What did it take to win a Week 1 Rebound Rumble match?

[Ian Curtis]

"I'm not looking for the best players -- I'm looking for the right ones." -Herb Brooks, Coach US 1980 Olympic Hockey Team

Week 2 gets to play the game that Week 1 gets to figure out. What a week it was! Below is some analysis that I hope will help you as you get ready to rumble this week.

Included is all Week 1 regionals (Israel not included), and events (MAR & FIM). This includes 676 qualifying matches. First up, a boxplot of scores, divided into winning/tying alliances and losing/tying alliances. Winning and losing in this piece always mean winning/tying and losing/tying, as it was mildly easier to do that than throw out all of the ties. (4% of matches ended in a tie)



A couple of key observations. Winning alliances tend to score a lot more points than losing ones -- since alliances are fairly randomly selected, some biasing factor (hint: think endgame!) likely seperates them. Winning alliances scored on average 22 points per match, whereas losing ones scored 8.7. That is, the winning alliance had to only balance one robot to win the average match last week!

Next up are the distributions of winning and losing scores. I find it interesting that while winning alliance scores are fairly normal, losing alliance scores are significantly skewed.


Basically, this drives home the point that teams did not need to score many points to win matches. Less than 5% of losing alliances scored more than 25 points!


Winning alliances tended to do better, but the mean was still 22 as mentioned above.

Adding to the two together, you can see the distribution for total alliance scores, which had a mean of 15.4 as others have mentioned.


A couple of parting thoughs based on these

1) Give yourself plenty of time to balance the bridges! I can't tell you how many points scored this weekend were bridge points because I haven't gotten a parsed copy of the twitter feed yet, but scores are so low that they can't have been an overwhelming proportion. Watching the webcasts lots of teams appeared to shortchange themselves, but I think for most robots time spent balancing the bridge is better spent than time chasing after balls.

2) Teams are not scoring a lot of points. If you miss a ball, it takes a long time to chase after it. Only take shots you are sure of. Again watching webcasts, it seemed like most teams were not playing defense in qualifying matches -- use this to your advantage! coughFENDERcough

3) Don't overreach! Set a simple, robust strategy and follow it. In line with #2, I think a defender going back and forth along the fender will be a big obstacle for a lot of teams.

[MrForbes]

From my experience at San Diego being able to balance on a bridge is not usually a matter of time...it's something that is difficult or impossible to do at all for many teams.

[Gray Adams]

Originally Posted by squirrel

From my experience at San Diego being able to balance on a bridge is not usually a matter of time...it's something that is difficult or impossible to do at all for many teams.

Do you have any guesses as to why they couldn't balance? Was it a lack of specialty hardware to aid in balancing, or was it a driver practice/communication problem.

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by squirrel

From my experience at San Diego being able to balance on a bridge is not usually a matter of time...it's something that is difficult or impossible to do at all for many teams.

My experience was quite the opposite. In KC I could get almost anyone on a bridge. Sometimes their appendage was too weak for them to get on by themselves, but almost every drivetrain could follow me up the bridge for a co-op attempt.

We did have some difficulty with Jags set to coast instead of break. Teams had trouble keeping their drive train from sliding around the bridge as it tipped back to level in coast. Many younger teams did not fully understand the difference.

We saw drive trains with six pneumatic wheels, 2 friction and 2 omni, swerve, mechanum, even 4 mechanum with 2 omni. They could all balance with the right partner and someone to give them some pre-match coaching.

[MrForbes]

First you have to get the bridge down. That is a significant challenge for many teams (it took us two days at the regional to get our bridge arm to work reliably). Getting on the bridge is easier if there aren't any balls in the way...which there are about half the time, it seems, since when you first lower the bridge the balls roll right in the way. Then you have to be able to drive the robot slowly enough and with enough control that it can balance. The kit drive train is a bit fast for doing this, and also most robots roll a bit after you let go of the joystick. This is assuming you were able to get on the bridge straight, and didn't fall off the side.

We found a whole bunch of ways to fail at getting on the bridge and balancing. Fortunately our shooting made up for it, but many (most) teams don't have that to fall back on.

[Yankeefan181]

What are your thoughts on balancing the different bridges during qualification matches? Should one focus on balancing your own bridge or the coopertition bridge?

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

They could all balance with the right partner and someone to give them some pre-match coaching.

That seems to be a big part of it....if you are with a team that is good on the bridge, and both teams work together well, then it's usually doable. That's pretty common in eliminations, but not so much in qualifying. My guess is we'll see a wide variation in regionals.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by Yankeefan181

What are your thoughts on balancing the different bridges during qualification matches? Should one focus on balancing your own bridge or the coopertition bridge?

To piggyback on this question, what do you think the affect of the coopertition bridge was on the average score?

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by Yankeefan181

What are your thoughts on balancing the different bridges during qualification matches? Should one focus on balancing your own bridge or the coopertition bridge?

For our team, we usually had the most consistent balancer to go on our own bridge, and the second-best attempt the co-op bridge. Then we attempted to convince the opposing alliance to join us on the coopertition with their strongest balancer.
As teams started to realize that gaining coopertition points meant significant rises in the standings, the attempts became more and more common. By the last day, almost all matches were at least trying the co-op balance.

Also, the rule of thumb for our matches was to "be at the bridge with 45 seconds remaining". If the robots on each side weren't ready to go at the 45 second mark, each team went off to do their own thing.

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

To piggyback on this question, what do you think the affect of the coopertition bridge was on the average score?

In qualification matches, balancing with just 1 robot commonly meant winning the match. In elimination rounds, teams needed to get both a 10-20 point autonomous plus balance 2 to stay competitive.

[pfreivald]

This is anecdotal, but I saw several matches where a team failed at a 20-point bridge balance when a 10-point balance would have won them the game.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

This is anecdotal, but I saw several matches where a team failed at a 20-point bridge balance when a 10-point balance would have won them the game.

And I saw one particular high caliber match where a team failed at a 40 point balance where they would have won with 20.

[BrendanB]

Consistency plain and simple.

[Wayne TenBrink]

Originally Posted by Yankeefan181

What are your thoughts on balancing the different bridges during qualification matches? Should one focus on balancing your own bridge or the coopertition bridge?

Teams tend to have an optimistic view of their own capabilities. We had coopertition agreements in most matches. However, we were alone at/on the coopertition bridge as often as not. At least with the alliance bridge you get points for balancing alone. If you don't need the points to win the match, coopertition makes more sense than alliance (to the team with the lead, at least).

[waialua359]

From watching webcasts this past weekend, it appeared that widebots either didnt attempt to push another robot up the ramp, or failed to do so.
In our scrimmage right before build season ended, I saw that to be the case.
I also noticed that teams with mechanum and omnis had a hard time getting on the ramp and balancing at a high success rate also.

Our team with our 8 wheel drivetrain has already attempted to push another robot up onto a ramp unassisted by the other team.
Honestly, I want to be the team that does this and not have to count on someone else doing it for us to balance 2 robots, especially during qualification matches where you're randomly with any team.