Turrets?

[Katy]

Personally I think turrets are very useful ideas but in this particular game not the right mechanism. Consider the way the goals are lined up. A robot that caps to one side (basically not the direction it drives in) can drive along the row of goals parallel with the driver's station and hit every single one. They can also drive along the row of goals from one end of the field to the other and make rows there. Many motor-driven arms can go the full way over the top of the robot allowing the team to cap goals on either side. In this case I believe a turret is very likely to just make more problems with wiring and weight.

Turrets were worth these things last year because there were a much smaller number of goals and therefore more people fighting over any given one. Really the robot:goal ratio was just 1:1 as opposed to this year's 2:3. More importantly the angles of access to the goals were severely limited...to the fixed goals most of all. You could come around from the back directly or on either side of the goal from the back. If you didn't want to do that you could fight your way up the stairs or try to reach over whoever it was sitting in your way. This meant that you had to be ready to cap from at least 3 robot positions to be able to take advantage of any situation. This assumes that coming directly over their front/back of the robot can be done from both the top of the stairs and the bottom of them. The two angles used to cap from on top of the platform can also be used on the ground. Most teams came from the front by the stairs because in the time it took a team to move around the robot guarding could easily run up to block. This means that it is very likely in reality more positions were actually used and needed while trying to dodge but once you have a rotating turret it is hard to count positions.

Pretty much I think the layout and number of goals makes capping them an entirely different game.

[geeknerd99]

We've got a turret this year. Having no machine shop, we spent 30-some man hours and made a gigantic sprocket with 200-some holes countersinked on both sides. Its also got huge cutout portions to reduce weight.

We were going to go all-out on the turret, but we couldn't solve the problem of running wires to the top and still be able to go 360. Out new strategy is to go head-on to a goal, and use the turret to fine-adjust the position of the arm.

Cap
Pull out
Repeat.

[Stephen Kowski]

oh man big ups to the turret teams this year.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...&quiet=Verbose

The initial plan was to turret then stack on the back, but the stacker in the back got in the road.....so now alls we gots is the turret.....2 tetras > 1