls aren't stuck under the ramp.
4. Some of the shooters are way over powered, and of course they miss by a mile because of that. Of course, it's easy to turn the power down, the question is can they turn it down in a controlled manner?

Unrelated to the playing, we spoke with inspectors at the event, and it looks like making your bumpers and frame perimeter legal is going to be a pain this year for us, picky picky picky...... Kind of sad when you have to put more effort into your bumpers than your shooter. lol

Our bot didn't have the shooter on top yet, and so was really light, but it could do a wheely stand half way across the field! That was a real crowd pleaser, but of course didn't garner any points.

It's going to be a great year, have fun all,

Mike

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Not much in the way of defense but I doubt teams like 23 and 125 are gonna be allowed to make a living parking in front of the basket and popping balls in at their leisure all day long especially in St. Louis.

I disagree. We won a regional ramp camping in 2006, and in ATL still did well enough to seed in the top 8. We mostly shot from the ramp, but we would shoot from the base if we had to. The only times we were ever effectively defended was when a big name team with good scouting was the other alliance. Unless we see some really fantastic launchers I would wager that the 2168s and 125s of the world do pretty well. I really have a hard time seeing wheeled launchers getting the consistency from the key, but we haven't seen what the tippy top tier is up to yet.

I really like this game. The audience seems to get into it in a way we haven't seen since 2008, every time the net swooshed the crowd stood or their arms went up. The end game is exciting, watching those teeter totters rock back and forth was nerve racking! I think the point balance is about right too, while a balance is worth a lot of points, if the match is close you can still see the down team matching the balance or maybe even scoring a couple more points to still win. I think balancing is about the right level of difficulty too -- it isn't easy but we saw it quite a few times on the webcast, which is promising. The first 3 balance is going to knock the crowd of their feet.

Strategically, knocking the balls on the ramp to your side of the field is huge. So is autonomous.

I think we're in for a good year. (Except for the enormous monkey wrench in the works that is the Coopertition Bridge. There is a lot of potential for bad blood on that field element.)

[kborer22]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The NBA it is not.
That 0-0 match was brutal and I think there's gonna be some pretty agonizing qualification matches (or even whole regionals) this year but at least the quality of play picked up exponentially during the elims. It looks like autonomous and the ability to get up on the ramp can make or break alliances. Not much in the way of defense but I doubt teams like 23 and 125 are gonna be allowed to make a living parking in front of the basket and popping balls in at their leisure all day long especially in St. Louis.

Don't you worry 125 will be able to shoot from wherever we need to....

Yesterday was all manual alignment, shooter speed, and hood angle for us, our drivers did great. We apparently had a bad Ethernet cable to the camera, oh well.

The biggest things I took away from yesterday:
1. Balls under the bridge is a huge issue
2. Teams looking to track penalties in scouting will be nearly impossible
3, balancing on bridges seems sketchy for now, once teams have more practice it should be fine
4. Hopefully they fix the fenders, the red fender at suffield was completely dislodged several times
5. Teams were inconsistent at best from the key, this should improve
6. Defense seemed useless. we parked in front of the fender and teams were able to back up to the key. Also, the high risk of penalties hardly seems worth getting anywhere near a robot shooting from the key. Well see how it plays out

[MarcD79]

@ kborer22; I agree there were some issues, but we all expect some at Suffield. The red fender was missing the velcro at the bottom. We knew but had no vecro to correct the problem. The ball issue was noticed right away & relayed to FIRST. As the day went on there were less instances of balls under the bridges. I guess the teams recognized this and adjusted their strategy. As for the rest of what you said about shooting from the fenders & balancing act. I will go out on the line & say everybody learned valuable information & will only improve dramatically from this. They also had that issue when we stopped round #3 in Hybrid. When the stop button was pushed, it caused a loss of info for the AP (access point) & had to be corrected. Again, FIRST was advised of this. The reason was that the bridge supports were not removed. They didn't pause the round for fear of the robots being caught up in a continuous Hybrid loop & unable to stop. As always there are things learned that are not thought of during planning each year. Life is a continued lesson & we never stop learning. We just roll with it. I am happy with how yesterday went & am looking forward to Hartford Regional.

[dsalvucci]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Not much in the way of defense but I doubt teams like 23 and 125 are gonna be allowed to make a living parking in front of the basket and popping balls in at their leisure all day long especially in St. Louis.

As Team 23's cannon operator, i just want to point out, in probably Team 23's unique case, that the cannon can be shot from anywhere reasonable on the field. For example, all i need to do is drop the cannon 2-3 degrees and back up 5 feet. In these few matches though, as a team we seemed more concerned with testing the preset codes such as the kinect hybrid, and one touch auto shooting from predetermined spots on the field for our rookie programmers (and by rookie i mean no past coding experience).

With that said, i do agree with you. Team 23 will be headed to WPI and our drive team is expecting to see plenty of defense and will be required to shoot from more than against the fender.

