Predicitions For The Rest Of Us

[Yan Wang]

Herding
There may be 1 cherry picker or ball drop collector robot at a regional that can quickly and effectively (think 121 in 2002) get the ball to the human player. Most robots will fail at cherry picking... Kinda like stacking last year. The most effective herders will be ones with large collapsable wings and a fast drive - the balls are everywhere and you don't have to fight for them. The 10 pt ball, past autonomous, will be utterly useless. It will be a waste of time to try to collect them when there are almost 40+ purple balls on the field.

Multiplier Ball
Again, one robot at a regional may be effective at this. Other times, robots will find problems with their center of gravity and having enough time to manipulate the ball before an opponent pushes them. A robot that can do this will not do exceedingly well in qualifying but will be crucial in the finals.

Hanging
Hangers who can do it from the side are going to have an easier time hanging. Any mechanism which takes more than 15 seconds to hang from start to off the ground will be fairly ineffective in the finals. Speed is everything - if you can jump up there (the defender will have a fairly tough time maneuvering on the small hdpe platform) and shoot up the mechanism quick, you can do this in the last 20 sec (or less) of the game, just like the battle for the hill last year. KotH is a waste of time... why not just spend more time herding balls? 10 balls = 50 pts = 1 hanging robot

etc
Autonomous is very important. The extra 30 seconds between end of autonomous and when the ball release triggers if the bonus ball isn't knocked off could let someone like me herd 4-6 balls. Add the 6 balls in the alliance to start and that can be 12 balls in the mobile goal for 60 pts! Miss two and you've still got 50! Human players will be EXTREMELY important this year. They can easily be worth more than hanging and deserve great respect if they do their job well. That's why that 1 capper in the finals will be awesome. I also think that during the finals, the lowest scores will appear.

Also, teams that used the 12" kit wheels will find it incredibly hard to make it to the platform if someone's already there. I imagine some amusing flips to happen this year. Tank treads like ones on Tribotec will be most effective.

Actually, one more thing. The Canadian SUPER Regional will be awesome.