Teams breaking the game

[dm224a]

Dear Firsters, I'm wondering what you guys think are the best examples of teams that have broken the competitions over the years. This means teams that have figured out the game so well that they are almost impossible to beat, like what happened in 2002 with team 71.

[EricH]

469 in 2010 is a pretty solid example. It took some lucky breaks for their opponents on Einstein to beat them.

[cmrnpizzo14]

469 in 2010 fulfills this perfectly even though they lost on Einstein. They had a chokehold strategy that was almost impossible to outscore.

[F22Rapture]

Any details/videos/pictures of 469's robot?

Nobody ever gives specifics in these discussions...

[EricH]

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

Any details/videos/pictures of 469's robot?

Nobody ever gives specifics in these discussions...

It caught soccer balls after they dropped off the return rails and then routed them down channels to the goals. They could switch which goal the balls were going towards, just about at will.

This was after wedging themselves into the tunnel and locking to the tower--and kicking a couple of balls into the goals themselves to start the cycle.

If they had a sweeper and a striker on their alliance, they were just about unbeatable.

[John Sabath]

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

Any details/videos/pictures of 469's robot?

Nobody ever gives specifics in these discussions...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TgjyRqrobc

[ratdude747]

179 in 2012. Shame it wasn't used more often.

Also, had it been deemed legal, 118's orginal bridge lift in 2012.

And any direct-drive minibot from 2011.

[Steven Donow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TgjyRqrobc
Here's a video of 469

And here's 71 in 2002, they're the robot that immediately contacts the goals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKvva_ZCHw

[cmrnpizzo14]

Sorry for that. If you are familiar with the 2010 game, you will remember that there was a ball return that passed over the alliance wall to the center of the field. Once an alliance scored a ball in the goal, that same alliance gained control of it and had to pass it quickly through the ball return.

469 would score 2 balls in auton and then drive to the center of the field where the ball return emptied and park there for the rest of the match. They wedged themselves under the tunnel and I believe applied some sort of brake and then allowed the balls to fall into their robot and then it would roll down a slide on their robot and redirect off of the colored bumps that separated field zones. The trig was worked out so that that redirection would roll the balls into the goals. The team would then put them into the ball return and they would fall back into the robot..... do you see where this is going?

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2010cur_qm100

Ignore that the match is 6v0, that is an entirely different discussion......

[aditya29]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

And here's 71 in 2002, they're the robot that immediately contacts the goals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKvva_ZCHw

Could someone give a quick summary of the objectives of the 2002 game, for those of us not familiar with it? I'm assuming it was worth more to move the goals into one of the specific zones, as opposed to trying to score the balls? Very cool design/strategy from what it looks like; not letting the starting configuration rules limit an ingenious design.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by aditya29

Could someone give a quick summary of the objectives of the 2002 game, for those of us not familiar with it? I'm assuming it was worth more to move the goals into one of the specific zones, as opposed to trying to score the balls? Very cool design/strategy from what it looks like; not letting the starting configuration rules limit an ingenious design.

Archived 2002 mini-manual.

In fewer words, robots scored points by being across the line closest to their driver station. Goals scored points for an alliance by being in the middle-ish zone on the opposite side of the field. Balls in goals scored for an alliance if the goal was on the opposite half of the field.

In short, if you could control all the goals, you could almost completely deny your opponent any scoring opportunities. The only scoring they'd have left is robots in home zones, which was weighted equal to a goal, so wasn't enough to win.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure 2002 was the last year you could completely deny scoring to your opponents and win. 2003 had an... interesting strategy where an alliance losing in the eliminations could completely descore their own points and deny the "winning" alliance points necessary to win the 2 of 3 matchup. Which was the last year we had to deal with that sort of game design fail.

[J_Miles]

Really, the only team to really "Break" a game has been 71 in 2002. Everyone pretty much agrees that Hammond broke that game. With that said, I think the GDC has done an extremely good job since then of ensuring that games can't be "broken." Yes, 469 in 2010 came as close to what you might call "breaking the game" as possible without doing so, but I would argue that their strategy - however difficult to defeat - was not unbeatable, and as such can't be accurately called a game breaking strategy.

What made 469's robot so special in 2010 was that they weren't a one-trick pony. Even if they had no balls cycling, their robot was so well designed that they could still outplay probably a vast majority of teams conventionally. No, they weren't in the same conversation as teams like 67 or 1114 in terms of pure ability, but they could certainly hold their own until they got their cycles going. And obviously given what happened on Einstein in 2010, they certainly weren't unbeatable - so, given all of that I don't know that any robot besides Beatty's 2002 machine can be called "game-breaking." And I'm sure that the GDC will see to it that it stays that way.

That said, I think that 469's strategy in 2010 was one of the most unique and powerful strategies I've ever seen employed in an FRC game, but certainly there have been more and will continue to be more. That's what makes FRC so amazing!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by J_Miles

Really, the only team to really "Break" a game has been 71 in 2002.

I'm hoping some old-timers show up to regale us with stories of some of the pre-2001 games. I swear I've heard a story of a game breaking robot in 1995 that could score an unbeatable number of points once they got their hands on a ball by cycling it round and round one of the poles of the field goal.

[Zach Purser]

Team 365 had a similar strategy to team 71 for that 2002 game. They had two massive arms that grabbed the outside goals and rubber pad they would put on the floor as a brake. A difference from 71 is that the arms remained rigid after contacting the outside goals. They were rolling over the competition until our match. During autonomous we sent two robots at the same outside goal, wrenched them around and dislodged the goal before they could set their brake. With the other outside goal still attached they were too out of balance to drive anywhere. So I guess we broke the robot that broke the game :-)

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'm hoping some old-timers show up to regale us with stories of some of the pre-2001 games. I swear I've heard a story of a game breaking robot in 1995 that could score an unbeatable number of points once they got their hands on a ball by cycling it round and round one of the poles of the field goal.

I've heard of another game-breaker, this one from 1997. Sorry, no pictures that I know about (though I'm sure Andy Grady or the TechnoKats will be able to dig some up eventually), but this one is one of the few machines that directly created a rule. 71 (yes, those guys again) would stack a bunch of tubes on a part of their robot and put it on top of the scoring structure, then detach it and score some more with the rest. To this day, mechanisms cannot be intentionally detached from robots without a penalty.