Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by iCurtis

I didn't watch the whole thing either, as we still had a robot to build, but I watched probably half a dozen.

1. Robots that are not moving are death. You MUST keep moving. When someone stopped near a HP they'd get filled up with balls. When someone stopped, a robot of the opposite alliance would go and dump their load. I saw a robot not move in autonomous once. That was bad, real bad. You do not want to start 26 points in the hole.

2. Super Cells are important. While a scrimmage is not a regional, the huge point swings that Super Cells provide, are well, huge. I'd bet a snickers bar that at least 75% of qualifying matches during week 1 could've been one with 2 scored super cells (2 Super Cells per alliance seemed pretty typical).

3. HPs have a tendency to miss Super Cells. Perhaps it was the added pressure, but they'd make orbit balls in from across the field and miss Super Cells that were going into a robot right in front of them.

4. Humans score A LOT of the points. It seemed that at least 20 points per alliance were scored in autonomous. It seemed to me that most alliances scored between 30 and 50 points, so Humans are making big contributions. Obviously, this is a scrimmage so robots may not be in tip top shape, but it's something to look out for.

5. There is a tendency to overshoot. I saw a bunch of robots go for an easy score and miss because their power dumper/shooter gave the balls too much "oomph."

6. It's really hard to dump in the middle of the field. It seemed that if a robot was along the edge of the field, it was pretty easy to pin them long enough to score a hopper full. It was not so easy to pin a robot in the middle of the field.

I admit, I was dead wrong about the Super cells (and owe my teammate a buck already because of it) though I think teams that can score at will (there weren't many robots lighting it up yesterday except 126 will make it so that the Supercell won't hurt them.

Teams will have to definitely scout Payload Specialist and their shooting percentages and a third team could be picked just for a good payload specialist and an adequate robot (it moves).

The competition season begins just when high school basketball season ends and it would not surprise me to see FIRST teams lure basketball players to their teams. As hot shooter could be devastating. Especially slow or immobile robots and there are good FIRST teams out there with good high school basketball teams in their schools.

[Fred Agnir]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I admit, I was dead wrong about the Super cells (and owe my teammate a buck already because of it) though I think teams that can score at will (there weren't many robots lighting it up yesterday except 126 will make it so that the Supercell won't hurt them.

I agree wholeheartedly that unless you have a super high scoring machine, losing the Super Cell 20 second battle is doom. But that's similar to other years where the one black ball or the ball on the goal, etc., have been a huge difference. We only won by one point, and in fact, we had the accidentally scored SuperCell in the last game, I believe. I think we won a crucial match (by one point?) in the Elims even after the other Alliance more Super Cells.

And for those that couldn't see it on the WebCast, the Super Cell battle really starts long before that 20 seconds. If you haven't done your Empty Cell strategy and countdown jockeying, it makes thing simply much tougher.

And to boost our ego... was our robot really lighting it up? Since I and my pit team are always focused on our robot's performance and always looking at the bad parts for improvement, I really couldn't give an assessment of how it stacked up to other robots like the Bobcats, the Ueberbots, Buzz, and Trinity. (Sorry if I forgot others, but sad to say, the pit chain only unlocked only a few times a day).

Fred

[Bongle]

Will the videos from this be on TBA? If not, can anyone send me some recorded stuff? I was building robots all day yesterday and really want to see how this game plays.

[Jessica Boucher]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

For those at the event, how did the orbit balls hold up? Were a lot of them broken at the end?

Yes, but the fix IMHO is a good solution. Holes are punched through a plastic strip, then through the ball, and a plastic rivet is put through the holes. They look similar to this: http://www.plastic-rivets.co.uk/plastic_rivets_pic.jpg

The fix is the best I've seen to keep the integrity of the ball structure. Note that the bottom of the rivet is not sharp but pointy, and can scratch your hands up if you're not looking where you're grabbing the ball.

Thanks to FIRST staff for coming up with a great solution!

[Greg Marra]

If anyone knows where videos or match results are, I will be happy to add them to TBA.

[Phoenix Spud]

Are there videos anywhere of the event? We know that 126 won and we have been talking with them about it but we were wondering if we could see any of the matches! It sounds like it was a great event. congratulations to all participants for getting your robot ready early!

[KathieK]

I'm concerned this is going to be a tough game for spectators to follow.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by KathieK

I'm concerned this is going to be a tough game for spectators to follow.

I've notice that too. I had a very hard time telling if a robot was scoring or if it was an HP shot while watching the webcast. The Super cells do stand out a lot, I'm not sure about the Empty cells though.

[Golto]

It is hard to follow the entire field, but pick one or 2 yeams to follow and it's bearable.

[Marc P.]

