The FIRST day...

[David.Cook]

Originally posted by etoleb
After watching pieces of the VCU regional, I was very suprised to see virtually no stacking attempts, with the exception of bots picking bins up and holding them (were there mechanical problems or something?). Am I totally missing something? Maybe the "stacking is useless" rumor has been convincing teams to not even try? Perhaps drivers don't have enough practice and their stacking mechanism needs fine tuning? Does it just take too much time for some teams? Could it be that its so confusing in the alliance station that drivers are distracted?

OK, I'll give you my thoughts. I thought stacking would be more useful. But I was at VCU, and my belief now is that it isn't.

Reasons:
1) Bots are way too fast, and it doesn't take much to knock down a stack.
2) Yes, stacking takes tooooooooo looooooooonnnnngggg! Several attempts were made at VCU - all of them failed.
3) It is easier and more statistically likely that you can defend a stack if you have a good sturdy pusher in your alliance. This was demonstrated in several matches at VCU.

Some anecdotes:
There were two teams with GREAT multi-stacker bots, Robodogs and team 122. Both have excellent designs, but in the end were unable to set the stacks down successfully. Robodogs almost got theirs down, and I think it would have won the match, but the bottom bin was crooked and the stack was still touching the bot when time expired. 122 never placed their 4-stack without it tipping over - either due to external bot bumping or their own wobbling - I really don't know which.
Team 388 (congrats on the Chairman's award!!) was able to pick up and manuever a single box, and was in a match where I think they could have won if they had gotten it stacked, but fast little bots running around and bumping them foiled the attempt.

I am sure somewhere there exists a bot that will successfully stack to win - I actually hope for it. But it will be the statistical outlier, not the bell curve.