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#31
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Re: Critical and picky - here I go again.
Good grief, I'd be <i>AFRAID</i> to criticize someone's strategy! Which team was it a few years ago with the simple bot in the "trough game", that had the ONE ball gripper and a chinup rig, but nothing else? Everyone laughed, because THEY all had big capacity ball handling machines, conveyor belts, giant container dumpers, etc... They stopped laughing when the little bot went over at round start, did a chinup, locked on, then proceeded to <i>steal every 10 point ball from their opponent's trough </i> and put it in their own...
IMHO, it's the most brilliant strategy I've seen to date... That simple idea swamped that game, by turning their opponent's efforts against themselves. Similarly smart, was the tiny "ramp assistance/manager" machine that helped the other teams in Co-Opertition FIRST (a simple wedge, which held the teeter totter level, while other robots ran over it's back). Two years ago there were some VERY brave teams that said "to heck with QPs, we're owning ALL of the Zone Zeal goals and will just be CHOSEN for the Elimination Tournament". Little things can have BIG effects, and NO ONE KNOWS until you see how the game WILL be played what IS smart, and what ISN'T. Last year for Stack Attack, we built a "transformer bot" with wings and a stacking lift, that could fold into a 14" high package. We busted our butts to package our entire bot into a 30"x36"x14" package! What happened? We never had to stack one bin to score. We never went under the bar, not even once. Instead, those two light 8020 "wing sticks" we stuck on at the last minute just to push some bins around were the most valuable thing we had. In addition, our complicated forklift stacker turned into a "stack slicer / opponent bin stack size manager". It ended up maximizing QPs by karate chopping the opponent's stacks at a level of OUR choice, and helped to give our alliance a Top Ten Round score at one regional. That use was something that <i> never </i> occurred to us until we started playing others! Yes, I definitely agree with everyone here that we learn from ANY feedback, even critical stuff. You bet I would bow down and kiss the feet of ANYONE that saved our bacon by pointing out something that would disqualify our robot! And yes, there's a difference between criticism, and put downs stated trying to make the commenter feel superior. (There's NO excuse for that!) But we must all be CAREFUL about PRE-JUDGING a robot's APPROACH. This is a battle ground of ideas, and they ALL INTERACT. It'll all depend on what everyone ELSE'S image of the game. Had the little trough lockon robot been up solely against clones of itself, there would have been no one out there collecting balls to steal, and they would have been in an arm wrestling match over one or two balls! THIS game has a LOT of "scoring zones". We asked for a Rock/Paper/Scissors game, and boy oh boy did Dean, Dave, Woody, and crew take a good shot this year at delivering one! I'm FASCINATED by the possibilities. WHAT will everyone be focused on? Will we see entirely different games at different Regionals? But who knows? There may still be a "game swamping move". There are thousands of smart people out there working on this one! And, depending on their OPPONENTS' aproach(es), a "dumb machine with obvious design weaknesses" that CAN be beaten easily ("had we only known what they were planning") may turn out to be the STRONGEST one there, just because their approach was SO DIFFERENT from everyone they face, who didn't expect to have to counter it! And THAT possibility is what makes going to the contests so much fun! ![]() I can't wait until I see how this game is REALLY played. The arena will quickly show all of us how strategically smart or dumb we all actually were, and where our efforts truly paid off. Bottom line: <i>The Field</> will be the ultimate judge of our efforts. Just learn what you can from the comments on your design. Don't sweat the critics and nay-sayers. Go out, and have some fun. After all, we'll soon see whose bot is going to be kicked... I can't wait to see some strategies AND designs out there that WE never would have thought of in a million years, and devices WE thought were dead ends made to work! ![]() Good luck to ALL of the teams. May YOUR design be victorious, and all of your hard work richly rewarded! - Keith |
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