All-Star Alliance

[Mark Jones]

With all of this talk about goal bots -vs- ball bots, I thought it would be interesting to put together a hypothetical all-star alliance. Now that all of the regionals are out of the way, and everyone has had a chance to view the elimination matches, what teams would you put together to form the ultimate elimination alliance. In addition, what alliance would you like to see go head to head? Would you chose an all goal bot alliance against another all goal bot alliance? How about a strong mix of goal and ball bots? Any all ball bot alliances? Start posting those dream teams!!!!

My ultimate alliance.

All goal alliance: 71, 60, 254 -vs- 180, 267, 343
All ball alliance: 16, 45, 47 -vs- 86, 111, 173

[Deej]

I'd personally want to see the matchup that was oh so desired in Silicon Valley, between my team, 190, and team 60. Once we have two goals, we are unmovable. This is attributed to our anchoring system that employs the same file cards that beatty uses for their shuffle drive. Just one of those brushes with just 2 pounds, takes over 100 pounds on the carpet to move laterally. Imagine a 130 pound robot over 4!! We also employ Continously Variable Transmissions (CVTs) that are capable of pulling over 400 pounds when engaged for our winching system. Also, I wouldn't mind seeing us versus the technotank (team 45) and team 61's powerhouse. Ball bots i wouldn't mind seeing team 121 (tough goal grabbing, fast ball picking bot) versus Baxter (16), or the Aztechs (team 157, although they aren't going to Florida).

[kevinw]

Originally posted by Mark Jones
With all of this talk about goal bots -vs- ball bots, I thought it would be interesting to put together a hypothetical all-star alliance. Now that all of the regionals are out of the way, and everyone has had a chance to view the elimination matches, what teams would you put together to form the ultimate elimination alliance. In addition, what alliance would you like to see go head to head? Would you chose an all goal bot alliance against another all goal bot alliance? How about a strong mix of goal and ball bots? Any all ball bot alliances? Start posting those dream teams!!!!

My ultimate alliance.

All goal alliance: 71, 60, 254 -vs- 180, 267, 343
All ball alliance: 16, 45, 47 -vs- 86, 111, 173

I think ya gotta add team 469 in there for the all goal alliance, although I'm not sure who you pull out.

[Andy A.]

I would have to go with 25, 505, and 95 as my allience.

Both 25 and 505 are very good goal handlers and compliment our ball handling nicely. As long as they can get 2 goals and keep them in scoring position (something I know they can do everytime) we can stuff enough balls to assure a win. The trick is that the ball handler has to move fast enough to not get pinned, which happend to us at UTC. Oh well... lessons learned.

-Andy A.

[Matt Reiland]

For balls you are missing 33 and HotBot both are very strong bots for big ball getters.

[Mike Martus]

What if after the competition we were able to have challenges. Make our own teams and play a few matches. That would be fun.

[Lance]

Everyone is forgetting about team #118. I guess not many people know about them, but we were allied with the in Houston finals, and we placed second because 118 drive messed up for the 1st time in about 16 matches. They are a very fast robot off the line, very similar to kingman, and get spin a turret with the goals, and have plenty of power with a low center of gravity. I would like to see 60 and a goal bot vs 118 and a goal bot. It would be an interesting match.

[Jordan A.]

I know this is a blatent pimp, but oh well

I like the fact that all of your teams are sub 350

I look forward to proving our rookie bot's worth as a goal pusher @ Epcot...

We pushed our way to a win in Canada (@ 70% power), lets see who we can push in florida

[Deej]

sometimes it isn't all about pushing...its being able to hold your ground, and those goals!!!!

[Jordan A.]

holding those goals can be done with defense

we rarely relied on out pushing (while we could do it) it wasnt as good as just preventing the other robot from getting to the them

[Joe Matt]

The best match was the Sparky 3.0 (384) and MOE Hawk (365) when they latched to all three goals and didn't budge an inch. Luckaly Dean and Woody saw the match . I would like to see that again at the Nats.

[Deej]

when the entire match can be completed in less than 5 seconds, not much you can do....we grab two goals on the fly, and immediately anchor once we hit the white tape showing the neutral/goal zone....once we are down, nobody is moving us, and we can spend the next 1 min and 55 seconds to reel in those goals, using our CVT's....let them try to pull and pull....eventually they will be ours...kinda makes you think about pulling in the big fish....let them out there for a while, and just pull little by little till they don't have anywhere else to go.

[Eric Bareiss]

The best match that I can see happening in orlando would be

60, 45, 67 vs 343, 111, 47

and it would all depend on whether 343 or 60 could get to the goals first, cause if one of them could grab two, it would be over. I haven't seen 343 in action yet, but i've seen Kingman, and they are fast, really fast.

[Patrick Wang]

While I see the delight in speculating what the "all star" or dream team is, I think there should be mention that there is a great deal more than simply "brute force" and strength involved in competiting in any of these competitions.

I would like to bring to example, how far our alliance in Silicon Valley got with three seemingly "underdog" robots.

Take into consideration, teams 115, 376 and 701.

By no means were any of the robots in this alliance, THE strongest, THE fastest, or even THE most effective at picking up balls.

There were no real "specialties" in any of these robots, none the teams could gear switch, none of the teams had a CVT, none of the teams had an anchoring device, none of the teams could grab 2 goals, In fact none of the teams had a tether either!

115 had a 4 motor drive locked in 1 gear and 376 had a ball lawnmower. 701 suffered a broken sprocket in the quarterfinals.

But other than that they were simply your standard joe "robots"

Well you might ask? So what?

The Alliance made it into the Finals, and we were so happy to have made it so far, with so little.

What can you attribute this to?

Teamwork...

Driving...

Communication...

If any of you get a chance to see some of the finals where this alliance played, take a close look, you will see how a few subtle maneuvers would completely take control of the game.

Our realization of the power of WPI, 190's 2 goal locking mechanism is what allowed us to even have a chance against that beast of a machine, (we barely moved the second goal out of their reach at the last second)

A carefully blocked tether also made the difference in the last second.

In the semifinals, we seemingly had lost control of the goals to the other alliance, but one careful pin was all it took to secure the match.

While our seemingly "ragtag" underdog alliance had little chance against the 60/254 alliance, We put up a good match, and at one point had more points.

My point through all this is, as the Art of War proverb says,

"know your opponents"

and

"know yourself"

This is what got a couple of 1 goal grabbing robots all the way to the finals at silicon valley.




-Just as a general disclaimer, I mean no offense to any teams that I did not mention, or does this any any way target any of the posters about any of their teams or robots on the boards. I am merely trying to tell a story of something magical that happened. And give hope to all those "underdogs" out there. There are so many things you can do if you put your mind to it.

[Deej]

I really do commend the efforts of the teams that made it to the finals versus 254 and 60....you guys found our weaknesses and exploited them...If i was on your alliance, I would have done the exact same things. ..Don't be afraid to offend others, you guys did great, and I really enjoyed watching you guys give the winning alliance a run for their money!!!