Week 1 Analysis

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Racer26

With BUMPERs nowadays though, you don't see nearly as much in the way of bent frames like you used to back in 03/04.

In 2001/2002, we (now-defunct 827) had a welded box steel frame, because you'd have been crazy not to!

[Blackphantom91]

Week 1 analysis from a CSA

1. This game is the roughest game I have ever been apart of. (The carnage that is imposed on robots is quite different than recent years of FRC).

2. Lots and lots of CRIO reboots due to impact. (check all your connections on Thursday and make sure they have slack,slack and are tightly in.) Tons of teams lost comms after a hit by one, two, or even three robots. Flakey connections will not cut it this year. It can be the difference between a loss or win quite literally because you are rebooting for at least 30 secs of the match.

3. If you get into a pushing match with 6 cims behind you may trip a breaker so be weary of that.

Robot/Game analysis.
1. Penalties need to be lessened and rules hopefully should be uniform from tournament to tournament.(Matches decided by penalties always taste bad.) The amount of discrepancy between tournaments is staggering this year, but fixable in the long run of weeks.

2. The refs have the hardest job in FRC this year. They have to take care of at least three different actions while trying to make sure that robots are not committing fouls. This is just too much on them this year. I hope to see this changed so that they can make the right calls. (aka more personnel to help)

3. I for the first time do not envy anyone playing in districts or 3 regionals this year. The amount of punishment I thought the robots took last year was incredible. At this point in the game the amount of hard hits and robots falling apart is way more than I would have ever imaged for only the first week of competition. Many teams play at least 2 or more events before championships I saw great teams fall apart in the final rounds of eliminations due to the nature of the game. If this state of play keeps up they may not have much left by State or even world championships.

4. The game forces even the best scorers to actively play defence between each transfer of the ball. This allows for an almost seamless transfer of control and play. That being said, this is where the majority of the problems start between congestion, guarding, penalties, and just straight up hard defence. After watching the shut down D that was played when 188 had a chance to to win by 610 was smart. It's easy to get stuck in the mode of score, score, score.

Something I love about this game when teams work together to pull a plan off. That takes a ton of moxie and coordination.

Question: how do your think they fix the pedistool problem? That one makes me the most uneasy.

TLR
All in all teams be safe out there. Do what you can to ensure your robot will survive this current game.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

In 2001/2002, we (now-defunct 827) had a welded box steel frame, because you'd have been crazy not to!

In 03, 1075s frame was 1.5" 80/20 type extrusion. We had 4" pool noodles covering 3 sides.

In 04, it was a TIG welded 1" box tube with 1/8" walls. In 04 at the Wonderland invitational, which we won (thanks 1241, 1114), we took a full speed frame to frame collision in auto that bent the frame by about 2" until it touched our wheel. A few minutes with a sawzall to remove the offending piece of frame (it happened to be part of our ball herder and not a necessary structural piece) and we were back in business.

[Zuelu562]

As a queuer, I didn't get to see ALL of the carnage and craziness that was going on, but boy did I sure hear about it. Talking to the GSDE refs at Lunch on Saturday, even they were saying they NEED 8 Refs (there are 6 including Head Ref), the additional 2 refs solely watching for penalties or scores, with the current team handling the other.

This game has so much potential when played at high levels if some things are just cleared up, like G40, the bar (whether fixed or left as is), among others.

[Wenbin Li]

Week One competitions was fun but I have a couple questions on rule?
Are G28 and G29 going to be enforce better at Week two competitions?
Is there anyway to challenge any calls right after a match?
Are refs going to step up their fouls?
Battle-bots?

Comments; FRC 4954 have broke 2 pistons, a pick up system, and multiple barring. We were a shooter and multiple Week One robots that had fast drivetrains and the uncompleted scorers play very physical defense on us. This feels like battle-bots.

[MisterJ]

Originally Posted by Akash Shah

During our time at our first competition, we broke several things such as very expensive pneumatic cylinders, pickup system, and bearings from other robots ramming into us and using there pickup as an attack

Thanks for choosing us as part of your alliance today. Our threesome put up a great fight and we were lucky to not suffer the kind of damages you guys did. Did it seem like our alliance was playing in the most physical elimination matches of the day? The semi-finals against 341 and 2590 were rough!

I know our team's not located too close to yours, but next time we're at a competition together and you need a hand, definitely let us know! I hope you can get that stuff repaired in the next few weeks. Your team and 5113 are going to have great rookie seasons! Best of luck at Clifton!

[Rohawk1]

Originally Posted by Wenbin Li

Week One competitions was fun but I have a couple questions on rule?
Is there anyway to challenge any calls right after a match?

There is a question box for any calls that coaches only can contest. The coach usually has to go there right after a match though. Knowing the rules is incredibly important.

