900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles

[meg]

Understood! It was a risk vs reward decision.

It could also be said that if 148's auto had worked in just one more SF match it wouldn't have been nearly so close

[steelerborn]

Yup that is also very true as well
Little things can make a big difference.

[howdosheeplamp]

After all this argument, I am certain there is something we can all agree on.
From the 21-seconds-left noodling of one of 118's stacks to them pushing a piece of litter into the landfill during the last moments of the match, to each and every noodle human players missed or scored, the semifinals, especially semifinal 6, was one of the most stressful, hand-wringing, and emotionally charged moments of my entire high school experience.
As a student at the end of my senior year, I can't believe I was part of such an amazing event. I have only gratitude towards all the teams at the event, and I am certain there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other inspired students much like myself. And isn't that the point of this all?
Sincerely, to all the teams that challenged me, inspired me, and brought me to tears of joy at the end of it all,
Thank you.

[Citrus Dad]

Seeing the video of the 1114/900 mechanism was quite interesting. We had developed a "counter-counter-cheesecake" to this counter-cheesecake that may have left a mess in both landfills. In the end, we might have left 118 off the field and used 1671 to stack from HP station while 5012 and 900 had can wars.

[pabeekm]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

"counter-counter-cheesecake"

Darn it.... now I can't stop imagining an entire counter full of cheesecake.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Seeing the video of the 1114/900 mechanism was quite interesting. We had developed a "counter-counter-cheesecake" to this counter-cheesecake that may have left a mess in both landfills. In the end, we might have left 118 off the field and used 1671 to stack from HP station while 5012 and 900 had can wars.

I really want to hear about the strategy you guys had developed with 5012. I have only heard bits and pieces. I hope someone is working on a write up. Y'all were an amazing alliance!

[steelerborn]

I wish 1671 was given some cheesecake, would have been nice to celebrate with some desert lol.

[howdosheeplamp]

Originally Posted by marshall

I really want to hear about the strategy you guys had developed with 5012. I have only heard bits and pieces. I hope someone is working on a write up. Y'all were an amazing alliance!

Immediately after 5012 was picked, 118 got to work putting their cheesecake on the back of the robot (dubbed "Bane"). They finished their cheesecake sometime during division semis, if I remember correctly.
Meanwhile, 1678 was building and testing a separate cheesecake. This was originally designed to be mounted on top of a robot drive base, but a wooden frame was used as a substitute since 5012 was being cheesecaked at the same time. After the 118-1678-1671-5012 alliance won their division, we started planning the counter-counter-cheesecake against 1114's harpoons. This ultimately led to the wooden frame being the final mounting spot for the cheesecake, and after cutting some weight off of both 5012 and the second cheesecake, the whole assembly (5012+118's "Bane"+1678's tethered cheesecake) was under 120 lbs. It was good to go by Einstein semis, if I recall correctly.

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by howdosheeplamp

Immediately after 5012 was picked, 118 got to work putting their cheesecake on the back of the robot (dubbed "Bane"). They finished their cheesecake sometime during division semis, if I remember correctly.
Meanwhile, 1678 was building and testing a separate cheesecake. This was originally designed to be mounted on top of a robot drive base, but a wooden frame was used as a substitute since 5012 was being cheesecaked at the same time. After the 118-1678-1671-5012 alliance won their division, we started planning the counter-counter-cheesecake against 1114's harpoons. This ultimately led to the wooden frame being the final mounting spot for the cheesecake, and after cutting some weight off of both 5012 and the second cheesecake, the whole assembly (5012+118's "Bane"+1678's tethered cheesecake) was under 120 lbs. It was good to go by Einstein semis, if I recall correctly.

