Where are you going to hang?

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Jared341

No, he's not saying that. What he's saying is that a team with limited resources can choose to do only the pyramid + 5 pointers and be a valuable contributor to an alliance.

Let's say that is literally all that bot does - no auton, no pickup, no teleop scoring, most basic drive train possible. Just a basket for colored disks and a hanging mechanism that has ~90 seconds to climb the pyramid. If that bot works correctly, it is worth 50 points per match.

I can guarantee you that the median team OPR this year will be well below 50. It will be well below 30 for that matter. Any 30 point climber is well above the "Minimum Competitive Concept" for 2013.

There's a difference between what he is saying and what you're saying. He starts with 5 discs scored in autonomous, you don't.

I think focusing on climbing a dumping is a perfectly sound strategy, as is focusing on shooting and picking up disks. Doing a robot that thefro526 described in post #11 combines those two into one superbot that can do everything.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

There's a difference between what he is saying and what you're saying. He starts with 5 discs scored in autonomous, you don't.

I think focusing on climbing a dumping is a perfectly sound strategy, as is focusing on shooting and picking up disks. Doing a robot that thefro526 described in post #11 combines those two into one superbot that can do everything.

Jared has the advantage of knowing how I think, so to him, what he said and what I said, are the same thing.

Without spilling the beans on EXACTLY how to do what I described in post 11, imagine the following.

A Kit Bot, perhaps 32"L x 26"W or somewhere about there, with a single jointed arm. This single jointed arm has a sort of 'bucket' on the end of it that functions exactly like a spatula would when cooking a omelette or a pancake. Let's say this bucket can hold some amount of discs in a lower compartment greater than two. This arm with said bucket is powered by a CIM motor or two and is very light weight. If you were to move this arm upwards at the highest speed possible with gearing and assistance designed to not draw more than 40A or so, what does it become?

A catapult.

Now lets go back to the spatula bucket... When you're cooking an omelette or pancakes, if you hit them just right with the spatula, the omelette or pancake stays still, while the spatula moves under.... So if you drive at two disks pre-placed on the field reasonably quickly, the spatula moves right under them.

Now you use you catapult again.

Since you've got a spatula bucket on the end of your arm, with more than one compartment, you have a place to load 4 colored disks in as well... From here, it's just about climbing.

So you add a mechanism that allows you to retract and hold position, since you can already 'reach' out and up on the pyramid....

I'm fairly sure that this is no super robot.

Efficient analysis of the real challenge is the key to success with limited resources.

Edit-----

I went back and reread the posts from #12-#16 and wanted to add something:

I am more or less trying to show that an ascent to Zone 3 is not an unreasonable task to expect to be done, especially if you take in to consideration that some teams may decide to spend the better portion of the match doing so. I took this idea one step further in an attempt to validate this school of thought, showing that a robot that had been based around an ascent to zone three can actually be an upper mid tier robot with some creative thinking and a little bit of extra work.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the arms race, the quest to figure out what the Captain of the world champion alliance is going to do, that we forget about what their second pick will do, the 24th team in the draft of that division who is often the robot that can either push an alliance to the top, or drag it to the very bottom. The majority of the discussion I have seen so far focuses on hanging quickly, purely at the end game. Odds are, the captain of the world champion alliance will do this, much in the same way that champions of the past, but it isn't a requirement for every team to be successful at a reasonably high level.

I just hope some team out there sees what I've said and it 'clicks'. Odds are, if you focus on the Zone 3 ascent, and are $@#$@#$@#$@# good at it, you'll be ahead of more than half of the pack. If you can do the ascent and a few tricks while on the way up, you'll definitely be a force wherever you go - might not win all of the matches, but I can assure you that many of those that you win could not have been won without you.

[wesbass23]

To those of you (2 people as of now) who say you will not even attempt climbing. Why not?

[$wimmer3138]

Originally Posted by wesbass23

To those of you (2 people as of now) who say you will not even attempt climbing. Why not?

One of those votes comes from 2056... very interesting. I'm extremely excited to see what they come up with this year.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by thetimemachine

Same for us...if you can get from 1 to 2 what is stopping you from getting from 2 to 3?

Right now? That darn pyramid goal above the third rung. Your climbing mechanism can only stick up 7"-8" above a rung. Any more than that, and you run into the bottom of the pyramid goal.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by thefro526

Now lets go back to the spatula bucket... When you're cooking an omelette or pancakes, if you hit them just right with the spatula, the omelette or pancake stays still, while the spatula moves under.... So if you drive at two disks pre-placed on the field reasonably quickly, the spatula moves right under them.

My brain understands what you're saying, but now my heart wants a pancake making robot.

If I was a rookie or a low resource team, I would seriously consider looking at drawing parallels between the last two endgames and this year's endgame. While no game has involved throwing frisbees before, there are interesting, simple relations anyone with background in FRC history could draw together. If you also keep in mind the common tendency to always overestimate score and your team's ability, year after year, even with the ever-present benefit of hindsight, you may find yourself on the path to an alternative approach to the game.

I'm not saying some teams should completely disregard any kind of floor intake or launching mechanisms in order to build the most reliable 30point climber with an option for some simple frisbee dump-only system, but to say it's something not even worth considering would be shortchanging the brainstorming process, something that can be made evident later on.

[midway78224]

We plan to hang from level one and work our way up to level 3 depending on time.

