Teamwork Aspect

[Cyberguy34000]

Obviously FIRST wants to emphasize more of a teamwork aspect this year. And I was thinking about it and came up with some pretty cool stuff. Some of the rules that were made this year seem to really get in the way, right? Like for example, the rule about not having any tetras on a robot while loading. Well, what if you consider the teamwork aspect. What if you designed a robot to go from station to station unloading team Tetras onto the field, or for that matter to other robots for them to cap with. Just a simple (but fast) chassis with a conveyor belt on top could actually be a very effective teammate to have. Instead of having to hike it all the way back to the friendly loading station, the team tetra ferryer would bring a massive number of tetras to the robots on the team that could cap. This would release the bottleneck on the amount of tetras on the field. The tetra ferryer could also just leave a bunch of team tetras on the enemy loaders, stalling them and increasing the bottleneck on the enemy. Since this robot would be very easy to build, and also very fast, it would be an excellent robot for a rookie team. And it would be quite a valuable member of the team.


All of this was possible because of the teamwork possibility opened up by the three team alliance. So what other teamwork possibilities could there be?

Post away people!

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by Cyberguy34000

. Some of the rules that were made this year seem to really get in the way, right? Like for example, the rule about not having any tetras on a robot while loading.

Which rule is this? You can have a tetra on your robot when you load another. You just can't sit in the loading zone and pile up more than one at a time..

[Aignam]

You can have as many Tetras on your robot as your heart desires. You cannot load more than one Tetra onto your robot without first leaving the loading zone.

That robot would have to take a tetra, pull out of the loading zone, and pull back in before accepting another tetra.

And you have to keep in mind that not everybody will be designing their robot to pick up Tetras from the floor. (Sure, the more advanced robots will be able to do this because of their autonomous strategies [vision tetra], but a fair few will design their robot to grab from the automatic loading station or have a human player position the tetras on the robot for them.)

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

You're right, teamwork will play a very important part.

The pinning rule may faze some people. This year, it is illegal to "pin" a robot, i.e., push them into a corner or wall, for more than 10 seconds, or there will be a penalty. To some people, this screams "What? No more defense?". I think the best way to combat this thru teamwork is to have a strategy that really wouldn't require you to pin them, but rather help your alliance to corner a robot from say, getting into the endzone at the end of the round if it is impossible for your own alliance to do so.

Also, I think it will be imperative to have a robot that can run tetras. Realistically speaking it could take a great deal of seconds to get a robot from the loading zones and for it to cap the goals. As cyberguy34000 described earlier, this year robots with not as many "gadgets" on them may be a critical part in winning some rounds. I think FIRST is opening this opprotunity to a lot of teams who have to reconstruct their robot at competition or to teams who start late in the build season.

Good luck everyone!

[Zanella BR]

I think this year's competition will be extremely depending on planning tactics with all your alliance. "Agressive" or "passive" actions may vary according to all the robots on the alliance, both of the strategies have its advantage and disadvantage for each kind of robot.

[DrShadowSML]

This game is just a more difficult team version of tic-tac-toe. Strategy is key.

[Cyberguy34000]

Sorry about the poor example in the opening. I had a misconception about the rules. Sorry about that! But continuing on with this idea, what kind of robots wouldn't necessarily be good robots by themselves but excellent "team" players? I think that an ultra fast "Terra Ferryer" might actually be a pretty good idea considering that because they wouldn't have to have an arm, they could devote all of the strongest motors to the drive train. It could stack 4-5 tetras and it would allow it's team members to focus on capping instead of running back for more tetras.



But anyways, what are some other ideas that might emphasize this year's teamwork aspect?

[DrShadowSML]

A good team strategy would be to pass tetras from smaller robots that can't cap to tall robots that can. The small one can be fast so it can gather tetras with ease.

[robolemur1236]

what if you could make the conveyer belt raiseable, so you could gather massive amount of tetras, then assist teams in stacking?

[DrShadowSML]

How stable would this conveyer belt be and how are you going to do this? It's a good idea!