[Bill_B]

Originally Posted by Hebrew

This is our team's rookie season by the way.

What team is that? Your profile doesn't mention your team number.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I disagree. We won a regional ramp camping in 2006, and in ATL still did well enough to seed in the top 8. We mostly shot from the ramp, but we would shoot from the base if we had to. The only times we were ever effectively defended was when a big name team with good scouting was the other alliance. Unless we see some really fantastic launchers I would wager that the 2168s and 125s of the world do pretty well. I really have a hard time seeing wheeled launchers getting the consistency from the key, but we haven't seen what the tippy top tier is up to yet.

I really like this game. The audience seems to get into it in a way we haven't seen since 2008, every time the net swooshed the crowd stood or their arms went up. The end game is exciting, watching those teeter totters rock back and forth was nerve racking! I think the point balance is about right too, while a balance is worth a lot of points, if the match is close you can still see the down team matching the balance or maybe even scoring a couple more points to still win. I think balancing is about the right level of difficulty too -- it isn't easy but we saw it quite a few times on the webcast, which is promising. The first 3 balance is going to knock the crowd of their feet.

Strategically, knocking the balls on the ramp to your side of the field is huge. So is autonomous.

I think we're in for a good year. (Except for the enormous monkey wrench in the works that is the Coopertition Bridge. There is a lot of potential for bad blood on that field element.)

Just because something worked in the past does not mean it will work today. Aim High and this game are different.

[ThirteenOfTwo]

I'm mostly interested in whether anyone was crossing the field--our drive train doesn't cross the bump (but is very fast on the bridge), so it'd be great to know in advance if that's going to be a crippling decision so that we can possibly whip something up using the withholding allowance.

Originally Posted by kborer22

6. Defense seemed useless. we parked in front of the fender and teams were able to back up to the key. Also, the high risk of penalties hardly seems worth getting anywhere near a robot shooting from the key. Well see how it plays out

Did anyone try to play a more agile defense? In the matches I saw, all of the defensive robots just tried to ram their opponents into submission... to my thinking, the best way of playing defense in this game is being quick enough to snag the rebounds on all of the missed shots.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by ThirteenOfTwo

Did anyone try to play a more agile defense? In the matches I saw, all of the defensive robots just tried to ram their opponents into submission.. ..

The classic form of FIRST defense. Depending on rules can be very effective (2007, 2009, 2010) or potentially very damaging to your chances of winning (2005, 2011 and this year). Mostly due to a "no-contact" zone on the field that is often forgotten or ignored by aggressive drivers.

[Andy Grady]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The classic form of FIRST defense. Depending on rules can be very effective (2007, 2009, 2010) or potentially very damaging to your chances of winning (2005, 2011 and this year). Mostly due to a "no-contact" zone on the field that is often forgotten or ignored by aggressive drivers.

Also factor in that the "no contact zone" only gets bigger as more robots stuff themselves in at the border of the key. I think the lack of defense at Suffield was based mainly off of two things...

1. The fear of getting fouls just traveling to the fender.
2. Teams inability to even cross over from one side of the field to the next.

I wouldn't expect 2 to be an issue as we get deeper into the season, but 1 will remain a massive factor.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

I wouldn't expect 2 to be an issue as we get deeper into the season, but 1 will remain a massive factor.

The fresh painful memories of such consequences are still fresh in many teams mind from last year.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The fresh painful memories of such consequences are still fresh in many teams mind from last year.

As they are for us...

I feel for any alliance, sending a defensive between the key and the fender is going to be taking a huge risk. There will be teams who do it extremely well, as there always is. However, the drivers of that defensive robot will need to be on their toes and very aware of where they are. We will see many teams parking just on the edge of the key. Defensive teams will have a 3+ foot radius around the key to be aware of at all times. The best defense will be teams who can clear the other alliance's zone of rebounds/stray balls.

-Brando

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

Also factor in that the "no contact zone" only gets bigger as more robots stuff themselves in at the border of the key. I think the lack of defense at Suffield was based mainly off of two things...

1. The fear of getting fouls just traveling to the fender.
2. Teams inability to even cross over from one side of the field to the next.

I wouldn't expect 2 to be an issue as we get deeper into the season, but 1 will remain a massive factor.

A third reason you didn't see defense at Suffield Shakedown: no team came to play defense to win the game. They came to refine their offensive capabilities on an official field. Defense will come because a good 60-70% of teams at regionals won't make one shot in the hoop. These teams may not play an ideal defense, but it will be an annoying one.

[Squeakypig]

Defenders will actually be at a driving advantage compared to the offensive robots in that zone since the drivers of defensive robots will be right there on that side of the field. A well practiced drive team will be able to defend and clear balls to the other side of the field with minimal chances for penalties I think. This might actually be a year where you see a 'powerhouse team' play defense and be successful at it!