Week 1: Thoughts, comments

[Andrew Blair]

What I feel, watching the videos, is that as was said before, defence is king, more so than I have seen since Stack Attack. Secondly, though most teams are shooting, the corner goals seem unguarded most of the time. A robot with either good speed or power stands a good chance of getting to a corner goal at least once during a match, and if they have a good load of balls, could swing the match. Once someone is in the corner, you cannot get them out. Finally, though the ramp seems like a golden match winner, most alliances seem to only have 1 or 2 ramp climbers, and often they still have difficulties. A teams that can fly up the ramp whenever it's needed would seem to be a valuable team-mate.

Regardless, I see this as a game that could change dramatically as the year goes on. Not just in efficiency, but how the entire game balances.

[Conor Ryan]

• This year's game is undoubtedly much more complex than we ever thought
• Everyone's first day at your first regional will be crazy, if you go to a second regional you will dominate in the early rounds
• Robots that shoot in autonomous and can score are rare, and if they have it, they are great.
• Scoring in the corner goals is much tougher than anyone expected because of the small ramp there, ideally you need 6 wheels, good ground clearance, and a powerful and fast way to propel the balls out of your robot, the dumping style will not and does not work well.
• Human players score a great deal of points, and the best way to score with them is th throw the balls 2/3 of the way diagonally across the field, then hope that it rolls in. (this scoring method determines the low point values)
• The average match is between 25 and 40 points
• Defence is positional! You don't push other robots out of their way this year, you just get in front of their shooter, and give them a hard time. Ploughing robots away though it maybe effective is slow and gives the other team a little bit of time to get a shot off.
• The best alliance at this point is 2 shooters and a Corner/Defensive robot to stick on the best shooter of the other team.
• Speed is often more helpful than torque, too get in position and collect balls, which take up a lot of the match.

[codeoftherobot]

I would also agree with Greg Perkins that following the game proved to be very difficult for people outside of FIRST, especially if they were seeing it for the first time. Sometimes, the announcer would say how the decision was made for offense/defense positions at the start, but other times, there would be no mention. To an onlooker, it would seem almost at random. My only recommendation is at the front desk for regionals (visitor entrance), have a small flyer visitors can take with them that explains the game as simply as possible. I've kept track of the rules but during some of those webcast matches, I would lose track of who was on offense/defense.

The corner goals didn't seem to be as emphasized as I thought they might be, especially for those robots that couldn't shoot. Many of them seemed to have been playing defense and then running to the ramp at the end but I think the key teams are going to be those with robots that can shoot well under pressure and make it to the ramp at the end. Ball collecting takes a lot of time and, from the scores, those that had the shooters definitely caused the scores to jump higher.

My favorite parts of the VCU regional were those autonomous shooters. Those robots really tip the balance in favor of their respective teams. Once they have sunk their balls in the goal, the match, quite a few times, was already set. Congratulations to all those teams though during the first week. Some of those designs were absolutely mindboggling (shooting from the ramp at an angle of 80 degrees). It is a complex game though and it was amazing to see how teams worked around various problems which allowed them to participate.

[Daniel Morse]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

• Scoring in the corner goals is much tougher than anyone expected because of the small ramp there, ideally you need 6 wheels, good ground clearance, and a powerful and fast way to propel the balls out of your robot, the dumping style will not and does not work well.

Actually, I do not agree with this. Team 213 has used the dumping method for side unloading in Manchester. On average we can get 28-29 balls into the corner goal if we have 30 in the machine. Take a look at our machine. We do about 9-10 balls in autonomous on either corner goal (left or right).