Shooting full court?

[cmrnpizzo14]

I am sure that at least one team will try this and have reasonable success.....until the frisbeeswarp. We all know that this will happen, but no one seems to consider it as a factor.

[ToddF]

After some time playing with the simulator, I've concluded that the ideal alliance this year is a dedicated climber and two shooters, one of which can feed directly from the station and the other with great floor pickup.

For the first part of the match, the station feeder just shoots disks downfield. If some of those happen to score, great, but more important is reducing the number of trips to the feeder station to retrieve disks. Last year, good inbounders were able to keep their robots supplied with basketballs, but this year a robot will have to provide that function, at least until the inbounders can throw disks to their robots.

From the simulator, we learned that the real bottleneck to scoring is disk supply. Good scoring robots quickly exhaust the available disks on the floor. Driving to the drivers station to get more is a real time killer, especially if slowed down by any halfhearted attempts at defense.

Think about the problem this way: After teleop, a single robot has 6 disks easily reachable on the floor available for scoring. If limited to getting disks from the feeder station, and generously assuming 5 trips to refill, that is 20 disks more. Any defense that slows down round trips from the feeder station could easily reduce the number of trips to 2 or 3.

For every disk available for scoring, you pay a price for that disk measured in seconds to retrieve it. The highest price you can pay is driving back and forth to get them, and the other alliance can drive the price higher by playing defense. The lowest price you can pay is parking at the feeder station and shooting them downfield. There is an optimum number of disks the inbounding robot would want to shoot downfield. Too many and they will lay on the field un-scored at the end of the match. Too few and the scoring robot(s) will run out and have to go hunting for more.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by ToddF

After some time playing with the simulator, I've concluded that the ideal alliance this year is a dedicated climber and two shooters, one of which can feed directly from the station and the other with great floor pickup.

For the first part of the match, the station feeder just shoots disks downfield. If some of those happen to score, great, but more important is reducing the number of trips to the feeder station to retrieve disks. Last year, good inbounders were able to keep their robots supplied with basketballs, but this year a robot will have to provide that function, at least until the inbounders can throw disks to their robots.

From the simulator, we learned that the real bottleneck to scoring is disk supply. Good scoring robots quickly exhaust the available disks on the floor. Driving to the drivers station to get more is a real time killer, especially if slowed down by any halfhearted attempts at defense.

Think about the problem this way: After teleop, a single robot has 6 disks easily reachable on the floor available for scoring. If limited to getting disks from the feeder station, and generously assuming 5 trips to refill, that is 20 disks more. Any defense that slows down round trips from the feeder station could easily reduce the number of trips to 2 or 3.

For every disk available for scoring, you pay a price for that disk measured in seconds to retrieve it. The highest price you can pay is driving back and forth to get them, and the other alliance can drive the price higher by playing defense. The lowest price you can pay is parking at the feeder station and shooting them downfield. There is an optimum number of disks the inbounding robot would want to shoot downfield. Too many and they will lay on the field un-scored at the end of the match. Too few and the scoring robot(s) will run out and have to go hunting for more.

Was the limited supply of disks (45 per alliance station) ever a factor? I know the simulator may be an overestimate for a typical team's ability but I'm curious if the disk supply matters even for an elite level group.

[Taylor]

I'll just leave this here.

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by Donut

Was the limited supply of disks (45 per alliance station) ever a factor? I know the simulator may be an overestimate for a typical team's ability but I'm curious if the disk supply matters even for an elite level group.

This year the game piece supply is comparatively larger. Each alliance is given 51 probably unshared discs (assuming discs are not stolen off the ground) Last year there was 18 shared balls for both aliances. At least until MSC I will find it hard to believe on average each robot on an alliance can score 17 discs and deplete the supply.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by MagiChau

This year the game piece supply is comparatively larger. Each alliance is given 51 probably unshared discs (assuming discs are not stolen off the ground) Last year there was 18 shared balls for both aliances. At least until MSC I will find it hard to believe on average each robot on an alliance can score 17 discs and deplete the supply.

