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Unread 23-03-2015, 17:43
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Re: This year's "game" is a job, not a game

So maybe this has been said before, but I have a new perspective on this game after competing. Don't worry, I still think it's terrible.

Our team made an improbable run to the 8th alliance captain position and picked a solid alliance of three middle tier robots. Our strategy was essentially to gamble that the three teams working together were worth more than the sum of their parts. 870 would make their usual capped stack of five, then cap one of our stacks of five. 1111 would get the center bins in autonomous, then go for their own capped stack, while we would go for two stacks of five. If 1111 had extra time, they could cap our second stack. It was far from a guarantee but it put the strengths of each partner together and made for our best shot out of the quarters. The main problem is that it requires perfect play from all 3 robots.

Two seconds into our autonomous mode of our first quarterfinal match, the power cable from the roboRio to our PDP wiggles loose as we hit the scoring platform, and we're out for the match, excluding 2 seconds of false hope in the middle of it. As you might expect, the entire strategy falls apart when one member of the alliance isn't there, and we were the team that created scoring opportunities for our partners.

Any other year, it's a tragic loss, but not an insurmountable one - you can win the next two to move on. But at this event, we were in a situation where, two seconds after our very first match started, it immediately became impossible for us to win the regional. The score we would need to move on after getting nearly no points that match was impossibly large, and not even the best teams at the event ever scored that many points.

I did my best to keep everyone's spirits up and rally the alliance to score as high as they could their second match, saying it wasn't impossible to move on, but a few of the drivers just knew that we were going to be out on the field playing a completely pointless match. The energy of the alliance was down, and everyone was at least a little rattled from the previous match, so we didn't play optimally match 2 either. Not that it mattered; again, it was a completely pointless match.

I don't think there's anything less inspiring than having your fate sealed by an unforeseeable hiccup, then being forced to play a pointless match that leaves you no chance of advancing. We installed that wire correctly, we performed the standard pull test and solidly connected the wire at home. Short of running a multimeter to every wired connection on our robot before every match, there's nothing we could have done to prevent this. And as soon as it happened, it was over. There was no way to win the event anymore, the second match was just for show.

I gave this game a lot of chances - I thought it was a very fun engineering challenge. I wasn't my normal cynical self during build season, hoping things would work out. But that elimination tournament was like a kick to the gut. Have you ever lost a regional in the first two seconds of eliminations? Should that even be possible? I really think it shouldn't be. This game would be dramatically improved if the best 2 of 3 match scores were what determined if you moved on or not. There's no room for error - on your part, on the field's part, or just plain bad luck.
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Mentor / Drive Coach: 228 (2016-?)
--2016 Waterbury SFs (with 3314, 3719), RIDE #2 Seed / Winners (with 1058, 6153), Carver QFs (with 503, 359, 4607)
Mentor / Consultant Person: 2170 (2017-?)
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College Mentor: 2791 (2010-2015)
-- 2015 TVR Motorola Quality, FLR GM Industrial Design -- 2014 FLR Motorola Quality / SFs (with 341, 4930)
-- 2013 BAE Motorola Quality, WPI Regional #1 Seed / Delphi Excellence in Engineering / Finalists (with 20, 3182)
-- 2012 BAE Imagery / Finalists (with 1519, 885), CT Xerox Creativity / SFs (with 2168, 118)
Student: 1714 (2009) - 2009 MN 10K Lakes Regional Winners (with 2826, 2470)
2791 Build Season Photo Gallery - Look here for mechanism photos My Robotics Blog (Updated April 11 2014)
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