Week 1 Analysis

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

What kind of intake does team 148 have?

Roller

[Jarren Harkema]

Rookie here, so my observations might not be as keen as some. Our team went down to the Southfield tournament in Michigan as spectators. A few major things stuck out to me.

If you can't shoot the ball accurately in auto, don't even bother trying. It is painful to watch 3 robots miss in succession, and have to watch them for the first 30 seconds of teleop just trying to grab the balls and get them to a goal so they can start cycles. If you don't shoot at all, don't even start with a ball.

If you miss a high shot, don't waste your time trying again, shove it in the low goal and move on. I saw many teams attempt 3-4 times before humbling themselves and pushing the ball into the low goal. I was surprised at how inaccurate the throwing mechanisms were.

If you have to park to shoot, you will get pushed. As soon as a robot begins lining up, an opposing robot is right in its way, shoving, pushing, doing anything to mess up your shot. Teams that can shoot while moving have the best luck at avoiding defense. In addition to this, having to lower an intake arm, or the like, in order to shoot, slows you down.

Human Players, if a robot has the ability to catch from you, please toss the ball into the robot rather than onto the field.

Finally, I was surprised at the number of teams who didn't have a secure hold on the ball. Simply spinning or getting rammed from the side was enough to dislodge the ball. This was very apparent during lining up for shots.

Pickup systems, whether it be roller bars or el toro, aren't created equal. They have to be done right to be effective.

That's my observations, I hope I didn't come across as too condescending. I'm sure I will eat some of my own words as I'm coaching our drive team next weekend.

[Rynocorn]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Roller

Love it. Also I think that the major advantage 842 has over a roller intake is that they can set the ball down for assists and carry the ball around switch greater security (that's how it seems to me). Though they cannot roll it out, it should be easy for the pincers to fit underneath a roller intake making a pass a little easier and secure.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by Rynocorn

Love it. Also I think that the major advantage 842 has over a roller intake is that they can set the ball down for assists and carry the ball around switch greater security (that's how it seems to me). Though they cannot roll it out, it should be easy for the pincers to fit underneath a roller intake making a pass a little easier and secure.

There is no functionality difference in this area. Both systems can set the ball on the ground quite reliably, quickly, and easily.

You do run into an issue when a pincher hands off to another pincher. The recipient needs to wait for the passer to back away, or else the claws can get tangled (which I saw in one match at Alamo, not sure the number, though). It's either that, or leaving the ball open on the ground.

[JosephC]

A few things.

#1: At Centerline, many teams came to us saying our field balls were over inflated. After spending lunch measuring every balls three times, they came out to ~25" diameter. There seems to be a discrepancy between the field balls and teams balls, but they are the right size, atleast at centerline.

#2: There needs to be a ramp of some sort on the overhang above the drivers. I can't tell you how many times the ball got stuck up there, and without having a pole of some sort to get it down, Field Reset has to run in there and dislodge it with their hands, completely disrupting the drivers.

#3: What 1023 and 1718 said was completely true. I saw so many penalties that made no sense I was amazed. Tech Fouls either need to be lower points, or the system needs an overhaul to help protect the offensive robots. This year seems to be going in the complete opposite way that past years have been. Instead of protecting scorers for an excited match, defensive robots are aloud to go ham with very few repercussions. This has nothing to do with the proficiency of refs but everything to do with them having way too much on their plate to do.

[cadandcookies]

Main observation:
The game is significantly different than anyone's predictions I heard before this week.

As almost everyone else mentioned, this is a ridiculously penalty heavy game, and I think that's hurting more than a little bit.

I sincerely hope we see a Tuesday rule update that addresses the concerns brought up in this thread.

