Real cool Robot Idea

[Marcel]

Ok this is my theory, if a robot that can collect balls, meaning harvest, collects all of the balls on the field when their alliance has more points. That would be a very good strategy. Not sure if thats allowed according to the manual though. Too lazy to check. Of course I'm sure theres some kind of rule against this.

DISCUSS!

[Ethulin]

Originally Posted by Marcel

Ok this is my theory, if a robot that can collect balls, meaning harvest, collects all of the balls on the field when their alliance has more points. That would be a very good strategy. Not sure if thats allowed according to the manual though. Too lazy to check. Of course I'm sure theres some kind of rule against this.

DISCUSS!

If I understand what you are saying, i.e. pick up all the balls and hold them, then no, there is no rule against it.

But also consider: Any ball they have in their robot
Any ball they have in their driver station

Any of those they could still score!

[KenWittlief]

the trick would be to collect and hold them, then dump all of them into one of your goals at the last second

but then, you could not make it back to the ramp....

darn design trade-offs! the game design committee does this to us every year!

[TheDrWho22]

We've looked at this too... but you need not necessarily dump them at the last second to make a difference. Dump them with 10 or 15 seconds left in the match, or how ever long it takes to get back to the ramp... the other team still needs to reenter those balls into the field and enough to make a difference would take a few seconds to do, and a few seconds to either shoot or dump and they won't get back to the ramp. So yeah, I think it can be done, and if use properly, quite effective.

[KenWittlief]

well, yeah thats easy to say. I think a robot that is holding 10 or 20 balls and starts heading towards a goal in the last seconds of the game is going to attract the attention of other robots on the field

might even be some of that 'push comes to shove' stuff going on!

[Marcel]

Well if your team has more points and enough to still beat the other team even if they get all 3 robots on the ramp meaning you need a minimum of 25 points more than the other team (you get 25 bonus points if all 3 robots are on the ramp at the end of the match.

Sooo lets say team blue has 100 points and team red has 85.
Team blue is ahead by 15 points. But they have a harvester with enough room for all the balls.
So they collect all the balls with about 15 seconds left.
They drop off the balls in one of the corner goals and the human players don't throw them out or anything, they just stay there.
So team blue gets about 20 points or so and also gets the 25 point bonus because of all 3 robots.
So if all works well team blue wins by 20 points

This is just a small example in a nutshell of course something else can happen.

[Donut]

I don't know what others would do, but if an opposing robot collects all the balls (and I literally mean all the balls), I'm sticking one robot in front of them at all times to prevent them getting near a corner goal. With no balls to score, the other team will have nothing to do but stop you from scoring, which gives you very little chance of doing it.

Of course, with a big enough lead this is fine, because then you can just sit there and let the match end and it won't matter if the blocking robot's 2 partners get on the ramp.

[greencactus3]

i dont think this has been mentioned...
a bowler robot. on their own ramp, has a lot of balls stored.. and then after all the bots are on the ramps, it rolls them ALL out towards the low goals..
easy to block so well.. itll work once. but an 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?