[Wenbin Li]

Doing our competitions at Hatboro-Horsham, all defensive robots violated rules G28 and G29. Are the refs going to call that during the next competition. G29 says that robot alliances can not pin any robots for more than 5 seconds and "a robot is considered pinned until the ROBOTS have separated by at lest six feet". Also the pinning robot has to wait 3 seconds to pin again. A lot of scorers was pinned over 5 seconds and the pinner did not get out of the 6 six radius. G28 explains even though there is a part that a robot can bring out to 20 inches but that "thing" cannot damage a robot part that is inside the frame.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Rohawk1

There is a question box for any calls that coaches only can contest. The coach usually has to go there right after a match though. Knowing the rules is incredibly important.

Knowing rule T13 is important. The person in the question box must be a pre-college student, wearing a drive team badge -- not necessarily the coach. Definitely not the coach, if that person is not a pre-college student.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Rohawk1

There is a question box for any calls that coaches only can contest. The coach usually has to go there right after a match though. Knowing the rules is incredibly important.

Just to be clear, it has to be a pre-college student member of the team, not just any coach. However, the question box is there for a reason: referees want to make sure everyone has an understanding on the rules. I know the community is hoping for a sweeping update this week, but regardless, remember to work with game officials this season even moreso than in the past to make sure the game is being administered as cleanly and effectively as possible.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Rohawk1

There is a question box for any calls that coaches only can contest. The coach usually has to go there right after a match though. Knowing the rules is incredibly important.

This is incorrect. It does not have to be the coach, but it can be any PRE-COLLEGE/STUDENT team member, as long as they have a coach or driver badge

[team222badbrad]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

At the MAR events it looks like refs are pausing matches in the middle of teleop to discuss and assess penalties and assists...?

I can't speak to the specifics of how it happened since I didn't see it happen, but 1403 (our alliance partner) became entangled with 1676 and 1279 (our opponents) about halfway into the match.

The match was stopped mysteriously and the ref's grouped together for quite some time near the entangled robots.

Once the discussion was over it was decided that the match would resume.
I have never once heard or seen a match being stopped for any reason the refs decide or resumed. If it was a safety issue a G3 probably should have been called on all participating robots.

We then proceeded to question the resuming of the stopped match.

It was then debated for sometime of what should be done and it was eventually decided that it would be restarted and not resumed...



Another interesting item was that on Saturday drivers were told at the drivers meeting that gloves were required and fouls would be given for NOT using them during field robot loading/unloading. I still haven't found that rule. I do not know if any were assessed, but we didn't attempt to find out. We normally use them anyway.

[Lil' Lavery]

The head ref at Hatboro would frequently pause matches to fix podium issues, then resume them. It happened about every two or three matches.

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by team222badbrad

Another interesting item was that on Saturday drivers were told at the drivers meeting that gloves were required and fouls would be given for NOT using them during field robot loading/unloading. I still haven't found that rule. I do not know if any were assessed, but we didn't attempt to find out. We normally use them anyway.

Looking at the manual, the only instance of "glove" is in the Admin section:

Originally Posted by 4.2.1 Safety Recommendations

At events, the pure anticipation and excitement can sometimes overshadow common sense and safety fundamentals. One safety area teams sometimes overlook is the need to wear appropriate clothing when working or being around the robots. In addition to the ANSI-approved, UL-listed, or CSA rated safety glasses required for eye protection, FIRST highly recommends that team members and mentors:

• Refrain from wearing dangling jewelry or loose, baggy clothing near the robots;
• Tie back long hair so that it will not get caught in the robot or other machinery; and
• Wear gloves to protect hands and fingers when handling the robot or the robot crate; finger injuries are one of the most common injuries at events!

Noting that "recommends" =/= "requires"

[Craig Roys]

Originally Posted by piersklein

All this hype over aggressive defense this year is astounding. How did so many teams not anticipate this aspect of the game? This is especially important when some teams build weighted chassis battering rams as robots. I know my team wont have a problem, our entire robot is double extrusion and welded steel

It's not the defense that's the problem. We built our intake arms to be flexible to withstand being hit and we brought lots of spares and built them so they are a relatively easy swap. The problem is the way the game is being called. We expected to get hit and have our intake broken...we did not expect that if we were sitting still to shoot a ball and another team rams into us and breaks our intake (they initiated and caused the contact) that WE would be assessed a 50 pt technical foul for contact in the bumper zone. That's only one of a number of examples of fouls being called on the team being hit (not just our team). I'm not sure why G14 is not being enforced...many penalties I saw were the result of a defending team forcing the offensive team into a penalty.

Just to be clear...I'm not blaming the refs. I agree with the sentiments of many others in that they have WAY too much to try to do to possibly watch everything that's happening. I appreciate the job the refs have to do and I know that they are trying the best they can in a very difficult job this year. Separate scorers would help which would allow the refs to focus more on what the robots are doing. I do think that technical fouls are much too large for the amount they are being called.