[Anupam Goli]

Man, I could go to town on what happened at Palmetto

This has to be the worst scouting I've ever seen. EVER. You can't trust the FIRST rankings AT ALL this year. Teams like 4451 got absolutely awful schedules, but were the best assisting bot out on the field, and one of the most consistent low and high goal scorers. They weren't picked at all. I'll be honest, our robot was having a lot of issues, I don't think we (1648) deserved to be picked at all, but team 3571, coached by a certain world championship winning drive coach, and one of the best trussers and best intakes in the field, was also left out of eliminations. We saw teams in elims that had no business being there, there were teams that didn't understand game rules in elims here. Defense may win a lot of matches, but when teams as good as 4451, 3571, and 4452 get overlooked because the FIRST rankings show they were on weak alliances all day, there is a problem. I seriously hope 3571 gets polled in FRC Top 25, that's how good I felt their intake and shots were throughout the day.

I have had enough of week 1 ref issues now. Last year, we lost in quarterfinals because of a ref not calling a pyramid contact, but calling a human player stepping behind the line. I swallowed that one up as having scouting mistakes and having a weaker robot and lucky schedule. This time, I was absolutely livid after watching many matches end in high scores because of unnecessary tech foul calls. When my human player is in no immediate danger of hitting a robot, and barely extends over that yellow tape for a fraction of a second to in bound the ball, I don't think G40 should apply to that. We racked up 150 foul points in a match by ourselves because this ref was too focused on watching millimeter portrustions of hands over the yellow tape*. FIRST, PLEASE FIX THIS! THESE TECH FOULS ARE RIDICULOUS AND I ASSURE YOU AREN'T PREVENTING ANY DANGEROUS SITUATIONS.


I'm glad we don't compete again until week 5, I think it's going to take me a couple of weeks to calm down and refocus on how to improve.

*1024 and 5130, we apologize for incurring so many foul points and making a winnable match into a loss.

[Woolly]

Here's my opinion:

Penalties:
G40's penalty should be reduced if the alliance at fault gained no advantage by running afoul of it.
G12 may need to be reworked to become like the pinning rule, to where you can posses the opponents ball for five seconds if the ball was acquired without the use of an active mechanism on the robot, but you must get X distance away from their ball before you can attempt to posses it again. That way if the opposing human player drops their ball in your robot you don't get the "death penalty" for it. EDIT: Also, the robot may not distance itself from the ball by launching it via a mechanism on the robot.

Defense:
Defense is always part of the game, but I doubt this is quite what the GDC envisioned when they made a game all about the concept of assists. Pushing matches tend to be the least damaging type of effective defense played, and what they tend to break (transmissions, motors, wheels) are more readily replaceable than all the frame bends and tweaks that usually result from these high speed ramming maneuvers I've seen. Usually once the frame is bent, the robot is never quite right again.

tl;dr push and bump, don't ram.

Though, would be interesting to put shock watches on some of these robots, and see how hard some of these hits are.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I said that relatively, it's a very minor issue. It's not something we encountered because we dont have a design dependent on it. However, we had a strategy depending on at least one other robot functioning in the match. Apparently I overestimated...

I can't remember or care what rank we wound up in Alamo, but I saw a lot going on in Alamo Week 1 from behind the glass. There were a lot of... interesting things happening, and this is coming from someone who was also behind the glass at a Week 1 event in NJ in 2010.

It's not worth a lot of time for me to reiterate thoughts from either the people at events or the peanut gallery watching online, but I'll add in Alamo-specific observations to some that may not be specific to the venue.

Game observations:
The adage "you're only as strong as your weakest partner": multiply the truth of that by a thousand this year. I came into the evnet trying to execute a solid strategy with teams, only to get burned by robots that did not function, drivers that didn't understand the game, and human players that DEFINITELY DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE GAME. I had to pull my human player off of the "islands" because I couldn't trust other human players to know how to look for the ball. We lost two matches because of this. If you have to pull out the rulebook and walk through with people, do it.

I don't know if this is the way things operate in the Lone Star State or will be indicative of the rest of competition, but there is no visible top 25% at events. Only 5 robots could earnestly play the game alone by themselves and win, while mid-top robots were thrown into a bind where they have to carry harder than usual.

If you want a visual representation of what kind of defense we're seeing in Aerial Assist, look here. That is a welded piece of 2x1, .125 in thick tubing, behind bumpers, totally broken. It's astounding. The "heavy defense" or what it should actually be called "pinning without fouls" will be prevalent as long as the game official setup is the way it is.

