Corner Climbing, The best strategy of 2013?

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by nikeairmancurry

For climbing, I do not believe there was a "best" strategy.

It might be hard to define best, but I think that given the constraints, I think the jury is in: 30 pt. climbers weren't worth it. When 1114 can't make it work reliably it's fair to say that most teams would be better off with a different strategy.

If you had unlimited time and resources to build the ultimate robot to play ultimate ascent, I think you would end up with a corner climber. Specifically, you would get one that did a passive, after the buzzer 30-pt climb.

[nikeairmancurry]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Similarly, 254 & 1986 (and us) gave up dumping the colored discs while 1114 & 67 did.

This year was really about trade offs and was a strategists dream with so many different aspects of the game to play. Its really hard to say what the best strategy was.

I felt floor-up was highly more valuable then the colored disks... There were also face climbers who could dump.

Originally Posted by SoftwareBug2.0

It might be hard to define best, but I think that given the constraints, I think the jury is in: 30 pt. climbers weren't worth it. When 1114 can't make it work reliably it's fair to say that most teams would be better off with a different strategy.

If you had unlimited time and resources to build the ultimate robot to play ultimate ascent, I think you would end up with a corner climber. Specifically, you would get one that did a passive, after the buzzer 30-pt climb.

I looked at it more of method of climbing, than to climb or not to climb..

[Wayne TenBrink]

I could almost write a book on this subject. We had a fairly fast (under 30 seconds including alignment) corner climber with the ability to dump colored discs. It wasn't the best climber out there, but we got it to work fairly well. It took over our lives most of the season and it dominated our strategy and fate. Was corner climbing the best strategy of 2013? I would say no. Was it the best strategy for us? I still don't know, but I am glad we did it. It was what I call a "white knuckle ride" all season.

Our robot did a lot of things OK, but wasn't outstanding at any of them. We had a floor pickup arm that let us run a 5 shot autonomous, but generally it was faster for us to run cycles than collect from the floor. We could run 4 cycles in a match if we didn't plan on a climb & dump. In addition to the corner climber, we could do a "quick 10" hang from the low bar.

We only won once this year. That was Week 1 at Traverse City when we only had a 3-shot auton, never did more than 3 cycles, and never climbed - just hung for 10. Our OPR was around 40 - our lowest event all season, but we still won. Climbing was not a factor. General lesson: If you show up on Week 1 with a functional robot and a drive team that has had some practice, you can do well.

Our second event was West Michigan on Week 4. By then, our climber was ready to try in "battle". We had also improved on some other "lessons learned" from Week 1. The climber set back our overall performance. Since we hadn't used it in a match before, we would quit cycling and allow ourselves at least a full minute at the pyramid for alignment and climbing. If we wanted to carry discs, we needed to quit cycling even earlier in order to get them. Our best match was 5 shots in auton, 2 cycles, and a climb & dump (104 points). That was the exception, and we spent a lot of time & energy trying to repeat it. What usually happened was that our opponents would see us collecting colored discs, then swarm all over us until we didn't have enough time to climb. We managed to make it to the finals, but it wasn't because of our climber.

Our third event was MSC. By then we were getting desparate to make the climb & dump a strategic and visible success. We got off to a lousy start, going 1-3 in our first four matches, despite improvements that cut our alignment time and sped up our climb. We were almost ready to go straight from autonomous to loading colored discs and climbing in order to demonstrate a consistently successful climb & dump, when we realized that the dump had become our worst enemy. It was an all-or-nothing option, and in order to achieve the "all" we were giving up more than we stood to gain. We quit trying to dump, and didn't even worry so much about reaching the 30 point climb. We went back to trying four cycles and then climbed as high as we could in the time we had left. Most of the defense went away. We were productive for the whole match. Our max scoring potential for a match was 108 (30 auton, 48 teleop, 30 climb). We never quite achieved that, but our average scoring was in the mid 80's for most of Friday and Saturday. We won our last 9 qual matches. We had a good run through eliminations, but lost the semi's in 3 matches. Partly because of a shooter motor failure, but mostly because we just got beat by the superior alliance of 2054, 67, and 2337. By that time, the climber was showing signs of wear and tear.

At Championship, we "struggled" (stunk) in quals due to shooter and drive train issues. The climber was working, and was one of the reasons we got picked by 4814 & 67 for elims. Our job was to shoot 5 in auton, create a shooting lane for 67's FCS, then climb. The strategy worked well enough to get us three matches into the Curie finals.

In our case, the climber was the difference between a decent season as an average cycler in a crowd of better cyclers, and a great season (in our opinion) where we had the ability to do great things when it all worked. It was stressful, but exciting. We have lots of vivid memories, but they aren't all about the high points. The design of our climber had a lot more mentor content than any other system on the robot (or any other robot we have built). I suspect that it true of many teams that climbed this year, and I am not sure that's a great thing. Using it put a lot of stress on the drivers - especially the one that operated the climber. There has never been a game where a simple miscue could so easily result in a season-ending catastrophy. We wanted to have a student field coach this year, but I held that role for myself until we we were having good climbing success. If our season was going to end in a crash, I wanted it to happen on MY watch, after I told the drivers to go for it, when I gave them the go-ahead to proceed from one level to the next. I wasn't confident early on, and I wasn't going to put that responsibility on the students. We never did have a student field coach. That wasn't such a great thing, either.

From what I observed, it sounds like almost every climbing team experienced failures at critical moments. In my opinion, the points for climbing to level 2 & 3 weren't proportional to the work and risk it took to accomplish it. I don't think a single robot on Einstein got there mainly because of their ability to climb. By that standard, climbing (corner or wherever) was definitely not the best strategy of 2013.

PS: We took two famous falls this year. Fortunately, neither ended our season.
(1) MSC Q101 where we won 247-70. We were paired with 33 and 67, and could have set the season-high score had we completed our climb and dump instead of falling from the 20 point level. We only contributed 30 of the 247.
(2) Curie Final match #1 where we won 186-0. We were at the 30 point level with a bad grip. When 67 reached the top, they hit the crown of the pyramid hard enough to knock us loose. The referees blamed 862 for knocking us off, and their alliance got red-carded.
In both cases, we were able to climb in our next match, but our poor robot is suffering.