What did we learn from week 2 of the 2013 season?

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by sdcantrell56

O I just assumed floor pickup was part of the equation. Why not go for it all.

Tried to long too do it. Just wasn't possible. That's most of the reason why we were not ready for competition at Waterford.

Unicorn bot would also have to be 60" tall and capable of shrinking to under 30" to go under the pyramid as well.

Way to hard to do...

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by iVanDuzer

There were no Canadian teams on Einstein in 2009. 188 came the closest as Curie finalists, but they lost to 217 + 68 + 247.

My mistake. Misread this page, which includes 188 in the fake qualification matches played on Einstein: http://www2.usfirst.org/2009comp/eve...chresults.html

[DanielCH]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I remember designing that robot. It was twice as heavy as allowed, twice as big, and used about 20 motors.

Of course, Robonauts pulled it off.... but they're the robonauts. (Can they put the colored discs in yet?)

Unless I'm mistaken, the 30 point climb has been pulled from 118.

[Kusha]

Originally Posted by DanielCH

Unless I'm mistaken, the 30 point climb has been pulled from 118.

I saw that they didn't climb during Lone Star, does anyone know why?

[JB987]

Word is they had a significant weight problem...maybe someone should ask them?

[jee7s]

Originally Posted by Kusha

I saw that they didn't climb during Lone Star, does anyone know why?

118 did climb at Lone Star during eliminations, for 10 points. One of the semi-final (I think) matches had all three of us off the ground when the buzzer sounded.

Too bad I can't dig up a picture. I wish my memory was better, but the past 10 days have been pretty busy for 2789.

[JoeyPass]

This was an excellent learning experience for everyone. It was great to see teams innovate on the fly and come up with creative solutions with what limited time and materials they had. This is exactly what FIRST is all about. Don't ever give up, keep on innovating, root for the underdog because you never know what new ideas they will try.

For us as a team, this was a gift. We knew that it would eventually happen though we did not know what form it would take. This allowed us to try different counter strategies and it made for some exciting matches. Sincerely, from team 2169, thank you to all of the teams that forced us to get better. We hope to proudly represent Minnesota at the World Championships.

[Kusha]

Originally Posted by jee7s

118 did climb at Lone Star during eliminations, for 10 points. One of the semi-final (I think) matches had all three of us off the ground when the buzzer sounded.

Too bad I can't dig up a picture. I wish my memory was better, but the past 10 days have been pretty busy for 2789.

Sorry maybe I should have clarified, I saw them hang for 10, but not for 30.

[Justin Ridley]

Originally Posted by Kusha

I saw that they didn't climb during Lone Star, does anyone know why?

Our 30 point climb did not yet meet our design requirements for speed. It takes us 30-45 seconds to line up to the pyramid and get to the top. After seeing how the game was played week 1, and knowing we could add a simple 10 point buzzer hang, those 45 seconds were not worth the 20 extra points (not to mention the risk of a fall). We were right on the limit for weight, so removing the climbing system allowed us to put weight into some other systems and make the rest of the robot better.

We plan to continue working on the climb in an effort to get it quick enough that it's worthwhile for future competitions. It wasn't an easy decision to remove an entire system like this, although after last year we're starting to get used to it.

[MisterG]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

2169 should have been expecting this. This isn't an engineering fair and demonstration, it's FRC. Defense is part of the game. You can't expect a good FRC team to just sit there and get clobbered by a full-court shooter; they're going to engineer a solution to the problem. As long as those teams weren't breaking any rules, I don't see how their actions are possibly ungracious.

This!

Besides, since they (2169, 525, 3061) :

• were *crowned* tournament champions
• went undefeated in elims *and*
• scored in the triple digits in all elim matches (high score 147)

I guess they were not overly upset by improvised blockers.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

Only if it also had floor pickup and a 7 disc auton.

*9

[DsRandhawa3244]

Originally Posted by MisterG

This!

Besides, since they (2169, 525, 3061) :

• were *crowned* tournament champions
• went undefeated in elims *and*
• scored in the triple digits in all elim matches (high score 147)

I guess they were not overly upset by improvised blockers.

Oh, not at all. They had a very solid anti-defense against our alliance in the finals. I was one of the drivers and they almost entirely shut us down(We were the defensive bot in the alliance). We had played against a team earlier in finals that also full court shot, but they didn't play a strong anti-defense like KingTec's alliance did.

[meibnotu]

Originally Posted by GBK

Don't count out those full court shooters just yet. Yesterday at Waterford we saw one alliance with two short full court shooters, both very good teams. Had they both been dialed in, good luck defending both of them. There was also an alliance with a tall full court shooter, when they were protected by their partner, there was not way of stopping them. The lack of protection allowed for a very powerful alliance to pull out the win.

Watch out for 1718

Definitely agree with this statement! Team 4080 is a full court shooter and was challenged by modifications made in a time out during finals at Peachtree Regionals, but if your alliance, like ours, was able to defend against them you can be successful and move on to championships like us. We were able to put up 3 digits. Our high score being 151. All this being said you can't underestimate defense AT ALL especially against tall robots.

[mman1506]

Defence is very important.
We were able to make the elims (4th seed) with a single cim kitbot without any working functions at GTRE. We felt horrible as pretty much every robot there was better than ours.

With how few Frisbee that are on the ground a good defence was more important than a shooter sometimes.

It was also interesting to see 1114 choose a 30 point climber vs. a pickup

[NXTGeek]

From San Diego, I learned how every full-court shooter has the potential to be blocked, and my guess is that towards the closing regionals defense will be very good at it, rendering full-courts disabled.

Autonomous is super important, as seen by 987's pixie dust intake and any 7 disk autonomous put together.

Also, 30pt climbs are overrated. It takes precise maneuverability to line up correctly to the corner, and falling off and crushing an important subsystem (148) is just too risky for only 30 points. Without 3Day and the fact that frisbees are simply easier to shoot accurately, 30 points makes sense. However, that is not how this game has developed. Hopefully FIRST will raise the point value for championships.