On the topic of Game Management Systems, Friday at Alamo had a few inbounders have grief with Tech Fouls. What isn't being considered are how some referees, at least on Friday, were not moving tablets out of the inbounder zone. It's hard to get a good pass off that is legal and controllable with that in the way, unless I tell my human player to throw the ball into the tablet and wait for a glare from a referee.

EDIT: In addition, the time wasted waiting for thigs to light up can be... enraging... in a high stress situation. In a match with 118, we had to wait 3 seconds with them at the goal for the assit counts to light up properly, then another 5 to light the pedestal. Things like that are killing the flow of matches and taking control of the game out of the hands of teams and into an inefficient managment computer (not FMS, but GMS).

This game is playing mostly as expected: qualification play is decidedly painful to witness, but eliminations can be the best they have to offer. The only caveat is that for a game that relies on live scoring more than any other event I can think of, getting the live score to reflect reality is as much of a given as 4 working robots in a given qualification match.

This game has potential, but they need to make a few administrative changes and wait hope that we're seeign Week 1 jitters and not season-long issues.

I completely agree with everything here. The coordination required to play this game is insanely high, and so many teams seem to not have gone through the rules. In addition, the field problems and other issues (not having a working hot goal for quite some time) only compound the frustration. However, I do think things will get straightened out soon.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

I completely agree with everything here. The coordination required to play this game is insanely high, and so many teams seem to not have gone through the rules. In addition, the field problems and other issues (not having a working hot goal for quite some time) only compound the frustration. However, I do think things will get straightened out soon.

I know an issue I had to personally deal with were human players and drive teams not knowing the rules. Since we were running a skeleton crew I was running back and forth and didn't get to have super-long alliance meetings. Aside from finals, I never had time to watch a match you guys played in. Do you know how you handled human players who didn't know rules?

[RyanShoff]

Originally Posted by Woolly

Usually once the frame is bent, the robot is never quite right again.

push and bump, don't ram

We are going to have to replace our frame at Wisconsin. Practically everything is bend. It is shot. We are going to have to pull the swerve modules, shooter, and electronics board, and transfer everything to a new frame. But don't worry, we'll be back for more fun.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I know an issue I had to personally deal with were human players and drive teams not knowing the rules. Since we were running a skeleton crew I was running back and forth and didn't get to have super-long alliance meetings. Aside from finals, I never had time to watch a match you guys played in. Do you know how you handled human players who didn't know rules?

We took quite a bit of time to make sure our alliance's human players knew the rules, especially about the safety zone, and taught them how to load our robot and vice versa. We were fortunate to have pretty great alliance partners throughout the regional, however, when we did have a human player who had violated rules in the past according to scouting, we usually would try to get our human player to fill the role. The main thing though was reinforcing the safety zone rule over and over again before each match. We probably iterated it maybe 6 times before each match.

[Laaba 80]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

When my human player is in no immediate danger of hitting a robot, and barely extends over that yellow tape for a fraction of a second to in bound the ball, I don't think G40 should apply to that. We racked up 150 foul points in a match by ourselves because this ref was too focused on watching millimeter portrustions of hands over the yellow tape

Have you ever heard the phrase "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." The rules are very clear; you can't reach past the yellow line. I don't understand how you can blame the refs for receiving the same penalty three times in one match.

[JosephC]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

Have you ever heard the phrase "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." The rules are very clear; you can't reach past the yellow line. I don't understand how you can blame the refs for receiving the same penalty three times in one match.

The refs don't tell you when you do it. If your a HP feeding balls to your robot and you don't think you're doing anything wrong, why would you change what you're doing?

[JTEarley]

Originally Posted by JosephC

The refs don't tell you when you do it. If your a HP feeding balls to your robot and you don't think you're doing anything wrong, why would you change what you're doing?

As a HP, I agree with this. I don't necessarily think that the rule should be changed, because it is written out very clearly, but I think that then this tech foul is called, the ref should make the HP aware of it. Although i was always aware and cautious, It was called on me once at the Alamo regional, and I had to ask my coach when it happened after the match was over