Real cool Robot Idea

[Lil' Lavery]

There's absolutely no reason to hold balls if you can score them in the center goal 100% of the time (of course nobody can). Then you have to figure out how many you can score out of the balls you have vs. the size of your lead. If you can score 75% of your balls, and you're holding 40 balls, thats 30 score=90 points. As I HIGHLY doubt that any single robot will ever get 80 balls, and that any alliance ever possessing more than 70 balls will be VERY rare, it may be incentive enough to try and increase your lead.
It is also important to know rougly what % of balls your opponent can score, and if it's high enough to eliminate your lead (or whether the possible 25 offensive ramp points can do it either). But if you have the lead, at some point during the match your out-shooting them, so its likely you may be able to do it again.


Few, managed to keep myself from spilling too many strategy secrets there

[Marcel]

Well I need to do a bit of researching and asking around. I'd like to know what happends when all of the balls have been shot into goals and no one is throwing them back out meaning theres no more balls outside.

Another thing is how many balls will there be max in the field/robot/goals and all. Because I'm guessing that theres eihter a limit to how many balls a robot can have in its storage or theres way to many balls for a team to have them all. I'll do a bit of searching and get back to you all with that.

-Marcel

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Marcel

I'd like to know what happends when all of the balls have been shot into goals and no one is throwing them back(...). Another thing is how many balls will there be max in the field/robot/goals and all. (...)

There are a maximum of 80 balls in play <G13><G25>. If all the balls are in the goals or out of play and the human players won't throw them back in, I guess the robots might try line dancing or doing the cha-cha. There is no limit to how many balls a robot can carry. If you can figure out a way to hold all 80 balls (perhaps squeezing them with pneumatic rams?), there is no rule against it.

[Marcel]

Wow, thanks for minimizing my search Rick lol.

Thanks. I still need to do a bit more of research and thinking to explain everything into words. Its a bit hard to explain everything on my mind at the moment.

[greencactus3]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

There are a maximum of 80 balls in play <G13><G25>. If all the balls are in the goals or out of play and the human players won't throw them back in, I guess the robots might try line dancing or doing the cha-cha. There is no limit to how many balls a robot can carry. If you can figure out a way to hold all 80 balls (perhaps squeezing them with pneumatic rams?), there is no rule against it.

oh guess what. one of our sophs stuck a poof in a vise and it supposedly went down to about 1/4in diameter. i wasnt there to see it sadly.. but i did find a lopsided ball... didnt bouce straight after that... so you can fit 80 balls if you REALLY wanted to

[Marcel]

Yea but would it be able to come out as normal after its not compressed or whatever?

[Marcel]

Alright from what I understand, each alliance gets 40 balls each. Each robot starts off with 10 if they can hold it and than its 5 balls for both sides of each alliance of human players. Once the match starts you can hold as many balls as you want. There are many strategies there are that we can use anyone got any more ideas?

[Faith]

I played with the idea of holding balls, but there are two major reasons I wouldn't. The first reason is it isn't as much fun, and the second is the way you get qualifing points - I think it is that you the winning team gets points equivalent to the lowest score that doesn't include penalties and the losing team gets points equivalent to the lowest score that does include penalties - either way, the more points the better for both teams.

[Donut]

As was mentioned above, qualifying points is based off of the loser's score. Of course qualifying points only matter in ties of record, and if you never lose you're set, but the chances of that are low, so it's advised you rather have a high scoring match than a low one.

That, and I honestly think it is impossible for a robot to gather all 80 balls (I think it's almost impossible to even get 40 at one time). The other alliance simply won't let you; any robot that starts hoarding balls will be continuously rammed to be taken out of the game. If human players refuse to throw them in, there's nothing the other team can do, but remember those balls you're holding on to must be scored by the other team for you to get them, meaning they've already scored substantial points.

Lastly, hoarding balls would lead to a very boring game, and love excitement in FIRST.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Donut

Of course qualifying points only matter in ties of record, and if you never lose you're set, but the chances of that are low, so it's advised you rather have a high scoring match than a low one.

If you never lose you're set...yeah right. How about Archimedes '04? FOUR-count 'em, four-robots (60, 571, 330 and someone else, I forget who) were undefeated. Would have been 2 in Newton '05, but one of the two got a tie late on Friday...High scores are good, but not if you have a complete infinity to zero win. I'd rather see a 100-99 win (where we were the 100, of course) that was hard fought and clean. Then you get that many QPs and you go way high in rankings.