It was ready just after Newton Finals. Preparation of our cheesecake was setting up the mechanism on a stand-in kitbot frame, a wood base on Friday. Saturday morning the plan changed to make it able to tether to 3rd bot with our robot parked OVER it. The mechanism was tested with 5 wraps in the pits while being weighed down with 2 cinder-blocks and 2 sandbags and grabbed the cans in 158 ms AFTER BUCKING NEARLY A FOOT off the ground and shrugging the blocks off. So if our robot could hold it down even better on the field there would be less wasted energy propelling it even faster! Then after auto we would drive off of Tether-Cake and stack some totes while leaving those 2 cans to be tied up the whole match.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by RoboChair

It was ready just after Newton Finals. Preparation of our cheesecake was setting up the mechanism on a stand-in kitbot frame, a wood base on Friday. Saturday morning the plan changed to make it able to tether to 3rd bot with our robot parked OVER it. The mechanism was tested with 5 wraps in the pits while being weighed down with 2 cinder-blocks and 2 sandbags and grabbed the cans in 158 ms AFTER BUCKING NEARLY A FOOT off the ground and shrugging the blocks off. So if our robot could hold it down even better on the field there would be less wasted energy propelling it even faster! Then after auto we would drive off of Tether-Cake and stack some totes while leaving those 2 cans to be tied up the whole match.

I love it. Mutually assured destruction. The level of strategy at play is just impressive considering this game.

[Joe Johnson]

A lot has been said. Sorry for not participating in this thread during the day as it progressed. What follows is a long post. Sorry in advance. Skip to the RANT Section if you just want to see an old man yell, "get off my lawn"

Originally Posted by marshall

I'm going to take your comment with the spirit in which I think you meant it and not as an insult. Saying "no disrespect" and then "horror show" in the same sentence does not come off as respectful. I don't think you meant it that way and I think I know what you meant.

<snip>

I said horror show, I meant it.

I don't say anything about your kids or your team. In fact, while watching Einstein, I leaned over to my son and said, "As much as I think cheesecaking is bad for FIRST, those kids are going to have a story to tell that will be recounted at ever class reunion they have for the next 70 years."

That said, the story and it's implications ARE fantastically scary more on that below.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

<snip> So far, I've found it impossible to come up with a rule wording that can draw the line clearly at a certain amount of cheesecaking
<snip>
I don't see how we can make it a plain black and white difference.
<snip>

Originally Posted by George Nishimura

<snip>
They tried to ban it. It just happens to be an incredibly difficult thing to outlaw and had to leave it as a loophole.

We don't have to make it as black and white as most people seem to think. FIRST is a great community. Given the nature of the community, I think it can be handled quite simply with a statement of principle and a rule:

STATEMENT (put in a blue box in the rules if you like):

We expect Alliance Captains to pick teams for the robot that a drafted team HAS, not for the robot Alliance Members can turn it into. Small improvements, code changes, tweaks and turns are par for the course as are discovering that a subsystem designed for one function can be used for another (e.g. can you use that arm to block frisbees? why yeah, I guess I can!). However, adding entire new subsystems and functionality after the draft is not in the spirit of FIRST (especially if such additions require removing other subsystems and functionality in order to meet limits such as weight, size, cost, etc.)

RULE (named for Karthik perhaps?):

Teams must be re-inspected after their last Qualification Match. This inspection is expected to be the last re-inspection that a robot will have for a given tournament. Changes that would typically require a re-inspection will not be allowed without a prior permission from the lead inspector of a competition. Requests for such exemptions should be rare. Actual exemptions should be rarer still and will require very special circumstances to be allowed.

Originally Posted by Libby K

<snip>
Of course they 'get' to claim they reached Einstein. They put in more work in one day than I think I've ever seen in my now 15+ years as a FIRST observer.

<snip[/b]

No serious FIRSTer should ever suggest that they didn't get to Einstein. This is settled law as far as I am concerned and even those who think having a 4th robot on an alliance is not a particularly good idea. Team 900 is now and forever will be a full member of the great alliance that came out of Curie and came within a 5 points (that's < 3 uncanned totes!) of making it to the Finals on Einstein.

