Terrifying Karthik

[jweston]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

You're overlooking a very big part of the game, and ultimately what pushed many teams toward a low bar oriented strategy. You need 8 balls scored to capture. If you want to reliably get that ranking point, especially at early events, you will want to do that by ferrying balls into the low goal. The low bar is probably the only reasonable shot of a single robot trying to stuff anywhere close to 8 balls in that goal every match. Trying to get an 8 ball throughput, even spread across the entire alliance, will require going to the secret passage early and often, and there's no faster way to it than the low bar.

I had taken the tower strength into account. There is 15s in auto and 135s in teleop. Let's say you can round trip a shot in 15s, probably faster doing the low bar. If you plan to capture or climb in the last 20s (i.e. you're going for that capture rank point), you can still get 8 shots in between auto and teleop. More shots are better of course, especially if you miss. My concern is if a design compromises the shooting accuracy even if it is low goal, more round trips are required to get the same effectiveness, potentially making the extra speed a wash.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If one of the ranking points was not predicated on scoring a high volume of balls I do not think the low bar would have been such a high priority for so many teams. But maybe I'm overestimating the depths of team strategic analysis, and people just decided to try and do everything.

Winning gets you two rank points. Breaching also gets a ranking point. The low bar gets you up to 10 points, it works as one of the four defenses needed to breach, and it cycles the ball faster. It's a nice piece to something bigger. If reality ends up reflecting this poll, low bar capable bots will be a very plentiful resource.

Of course, if a team can pull off the low bar and excellent shooting and/or a variety of defense breaching, that will be a very effective bot indeed.