Week 2 Analysis

[raptaconehs]

Hello CD community. After Week 1 we saw some major changes. So what have we noticed after Week 2. And what changes do we hope are made after Week 2. Some of my observations after Week 2 are that fewer balls are bouncing out of the goals after they have been modified. There are still a lot of teams that haven't been reading the rules and are still drawing up a lot of technical fouls. This game is still really physical, and the teams that are doing well are the teams that are nailing all their shots during the autonomous period.

[Canon reeves]

from our regional I learned that having your teams know the rules is crucial. Also, one of the best strategies I've seen so far is having one robot purely defense and another blocking and your best scorer trussing and getting 2 assists.

[Jarren Harkema]

Observed week 1 and competed in week 2. There were a few noted differences.

Fewer auto balls were missed. At the Southfield district tournament. There were usually 2-3 balls on the field after auto. At the Gull Lake tournament, the numbers were drastically smaller. Teams figured out that it was worth more to start cycles right away.

A heavy and fast offense beats defense, every time. Not sure if it was a difference in the teams competing at Gull lake as opposed to Southfield but teams at gull lake had a lot harder time defending against fast moving, fast shooting bots. We played our matches as offensively as possible, only playing defense when our part of the assist was done. Even then, we were covering our own alliance rather than stopping the opposing aliance. This proved to be an effective strategy.

Tech fouls were few and far between. I don't think G40 was called once. Teams are a lot more cautious now.

Robots must be able to hold onto balls. If simply turning flings the ball off your robot, find a better way to hold it.

[Travis Hoffman]

In the state of Indiana, it is possible to receive a tech foul for your robot coasting over the field boundary after power is lost at match end, leading to a qualifying loss.

[Caleb Sykes]

Triple assists are where its at. 3018, 2052, and 3692 won the Lake Superior Regional even after 2052's shooter broke in semis. The triple assists were worth so much that the trussing that 2052 did prior to the break was not even necessary. Even 3018 gave up shooting high a couple of times just to get the 31 point low goal score.

[Nick Lawrence]

Referees are having a difficult time crediting possessions of balls. They aren't being consistent with declaring possessions at all. Example: not getting credit for pushing a ball meaningfully, but getting a penalty for inconsequentially bumping an opponents ball.

90% of pedestal issues seem to be related to the referees not submitting their scores in a timely manner. It generally seems that this is because they were too busy assigning penalties, or they simply don't look down and confirm that their score was submitted due to the dynamic game. 10% of the time pedestal issues seemed directly related to dead-ball declarations.

We were on the short end of a pedestal issue at the Crossroads Regional. After a cycle of ours was completed, the pedestal failed to illuminate for at least 12-15 seconds. We felt it significantly affected the outcome of the match and warranted a replay, and contested it appropriately. We awaited a final answer, and with involvement from HQ, a replay was not granted. We respected the decision, and moved on and immediately began preparing for the New York City regional.

My only hope is that this issue is fixed for week 3 and beyond. Due to the nature of this game, I strongly feel any significant delay of pedestal illumination directly affects gameplay with only one scoring object on the field at a time. No, we're not going to make a giant storm about this. Referees are human, and field software is written by humans. There are going to be mistakes. As a community, we just need to learn how to deal with these issues. I know we can, we have he smartest people in the world on our side.

I look forward to what this game could be. It definitely has a huge amount of potential to be a fantastic game. I just hope we actually get there and aren't still deciding matches at the Championship Event on cycle delays and seemingly overbearing penalties.

-Nick

[Steven Donow]

Despite some of the problems experienced at Groton and the whole weekend going not as expected for 125, I still truly think that despite all the haters, this can definitely be a great game. Matches showed this. Even with the number 1 and 2 seeds eliminated in quarterfinals, the strategies made by the lower seeds just made the game incredibly exciting, and the 4v7 finals were very entertaining matches.

Qualifications may be uninteresting 75% of the time, but honestly, I feel that way about most games. Eliminations have incredible potential to be exciting, and I can't wait to see how solid/great Championships elims will be (especially considering there should reasonably be a flawless field crew)

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

In the state of Indiana, it is possible to receive a tech foul for your robot coasting over the field boundary after power is lost at match end, leading to a qualifying loss.

Some of these tech foul calls are getting ridiculous, but please tell me this is a joke. Either way you've got me curious about the possible context/circumstances...

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Some of these tech foul calls are getting ridiculous, but please tell me this is a joke. Either way you've got me curious about the possible context/circumstances...

Context - we won the match, until we didn't.

Circumstances - our telekinetic powers of post-match robot deceleration were at the cleaners aka the Force was not strong with us.

The Crossroads head ref must have LOVED us camping out in the question box - a frequent vacation destination for us all weekend long. ;-)

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Context - we won the match, until we didn't.

Circumstances - our telekinetic powers of post-match robot deceleration were at the cleaners aka the Force was not strong with us.

The Crossroads head ref must have LOVED us camping out in the question box - a frequent vacation destination for us all weekend long. ;-)

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

I think Travis is being coy because he doesn't want to be accused of murdering a ref.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Here's the video of Crossroads Q5, which clearly shows the "infraction" at match end - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFhSMpfk40k

Also, here's video that clearly shows a pedestal lighting delay near the end of Q24, a five point loss that a truss would have erased, had we been given the time we deserved to execute it. I believe you can hear the people recording the video (the good folks at 2252) commenting on the situation, but I can't be sure. The opposing alliance was given plenty of time to execute their winning truss shot, eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_dioSONuRo

Add two wins to our total, and we're 7-5 and looking at a potential top 12 seed, and that doesn't even include the other transgressions meriting a question box visit throughout qualifying.

GDC - FIX YOUR BROKEN STUFF. Your shortcomings DO have a SIGNIFICANT impact on team standings.

[Navid Shafa]

I couldn't tell conclusively from the Q5 video which infraction you might be referring to. Did they call pinning on you? Or did the head ref call an HP violation?

As for Q24, there was definitely a noticeable amount of time before you were able start the next cycle.

I'm sorry to hear that you guys were impacted like many others this weekend. At least you can be thankful that you still have two more events ahead of you.

Great looking robot and I'm sure you'll make a strong showing at the next two.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

I couldn't tell conclusively from the Q5 video which infraction you might be referring to. Did they call pinning on you? Or did the head ref call an HP violation?

I believe this is referring to the end of the match where their robot coasts after they are disabled and it coasts so much that it goes over the field wall.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

I couldn't tell conclusively from the Q5 video which infraction you might be referring to. Did they call pinning on you? Or did the head ref call an HP violation?

As for Q24, there was definitely a noticeable amount of time before you were able start the next cycle.

I'm sorry to hear that you guys were impacted like many others this weekend. At least you can be thankful that you still have two more events ahead of you.

Great looking robot and I'm sure you'll make a strong showing at the next two.

I was referring to the last second out of bounds tech foul call on our partner. Check the near right of the screen.

We personally were called for one (debatable) herding tech foul the entire weekend. Our partners, however, were not so lucky. And our opponents got away with a few things in some matches that we and our partners were called for in others. Inconsistency just bugs the heck out of me.

Thank you for the compliment - we've got lots to improve upon in the offensive execution area, responding to self-generated issues, as well as insulating ourselves from externally-generated blar. Our drivetrain is quite the equalizer, however. It tends to get us further in the elims that we realistically should get.