That said, I don't know where you have been looking for 15+ years, Libby K, but there are a lot of folks in the FIRST community who might dispute statements revolving around amounts of work done in a day. They worked hard, I am sure. Good on them. Had they done no work at all in St. Louis, my views on the matter would be the same. How much work they did or didn't do have nothing to do with what is good for FIRST in the long term.

Now for the rant:

I think that FIRST holds a lot of the blame here.

Three years ago they allowed all manner of things to be strapped to robots as blockers for full court disk shooters. Last year, the game design almost forced this because it required two good robots (a.k.a. the #1 seed and the first draft pick) to not be able to win unless the last team drafted (a.k.a. the 24th best team at a tourney) did at least SOMETHING that qualified as an "assist". These two years got the cheesecake snowball rolling.

But THIS year, this year was something special. FIRST made a game where two good robots could effectively get max points if and only if they won a battle that was over in a literal blink of an eye... ...during Auton. FIRST designed a game where a half a second into the match, not only didn't the best alliances need a third robot, often having a 24th robot around was a liability - having them do something, anything, only cost them points -- it never helped them. Add to this that Alliances get a 4th robot at the World Championships (not FIRST's best idea imho) and you have a recipe for the Harpoon Bot. It was going to happen.

I think this is bad for FIRST. Not illegal. Not immoral. Just not want we want more of. FIRST should take steps to make it clear that this is not something it supports both in terms of rules and expectations.

Dr. Joe J.

[KeeganP]

This is truly amazing. I've always been a fan of how 900 build their robots, and how they take the same challenge we do, and yet approach it with a radically different design approach. Last year, we faced 900 in the elims at NC, and only barely lost to their ingenious (yet annoying at the time -- kidding, you know we love you) strategy. This year, we somehow managed to snag them as the second round pick on the #1 alliance at NC and together won a regional. Their determination to fix a but midway through the Semis was amazing, and without them we could not have won the regional.

Seeing such an amazing turn of events on Saturday at Champs this year was incredible. Building a robot from scratch in only 7 hours is truly inspirational, and just from looking at the pits from afar it was clear that the students on 900 and 1114 combined are some of the most dedicated. I'm in awe of what was accomplished in such a short amount of time, and look forward to seeing the robot in action in the future (THOR and SCRIW tethered to Go Big?? Please??). I've long been a fan of 1114 and 900, and this incredible combination of teams to create a unique solution to a hard problem is amazing. I congratulate you on what you did, and can't wait to work with 900 again in the coming years as NC goes district for 2016.


----
Now, as a completely separate topic, I personally do not like that this year's game lent itself to this kind of tactic -- designing a robot from scratch in only a day just for Einstein. It's an amazing feat, but not one I feel FIRST should be going for. This is no fault of 900 or 1114 or any other team who "cheesecaked" another robot, merely a fault of a game where doing something like this could give your alliance such a leg up. We may well have done the same thing had we been in 900's shoes, but I'm not sure this is exactly what FIRST wants to promote in the coming years through their game design.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Now for the rant:

I think that FIRST holds a lot of the blame here.

Three years ago they allowed all manner of things to be strapped to robots as blockers for full court disk shooters. Last year, the game design almost forced this because it required two good robots (a.k.a. the #1 seed and the first draft pick) to not be able to win unless the last team drafted (a.k.a. the 24th best team at a tourney) did at least SOMETHING that qualified as an "assist". These two years got the cheesecake snowball rolling.

But THIS year, this year was something special. FIRST made a game where two good robots could effectively get max points if and only if they won a battle that was over in a literal blink of an eye... ...during Auton. FIRST designed a game where a half a second into the match, not only didn't the best alliances need a third robot, often having a 24th robot around was a liability - having them do something, anything, only cost them points -- it never helped them. Add to this that Alliances get a 4th robot at the World Championships (not FIRST's best idea imho) and you have a recipe for the Harpoon Bot. It was going to happen.