I doubt an Average robot will be able to at all. I would guess, however, that probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the fields at MSC and MARs champs will be able to do that relatively undefended.

However, a heavily defended robot this year will have trouble traversing the field while keeping away from the pyramid and the other team. In past years with relatively open fields, it still takes 30-40 seconds to traverse the field again a well-playing defender.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by MagiChau

This year the game piece supply is comparatively larger. Each alliance is given 51 probably unshared discs (assuming discs are not stolen off the ground) Last year there was 18 shared balls for both aliances. At least until MSC I will find it hard to believe on average each robot on an alliance can score 17 discs and deplete the supply.

I agree, I'm wondering if it will be an issue at the higher levels or not (Championship playoffs, District Championships, IRI).

[8885000]

We are very interested in running the 2013 game simulator you mentioned. Where can we find it???

Originally Posted by ToddF

After some time playing with the simulator, I've concluded that the ideal alliance this year is a dedicated climber and two shooters, one of which can feed directly from the station and the other with great floor pickup.

For the first part of the match, the station feeder just shoots disks downfield. If some of those happen to score, great, but more important is reducing the number of trips to the feeder station to retrieve disks. Last year, good inbounders were able to keep their robots supplied with basketballs, but this year a robot will have to provide that function, at least until the inbounders can throw disks to their robots.

From the simulator, we learned that the real bottleneck to scoring is disk supply. Good scoring robots quickly exhaust the available disks on the floor. Driving to the drivers station to get more is a real time killer, especially if slowed down by any halfhearted attempts at defense.

Think about the problem this way: After teleop, a single robot has 6 disks easily reachable on the floor available for scoring. If limited to getting disks from the feeder station, and generously assuming 5 trips to refill, that is 20 disks more. Any defense that slows down round trips from the feeder station could easily reduce the number of trips to 2 or 3.

For every disk available for scoring, you pay a price for that disk measured in seconds to retrieve it. The highest price you can pay is driving back and forth to get them, and the other alliance can drive the price higher by playing defense. The lowest price you can pay is parking at the feeder station and shooting them downfield. There is an optimum number of disks the inbounding robot would want to shoot downfield. Too many and they will lay on the field un-scored at the end of the match. Too few and the scoring robot(s) will run out and have to go hunting for more.

[vikesrock777]

Originally Posted by 8885000

We are very interested in running the 2013 game simulator you mentioned. Where can we find it???

I would assume he is talking about Catalyst 2013, released by Diamond Bullet Studios. It was one of the pieces of software we got access to in the virtual kit as can be seen on the kit of pars home.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...c/kit-of-parts
Follow this next link to download the simulation.
http://www.dbsgames.net/

[andrewthecow]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

I am sure that at least one team will try this and have reasonable success.....until the frisbeeswarp. We all know that this will happen, but no one seems to consider it as a factor.

I thought about this until I fooled around with the frisbees. They're made from a different plastic than an "ultimate" frisbee and are much more rigid. When flexed, they quickly return to their original shape. I doubt we'll see many problems with warped discs at competition.

[rcmolloy]

I could definitely see shooting for the highest goal being pretty darn difficult to dial in after extensive testing but because of the obvious height differences and dimensions, I could totally see it occurring in the middle goals. Also, the window to shoot in this year is varied dimensions per height and not an exact circle just placed at different heights.

[Djur]

Originally Posted by rcmolloy

I could definitely see shooting for the highest goal being pretty darn difficult to dial in after extensive testing but because of the obvious height differences and dimensions, I could totally see it occurring in the middle goals. Also, the window to shoot in this year is varied dimensions per height and not an exact circle just placed at different heights.

The high goal is only a few inches higher than the 2 pointers, but it's only 12 inches high as opposed to 21 for the middle goals -- so if you shoot at the high goal from the feeder station, you need to have at most a 5-6 inch height variation at a range of 50 feet -- and height of 114 inches -- to be able to score every disc from the feeder station.

[Doug G]

We would love a full court shooter on our alliance, if they miss a bunch of shots, we could pick them up in the auto zone and score them in the high goal! Saves us time going back to the feeder station.