"The Little Things" - Helpful hints for all

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by MichaelBick

What if they didn't have the human feeding stations this year. Intakes would have been pretty important then. The point is that you cannot make a generalization about a manipulator because it is totally game dependent.

Then it would have been a much different game.


I'll make several generalizations about next year right now (and I have no more knowledge of the game than you do at this point).

If there are multiple games pieces 95% of the teams that attempt to manipulate both will fail at both.


If there is an option to human load or ground load, of the teams that choose to ground load upwards of 50% would be MORE effective had they chosen to optimize human load and their manipulator.

The overwhelming majority of ground pickup systems will work great in the shop but are utterly ineffective while being controlled from 60' away. The prediction? Most of these teams will waste over 1 minute of the match attempting to pick up an element in most of their matches.

Why can I make these bets? Because I'm betting against the teams not the game. The simple fact is in 2012 I saw more teams focus on picking up a ball from the floor for 1.5 minutes in a match... But their shooter was useless. They would have been better off optimizing a human load only approach. It's all allocation of resources.