IN District - Tippecanoe Event 2016

[Richard Wallace]

I didn't get to watch any Tippecanoe matches -- was tad busy in St. Joe.

Video of 1747 practicing (TBA) shows very high quality crossing and accurate high shot from outer works. I look forward to seeing 1024 and 1501 in the videos uploaded today.

TBA Insights indicate a very high level of play at Tippecanoe, particularly the 44% Capture rate in eliminations. Also, low success rate (13%) on Sally indicates the refs were having trouble seeing clearance on solo attempts. I was reffing at St. Joe, where we used hand signals between courtyard and outer works refs to confirm door clearance on solo Sally attempts, and our success rate (54%) may be due to that. Hopefully refs will sees all the crossings better as the season progresses.

[tickspe15]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Also, low success rate (13%) on Sally indicates the refs were having trouble seeing clearance on solo attempts. I was reffing at St. Joe, where we used hand signals between courtyard and outer works refs to confirm door clearance on solo Sally attempts, and our success rate (54%) may be due to that. Hopefully refs will sees all the crossings better as the season progresses.

I can't speak for other teams but we(1747) didn't Sally port with the exception of the one match that we needed to do it for the breach. In that one match the refs marked the crossing correctly. We decided that the time spent to get the 5th defense crossing was better spent shooting a ball which got us closer to capturing the tower. This may change later in the season as alliances become more capable of quickly capturing the tower.

I do agree with the assessment that refs do need to get better at seeing and recording crossings of defenses. With the frequency of missed defense crossings and the lack of visibility of the lights on the defenses there is no reliable way to confirm that defenses have actually been breached. I would like to see the addition of a screen displaying tower and defense strength to the alliance station like in 2014.

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

TBA Insights indicate a very high level of play at Tippecanoe, particularly the 44% Capture rate in eliminations. Also, low success rate (13%) on Sally indicates the refs were having trouble seeing clearance on solo attempts. I was reffing at St. Joe, where we used hand signals between courtyard and outer works refs to confirm door clearance on solo Sally attempts, and our success rate (54%) may be due to that. Hopefully refs will sees all the crossings better as the season progresses.

There were many 4/5 breaches occurring in qualification matches (with the Class C defense ignored often) due in part to, I think, the low margin of error between capturing and not capturing in quals. Many alliances had the potential to capture in qualifications, even if they didn't have one of the big shooters, but in order to do so they would have to hurry to score enough boulders. Due to this, most alliances completely ignored the 5th defense once the breach had occurred.

My conjecture is that as the probability for successful capture approaches some constant c, the probability of breaking all 5 defenses (as opposed to only 4) decreases significantly. The level of play at Tippecanoe was around this point where going for the last defense was unnecessary for the win, and would have cost alliances a chance for the capture.

It's apparent that the lights at the front of defenses and on the side of the tower are intended to be signals of the field's state to drivers, but most of those lights are in a spot with poor visibility, plus many of them seem to either not work or are delayed during a match. FIRST is hopefully working on devising a better system than that. I noticed during this past weekend that the blue alliance had a tremendous advantage in that they were able to view the big screen right behind them in order to see tower and defense strengths and match time easily, while red alliance would struggle to see the screen due to the blue tower being in the way.

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by tindleroot

... I noticed during this past weekend that the blue alliance had a tremendous advantage in that they were able to view the big screen right behind them in order to see tower and defense strengths and match time easily, while red alliance would struggle to see the screen due to the blue tower being in the way.

That coupled with the fact that the 2nd screen with the scores was on the opposite side of the field of the red driver's station and facing the blue driver's station.