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View Poll Results: How will you be handling Gears?
We are building a Gear Ground Pickup 85 28.52%
We are building a Gearage that can only eject a Gear when the Pilot lifts it out. 89 29.87%
We are building a Gearage that can eject Gears without waiting for the Pilot. 113 37.92%
We forgot to read the manual to realize how important Gears are, so we won't be doing them. 11 3.69%
Voters: 298. You may not vote on this poll

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  #31   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 27-01-2017, 09:09
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

Being able to pickup the gears off of the ground is an extra part to a robot that isn't necessary to compete, but it might give that little edge in a unique scenario. My team said from the first day that we must do it for a few reasons.

1) If you have partners that don't have gear manipulators then you can just set a gear on their bumper at the start of the match and have it fall. That saves you one trip to the feeder station if you can just pick it up off of the floor.

2) Early on I anticipate gears dropping every once and a while from robots that haven't quite figured out how to support the gears completely. Being able to pickup off of the floor in this situation might just save you a couple seconds on some cycles.

Overall, it isn't super important, but it might be that little extra that distinguishes a good robot from a great robot. Not sure though until competition starts.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 11:18
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by Chris is me View Post
The key advantage is that if it's truly a touch it, own it intake, you're going to be able to cycle without stopping and waiting. The human player drops the gear 2 seconds before your robot drives past, your robot flies through and sucks in the gear, and you've shaved a second or two off each cycle.

Additionally, if your partners are able to drop gears, you can be the gear-scoring specialist on an alliance who stays near the pegs placing gears on them while shooting oriented robots spend a greater percentage of their time shooting balls into the high goal.

That said, I don't think it is a big enough advantage to justify doing if you haven't figured out a simple solution. And you should have a human player based backup design ready to bolt on if it doesn't work like you want to. If it's slower than driving into the wall and getting it from the human player, it's a waste.
This pretty much lines up with my view. if you want to maximize any process, you overlap the steps that can be overlapped to shave time. For gears this means the HP gets the gear as far out the slot as possible (frisbee gears will happen). Your robot does not slow doe and start herding the gear. in the distance between where you get it and the lift, you have time to get it up off the floor and into position. While driving back to get the next gear you start moving that device back down into place. A robot who did only this and had tons of drive practice could conceivably get 12 gears (1-2 auto, 9 cycles, and 1-2 dropped or placed by partner.)

we will not be doing this, but I hope someone does. it will be a thing of beauty.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 11:41
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by mrnoble View Post
Since no one out there really cares too much what 1339 is planning.
We care, Mr. Noble. Always fun to see your guys' robots <3
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Last edited by chandrew : 27-01-2017 at 11:49.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 13:15
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

I believe one of Karthik's rules is to be able to pick up your most important game piece off the floor. If gears are most important to you for scoring points, then a ground pickup is probably a good idea. There are of course exceptions. (See 2013)
Another thing he will stress teams do is to focus on doing a few things very well instead of a lot of things not so well.

Looking at the way 2013 played, I think the value in having a gear pickup will be determined by what ever you do faster. Especially in the scenario where you need to pick one mechanism or the other.(Do one very well vs both not so well.)

Unless you can load as fast or faster from the floor, stick with human load. Floor load has the added bonus of being able to potentially grab gears that have fallen or auto gears. But, if it's slower than your design for human load you are now relying on your opponents(or teammate) to make mistakes/be ineffective for your floor pickup design to have an advantage. If they do not make mistakes in a match you are not performing as good as you potentially could have due to slower cycle time. And if they are dropping gears they are already falling behind.