[nuggetsyl]

Low and to the left.

[waialua359]

Its interesting and quite surprising to see the majority say 30 point hang.
One things for sure........you'll see teams go to the feeder station, grab 4 frisbees, and shoot them for 12 points faster than a team takes to go from levels 2-3 on the hang bonus.

[Jakester9999]

This is very interesting. If they do take the time to climb to the 30 point rung for the whole match, that leaves the match to be a 2 on 3 competiton.... One less robot in the way on the field, but could possibly mean double teaming for defense....

[mrnoble]

I have a 10-ish year history with FIRST, and can't recall there ever being a robot in competition that was intentionally immobile on the floor. This may be the year, as it seems a very viable approach to the game to simply hang for 30.

I agree with the previous poster who said that teams usually overestimate how many points will win a match in a regional. Yes, there are always teams that have elegant, simple, effective machines that do almost everything well, and they will show up this year. Their matches will be blowouts. But since, at most regionals, they comprise about 2-5 teams, most of the other matches will be low scoring, and will be decided by robots that perform consistently. I like the idea that a robot with a backhoe bucket and no shooter could score 15 points in zone one by scooping up all the missed shots and dumping them. I like that a 10 or 30 point hang could mean a win, from a bot that does little else.

This could be a great year, in my opinion.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

I have a 10-ish year history with FIRST, and can't recall there ever being a robot in competition that was intentionally immobile on the floor. This may be the year, as it seems a very viable approach to the game to simply hang for 30.

I agree with the previous poster who said that teams usually overestimate how many points will win a match in a regional. Yes, there are always teams that have elegant, simple, effective machines that do almost everything well, and they will show up this year. Their matches will be blowouts. But since, at most regionals, they comprise about 2-5 teams, most of the other matches will be low scoring, and will be decided by robots that perform consistently. I like the idea that a robot with a backhoe bucket and no shooter could score 15 points in zone one by scooping up all the missed shots and dumping them. I like that a 10 or 30 point hang could mean a win, from a bot that does little else.

This could be a great year, in my opinion.

Although our team's attempt wont be to build a robot that only focuses on the bonus points, I can definitely see picking one of those types of bots as alliance partners to strengthen an alliance................if they can do it every time.

[Mongai]

Climbing to the third level is the "distraction", our team has determined. We'll go for the first level but we'll work on an accurate autonomous shooter that will ultimately break our match ties in qualifications.

[sarah_storer]

Originally Posted by thefro526

Jared has the advantage of knowing how I think, so to him, what he said and what I said, are the same thing.

Without spilling the beans on EXACTLY how to do what I described in post 11, imagine the following.

A Kit Bot, perhaps 32"L x 26"W or somewhere about there, with a single jointed arm. This single jointed arm has a sort of 'bucket' on the end of it that functions exactly like a spatula would when cooking a omelette or a pancake. Let's say this bucket can hold some amount of discs in a lower compartment greater than two. This arm with said bucket is powered by a CIM motor or two and is very light weight. If you were to move this arm upwards at the highest speed possible with gearing and assistance designed to not draw more than 40A or so, what does it become?

A catapult.

Now lets go back to the spatula bucket... When you're cooking an omelette or pancakes, if you hit them just right with the spatula, the omelette or pancake stays still, while the spatula moves under.... So if you drive at two disks pre-placed on the field reasonably quickly, the spatula moves right under them.

Now you use you catapult again.

Since you've got a spatula bucket on the end of your arm, with more than one compartment, you have a place to load 4 colored disks in as well... From here, it's just about climbing.

So you add a mechanism that allows you to retract and hold position, since you can already 'reach' out and up on the pyramid....

I'm fairly sure that this is no super robot.

Efficient analysis of the real challenge is the key to success with limited resources.

Edit-----

I went back and reread the posts from #12-#16 and wanted to add something:

I am more or less trying to show that an ascent to Zone 3 is not an unreasonable task to expect to be done, especially if you take in to consideration that some teams may decide to spend the better portion of the match doing so. I took this idea one step further in an attempt to validate this school of thought, showing that a robot that had been based around an ascent to zone three can actually be an upper mid tier robot with some creative thinking and a little bit of extra work.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the arms race, the quest to figure out what the Captain of the world champion alliance is going to do, that we forget about what their second pick will do, the 24th team in the draft of that division who is often the robot that can either push an alliance to the top, or drag it to the very bottom. The majority of the discussion I have seen so far focuses on hanging quickly, purely at the end game. Odds are, the captain of the world champion alliance will do this, much in the same way that champions of the past, but it isn't a requirement for every team to be successful at a reasonably high level.

I just hope some team out there sees what I've said and it 'clicks'. Odds are, if you focus on the Zone 3 ascent, and are $@#$@#$@#$@# good at it, you'll be ahead of more than half of the pack. If you can do the ascent and a few tricks while on the way up, you'll definitely be a force wherever you go - might not win all of the matches, but I can assure you that many of those that you win could not have been won without you.

But aren't you allowed to climb the pyramid ONLY in the last 30 seconds of the match?

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Its interesting and quite surprising to see the majority say 30 point hang.

This poll should be re-posted on stop build day and we'll see if we get the same results

Originally Posted by thetimemachine

But aren't you allowed to climb the pyramid ONLY in the last 30 seconds of the match?

This is not the rule.