To answer some questions about how the scoring works, or how easy it will be for spectators to follow, this is how I saw things down on the field:

There was one Official Scorer assigned to each robot/trailer in the match, tasked with keeping track of how many moon rocks and super cells were in their robot's trailer. They would increment the counter on their scoring devices as best they could see by watching their trailer throughout the match. At a regional, this data would be displayed as a real-time score on the big screen, which should help spectators follow the match.

At the conclusion of the match, the field reset crew was instructed to NOT remove anything from trailers until the Official Scorer assigned to that trailer made a final count and verified the numbers entered into their scoring device. Only the Official Scorer could release and remove balls from the trailers.

In general, if you can see the whole field, it's fairly easy to tell which alliance has the upper hand, if there is an upper hand. Closer matches might be more difficult to tell, but it's easy enough to see if there are more moon rocks in the red trailers than there are in the blue trailers, even without exact numbers.

[Flanamana]

It was tough to follow as a driver! There's too much going on scoring wise to have any clue of who won or who is currently ahead. Unless a team had a trailer filled (which mostly only happened when teams didn't show) it was too hard to try to figure out who won

also, just because you have a no-show on your alliance doesn't mean you're guaranteed a loss. we had that in match 15 when aces high wasn't there and we won.

And how come we weren't mentioned in the teams that 'lit up the field'???
IIRC we were 1 of 4 undefeated teams, and only lost when we had to switch drivers (I had to leave for work, I would have been there if we were 3 hours behind haha)

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Do you remember which match that was?

I was at the event and watched almost all of our matches from about twenty feet away from our robot on the sidelines, and we never had the opposing human player sink every shot in autonomous. Granted this could have been one of the matches I missed, but the average human player accuracy I witnessed with throwing balls into our full-speed spinning trailer was about 30-50%, whereas on stationary or linear moving targets this number often approached 70-90%.

I would tend to agree with your numbers Art. The spinning auto mode GREATLY reduced the risk of being scored on, as I was watching your robot compared to others in pretty much every match yesterday.
Then I noticed another team was spinning so I compared them to everyone else, & their bot did much better at defense as well during auto mode.
Spinning code = works well!!
If your programming team can't program anything else this year, you may want to start with this to be defensive, or something completely different. Just program something though or when you're sitting there motionless you're going to get about 10 balls scored on your at least.

Also, there WERE some exceptional Payload Specialists who made good decisions on who to score on (what one of 3 goals to score on) & scored nearly 100% in all matches.
I'm not saying they used & scored 20+ balls every match, but the ones who scored consistently were often seen as "good PS's" & commended by their team mates at the ends of the match at numerous times that I saw.

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

5. Unless penalties were being discussed, field reset occurred immediately after a match was over. I never saw an official count the cells in any trailer. As such, I did wonder about the accuracy of the scores in many matches.
Regards,
Mike

Originally Posted by Fred Agnir

Did they have manual scorers in the end?

The scorekeepers who were operating the hand-held devices during the match for the scoring came out after every single match & verified the count in their own trailer they were scoring by hand-held BEFORE the field reset crew could take ANY Orbit balls off the field just to ease your mind.
(The scorekeepers had a yellow arm band on which wasn't always visible & I actually told a girl not to take balls out if a trailer at one point because i didn't see her arm band, but she had it. Oops. lol)

Accuracy of the "real time" scores is definitely a question with the scoring hand-helds in speaking to some of the scorers who couldn't necessarily see the trailer the whole match due to blind spots of it being behind a robot, so they were told to, & happy to verify the scores manually, so this will not be an issue if they continue this practice.

[Brian C]

Originally Posted by KathieK

I'm concerned this is going to be a tough game for spectators to follow.

I agree with you Kathie. While I did not attend the event I watched the webcast. My wife and son were at the event and after discussing it today we all agreed that it's not a good spectator event.

I said it reminded me of a rubgy scrum only with robots.

My son said he hopes they play some waltz music at our regional this year as it would fit well with the robors "dancing" around in circles with each other.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

I would tend to agree with your numbers Art. The spinning auto mode GREATLY reduced the risk of being scored on, as I was watching your robot compared to others in pretty much every match yesterday.

I can't remember the match number, but it was early on in the day. The HP shot once per revolution into the same spot, and nailed the trailer 4/5 or 3/4 shots.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by iCurtis

I can't remember the match number, but it was early on in the day. The HP shot once per revolution into the same spot, and nailed the trailer 4/5 or 3/4 shots.

I guess that just proves that we will have some good Payload Specialist versus robot matches during autonomous depending on the player & autonomous path.

I would say that is impressive in that case then, but also remind that other trailers that just drove straight got 5+ balls in them by good human players at any given time, & the ones who stood motionless got 10+ on any given time.

It's all relative I guess.