So I think that yes, the ground pickup does have value due to potential auto/dropped gears. But if it slow's down your game play outside of those variables it's NOT worth it.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 13:21
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by engunneer View Post
A robot who did only this and had tons of drive practice could conceivably get 12 gears (1-2 auto, 9 cycles, and 1-2 dropped or placed by partner.)
Even with ground pickup, and a ton of driver experience, I don't think any team will be able to get 9 cycles. I agree that ground pickup is useful to shave some time off of your cycles, but I think this is helpful for getting a start on shooting fuel and working towards 40 kPa. I see it being extremely unlikely for all of the rotors to be completed without having at least two robots running cycles.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 14:02
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

Quote:
Originally Posted by engunneer View Post
...if you want to maximize any process, you overlap the steps that can be overlapped to shave time. For gears this means the HP gets the gear as far out the slot as possible (frisbee gears will happen). Your robot does not slow down and start herding the gear. in the distance between where you get it and the lift, you have time to get it up off the floor and into position. While driving back to get the next gear you start moving that device back down into place...
ditto...and if you are designing to be both a gear and fuel handler, you can apply this method and make a ground only gear handler that can place on peg and run and leave the overhead real estate for a high capacity fuel tank and/or climber. It also sets you up to be a great street sweeper in the (hopefully unlikely) event that an opposing alliance triggers a chaos defense and litters the field with fuel and gears, or a clutch player when your alliance is falling behind in either kPA or Rotor potential.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 14:14
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by iyportne View Post
...It also sets you up to be a great street sweeper in the (hopefully unlikely) event that an opposing alliance triggers a chaos defense and litters the field with fuel and gears...
This is very likely. It will be an objective in 100% of the matches I coach .
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Unread 27-01-2017, 14:50
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by iyportne View Post
It also sets you up to be a great street sweeper in the (hopefully unlikely) event that an opposing alliance triggers a chaos defense and litters the field with fuel and gears, or a clutch player when your alliance is falling behind in either kPA or Rotor potential.
With the gear size and bumper rules this year it seems that you could potentially build an effective little wall out of the gears that would be a pain to deal with. If the opposing alliance doesn't have a ground intake method, they will surely pay for it.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 14:55
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by s_forbes View Post
With the gear size and bumper rules this year it seems that you could potentially build an effective little wall out of the gears that would be a pain to deal with. If the opposing alliance doesn't have a ground intake method, they will surely pay for it.
Oooh ...

Step 1: Put gear feeder station cheesecake onto a defensive robot.
Step 2: Make a match strategy around defensive robot that also dumps gears to a place inconvenient for the opposing alliance but very convenient for your alliance.
Step 3: Make one of your business team's aspiring lawyers a PILOT.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 15:22
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
Oooh ...

Step 1: Put gear feeder station cheesecake onto a defensive robot.
Step 2: Make a match strategy around defensive robot that also dumps gears to a place inconvenient for the opposing alliance but very convenient for your alliance.
Step 3: Make one of your business team's aspiring lawyers a PILOT.
Sounds like the Pilots are going to have to be part-time Air Traffic Controllers.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 19:57
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

Actually this would not be legal per rule G21: Robots may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g. GEARS in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements e.g. BOULDERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.

By deliberately dropping gears in front of the Air Ship you are amplifying the challenge associated with the Air Ship.

Sorry this is a really interesting strategy that I had hoped would be viable, but sadly not.
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Unread 27-01-2017, 23:54
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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup

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Originally Posted by New Lightning View Post
Actually this would not be legal per rule G21: Robots may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g. GEARS in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements e.g. BOULDERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.

By deliberately dropping gears in front of the Air Ship you are amplifying the challenge associated with the Air Ship.

Sorry this is a really interesting strategy that I had hoped would be viable, but sadly not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
...dumps gears to a place inconvenient for the opposing alliance but very convenient for your alliance.
Step 3: Make one of your business team's aspiring lawyers a PILOT.
I think by "lawyer" JesseK means that there may be some ambiguity in this situation. If you are attempting to "amplify the challenge...", then it's certainly illegal. But if you're attempting to move the gear closer to your airship for another robot to score, which just so happens to block your opponent's path in some way, is that still illegal? The answer to that is not so clear to me. After all, the word "attempting" brings up intent, which gets murky.
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