Picking up balls or not

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by Bongle

The most successful teams in 2006 were those that could both human-load and vacuum-load, though the human-loaded ones tended to be more common.

With that said, I think that human-loading will be far less effective this year than in 2006 because the human players are forbidden from leaving their little zones. One thing that stands out in my mind from 2006 was all 3 human players reloading one of the triplets in about 10 seconds in a hail of balls. In 2006, human-reloading effectiveness was very high because you were allowed getting all 3 of your alliance's HPs about 4 feet away from your robot simultaneously. With the rules for Lunacy, you can only get 1 human player close to your robot at a time because they are spread all over the field.

Also, you are extremely vulnerable while stopped for loading because:
A) Your opponents will have a dead-stopped trailer to aim at (and they'll have 2 HPs close to you). Your opponents might fire a ball or two in your hopper, but balls in your hopper aren't scored yet, so that doesn't matter much.
B) Your own human players might mis-chuck and fire a ball into your trailer by accident.

In review, why this year is not like 2006 and why I think vacuum-loaders will be more effective:
-Stopping to reload in 2006 did not expose you to getting scored on
-In 2006, you could reload at essentially triple the pace of this year, which made human reloading that much more attractive.

These are excellent points.

Some other thoughts:
-If you can human load, it may make it easier to both collect empty cells and score super cells with the robot (drop the balls in the bot and score).
-If you have a big hopper for HP loading you may catch some of the other alliances missed shots

I still believe that HP loading will be faster than pickup b/c you won't have to chase down balls on the slippery surface. Chasing down 10 balls will take a fair amount of time...

One possible strategy is for the HP to toss them all in the same place so your robot can just zoom by and suck them up all at once. Kind of the best of both strategies eh?