I think this is bad for FIRST. Not illegal. Not immoral. Just not want we want more of. FIRST should take steps to make it clear that this is not something it supports both in terms of rules and expectations.

Dr. Joe J.

FIRST gave us a game where they put all of the carrots of the game design into this kind of strategy, while the sticks preventing it would not have met the goals of FIRST as an organization. Anyone who decries the hard work of teams to succeed to the best of their total abilities (not just robot power, but people/willpower) are insane. If you didn't like how alliances came to be and how the robots were adjusted, the onus is not the teams' to bear. I think lessons were learned by the GDC on this front. I've made a couple points on how the game design encouraged this before, and I'll probably add to it and summarize it later this week. That seems pretty agreeable.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I think that FIRST holds a lot of the blame here.

Three years ago they allowed all manner of things to be strapped to robots as blockers for full court disk shooters. Last year, the game design almost forced this because it required two good robots (a.k.a. the #1 seed and the first draft pick) to not be able to win unless the last team drafted (a.k.a. the 24th best team at a tourney) did at least SOMETHING that qualified as an "assist". These two years got the cheesecake snowball rolling.

But THIS year, this year was something special. FIRST made a game where two good robots could effectively get max points if and only if they won a battle that was over in a literal blink of an eye... ...during Auton. FIRST designed a game where a half a second into the match, not only didn't the best alliances need a third robot, often having a 24th robot around was a liability - having them do something, anything, only cost them points -- it never helped them. Add to this that Alliances get a 4th robot at the World Championships (not FIRST's best idea imho) and you have a recipe for the Harpoon Bot. It was going to happen.

I think this is bad for FIRST. Not illegal. Not immoral. Just not want we want more of. FIRST should take steps to make it clear that this is not something it supports both in terms of rules and expectations.

Dr. Joe J.

I think you and I agree with one another after all. I didn't think you meant anything bad earlier. It just came off one way to me, you know? It's all good though. I see your side more clearly now. At any rate, I think you're absolutely right about the game design. Games that can be won/lost in less than a second aren't nearly as fun as the ones that take the full time to play out.

And thank you for the kind words about my students. They definitely have a story to tell.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by KeeganP

This is truly amazing. I've always been a fan of how 900 build their robots, and how they take the same challenge we do, and yet approach it with a radically different design approach. Last year, we faced 900 in the elims at NC, and only barely lost to their ingenious (yet annoying at the time -- kidding, you know we love you) strategy. This year, we somehow managed to snag them as the second round pick on the #1 alliance at NC and together won a regional. Their determination to fix a but midway through the Semis was amazing, and without them we could not have won the regional.

Seeing such an amazing turn of events on Saturday at Champs this year was incredible. Building a robot from scratch in only 7 hours is truly inspirational, and just from looking at the pits from afar it was clear that the students on 900 and 1114 combined are some of the most dedicated. I'm in awe of what was accomplished in such a short amount of time, and look forward to seeing the robot in action in the future (THOR and SCRIW tethered to Go Big?? Please??). I've long been a fan of 1114 and 900, and this incredible combination of teams to create a unique solution to a hard problem is amazing. I congratulate you on what you did, and can't wait to work with 900 again in the coming years as NC goes district for 2016.


----
Now, as a completely separate topic, I personally do not like that this year's game lent itself to this kind of tactic -- designing a robot from scratch in only a day just for Einstein. It's an amazing feat, but not one I feel FIRST should be going for. This is no fault of 900 or 1114 or any other team who "cheesecaked" another robot, merely a fault of a game where doing something like this could give your alliance such a leg up. We may well have done the same thing had we been in 900's shoes, but I'm not sure this is exactly what FIRST wants to promote in the coming years through their game design.

Awww... you guys are the great ones. We wouldn't have even been in St Louis if you hadn't thought to do something unconventional with your pick in NC. We were thrilled to be part of an alliance with you and The Gorillas. Both of you are amazing teams. We hope our oddball strategies are starting to get noticed. You can build unique designs and have them succeed.