Predictions Week One: Overlooking the Outerworks

[pHolmgren]

Originally Posted by Looking Forward

PNW District- Auburn-Mountainview:
Auburn Mountainview has consistently been the strongest event since the introduction of districts in the Pacific Northwest. While it still boasts many of the usual contenders and local powers, all eyes will be watching this preview of Philomath. Five out of the Six previous AMV winners will be returning, along with a quarter of the elimination teams from last year's District Championship. Trying to top a 6 banner season sounds near impossible, but 1983 is looking to do just that. With its 16 motors, and complex design, this "White Knight" had a slow start to the season, but they have new-found programming capabilities this year to make up for it. With fast breach times, and an even faster hang, they should be able to get the points to stay on top of the pack, even without a shooter this weekend. 2522 is trending up after several seasons of growth, and have stepped up their game again this year in preparation for their trip to Hawaii. If their machine functions as well as it looks, they’ll be quite the force this year, especially with their well tuned autonomous. Both 2046 and 3663 ended their 2015 seasons on a high note, playing together at the Championship and reaching their subdivision finals. These two teams have built robots that look to be competitive over the course of the season, but week 1 is a different beast. Bear metal’s week 1 jitters look to be the only thing between them and a solid finish this weekend. CPR will be looking to dial in their camera-assisted shooter. 2557 and 488 are both looking to bounce back from poorer than usual district performances last year. The SOTAbots are going back to their roots with a catapult somewhat reminiscent of their 2014 robot, which should bring them back if it can perform even half as well as that robot. The build season has had its ups and downs for the XBots, who have lost a sheet metal sponsor, but could be the dark horse when eliminations roll around. Few teams have more to prove this weekend than 1318 or 360. After losing key mentors and students, both of these teams have worked hard this season to try and repeat their strong 2015 showings. The PNW has a handful of rookies this year, and the two to watch are competing this weekend. 5803 is looking to come home with more than a Highest Rookie Seed trophy. While they won’t be shooting, their strength may lie in being one of the few local teams to tackle all 9 defenses alone. If their climber is ready in time for the weekend, this rookie may be in for quite the debut performance.

Cannot wait for tomorrow! This is going to be a fun competition and I can't wait to see all 40 of the teams playing (even if it is a ton of teams.

[SciBorg Dave]

PNW District- West Valley:
PTO Pride - 1595
Kings of the Valley? - 4061, 2147, 4125
Rookie Dark Horse - 5920

New kid in the game. Rookie 5920 #1 alliance captain. Lost in the finals.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

My money for #1 seed at GSD? Team #238. You heard it here first!

-Brando

Coming back to grab the "I called it" moment.

That is all.

-Brando

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Looking Forward

Predictions Week One: Overlooking the Outerworks
PNW District- Auburn-Mountainview:
The build season has had its ups and downs for the XBots, who have lost a sheet metal sponsor, but could be the dark horse when eliminations roll around.

We got off to a slow start this weekend, but I'm happy with the way the robot turned out in the end. The hanging mechanism should be ready to go in Central Washington in two weeks and I think we'll have a more well-rounded machine at that time. Still, I think we demonstrated that we were one of the better machines focused on breaching at Auburn. We're super into our portcullis crossing mechanism.

More importantly, however, I want to thank team 1983 for helping us out in a big way after we received the bad news from our sponsor. The sheet metal shop we've worked with for the last three seasons has been great to us, but late in week four, we learned that they wouldn't produce any of the remaining parts we'd asked them to make. We redesigned everything above our drive over the next day and team 1983 graciously offered to allow us to cut plates on the waterjet in their shop. Without their help, we may not have finished a working robot in time for bag day.

[Boltman]

We had a great weekend as #8 in San Diego an we beat the #1 alliance that had the best HG shooter..2-0

We broke our hex shaft ,a team had one and in the hour before our SF we fixed that ..then our shooter got stuck in SF and the camera was off so we were driving blind so we lost..we failed mechanically and lost to eventual winners.

It was great . Our bot performed extremely well we scaled 3 times all the way up. Only counted once... one time they winched to high and we lowered at last second. The other the driver was excited and started 2 seconds early. Then one that was PERFECT in our first QF match so beautiful. Took all regional to get the scaler tuned to the field with modifications.

Now it should be great for Central Valley later this week. We are excited to have one more shot. This time with a modified shooter and steel hex shaft possibly auto HG still working on that..we might have to move our camera the tomahawk blocks the processing ... we get readings but the view is not good enough yet. If we get that working too wow.

[trumpthero786]

Originally Posted by Looking Forward

MAR District- Hatboro-Horsham:

Aiming to contend- 2729

Thanks for the mention! It's nice to know that people are noticing our hard work and efforts despite having many, many difficulties at Hatboro. Nonetheless we had a great time and are definitely aiming to contend at Seneca!

[BenjaminWard]

Chesapeake District - Northern Virginia Event:
Especially so coming off a build season that in a region not prepared for the type of winter weather that hit, which cut into many team's testing and iteration time. That could play into the advantage of teams like 1418, who finished early and had plenty of time to troubleshoot and refine their low goal and scaling specialist machine. Similarly, it could work against 116 and 612, who have often struggled early in the season as they get the kinks worked out of their machines. While fine tuning a machine at early events is a viable strategy in the regional format, losing those points in districts can spell doom for a team's DCMP or CMP hopes.

Spot on LF! Programmer from 612 here, we spent a fairly large amount of time working on fixes for our robot in the time between matches, especially on the first day. However, this year we've done a lot better than we have in the past few years, and by the morning of the second day we were able to shoot high goal and cross every defense, though we only shot high goal once in my recollection *during* a match and we could not handle a few defenses (the sally port for example) without help.

Even though we are usually around the middle of the pack, this year we came out very strong. We oscillated between first and sixth place throughout the day, ending at 6th after our last match and moving up to the 5th place alliance captain. This coming competition (week 4) we plan to be even stronger with a ton of code work and some mechanical fixes.

Thanks for the shout out!