What did everyone learn from this weekend's scrimmages?

[TheOtherGuy]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

Elgin, can you explain what you mean by "rover wheel"? Is this something that goes onto he front of the trailer somehow?

This was posted a while back:

http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2009...-trailers.html

[TigerDrive09]

Well, we learned that alllll your electronics and pneumatics fails just before you test.... then you get no practice, aaand then you have a massive relief at the school when you rebuild the electronics board and see everything work..even your "secret weapon"

[MarcD79]

We hit 101 at the Suffield Scrimmage in CT with the official FIRST field w/FIRST running the electronics. Yes there were problems with the electronics & yes they did find a solution. With the rover wheel on the trailer tongue, it can be pushed very easily. There was confusion as to when & whom could load the trailer after the moon rocks were counted. This caused us to hunt down each payload specialist station & count what was in each bin. The solution was to have ONLY the payload specialist load from their own station after the bins were returned to that location after counting. Hopefully there will be changes.

[nahstobor]

human loading is a nice option this year

[BigWhiteYeti]

Boy, they sure didn't have match excitement in mind when designing this game. I think teams are going to accomplish much less in any given match than they planned in build. Getting around the field is like trying to maneuver a 747 in downtown New York. With so little traction, its very difficult to push people out of your way, and the bulky trailers only add to the congestion.

One positive thing that may come out of this chaos is that pretty much anybody can beat anyone else given a fortuitous position in the inevitable pile-up.

[jamie_1930]

From sunday and monday's practice at Penfield's (1511) Ra Cha Cha Rally a lot of team's Payload Specialists aren't scoring very high, from counting one payloads specialists score count 2 moonrocks out of 18 and 1 of the moon rock actually managed to bounce on the regolith into his own alliances trailer. The main point of this is to help encourage you guys to have your Payload Specialist practice more. Those of us going to the RIT regional have shipped, but you can still have Payload Specialists practice.

[Doug Leppard]

Great discussion, thanks for the input.

[Matt C]

I learned that it's not as spectator friendly as previous years.

The game resembles a cross between a poorly choreographed ballet and (as said by a parent of a student on the team) 6 year olds playing soccer.

Most robots and trailers seemed to get stuck in a giant rotating lump in the middle of the field, making it very hard for human players to score accurately after the start of the match. (The first 15 seconds seemed VERY important for the human player this year).
The huge lump tends to make it hard to figure out who has what in who's trailer.

I'm hoping for at least one waltz to be played this year for comic effect. I'm thinking The Blue Danube

[Duane Card]

We started the weekend with a shooter and ended up with a power dumper.

We were only hitting one out of 7 shots fired at the goals. (not to good)

Analyzing the game play we found that you could pin or come in close contact with a goal for about 3 seconds on average. It was a no brainier to go to plan B the Power Dumper that can fire 6 to 8 Orbit Balls in under 2 seconds with great accuracy. IMO the Good dumpers will be a force to be reckoned with at most events. Poor moving Bots will be a sitting ducks.........So keep moving if you can do nothing else to keep from being pinned! It will become a game of cat and Mouse or a Dog fight to get position on your opponent to score big for the high profile bots that can fill a trailer with their large loads. The Championship will be a wild one !

[Meredith Novak]

Originally Posted by Matt C

The game resembles ... 6 year olds playing soccer.

Oh, please nooooooo!!!!!

[wilsonmw04]

Here's what I saw while on a practice field yesterday. (disclaimers: We only had 4 robots on the field at once. There were only about 60 balls on the field)

1. Robots are going to have to score from close range (1-3 feet). Long range shooting does not look feasible.

2. Human players are not as effective as I thought past 10 feet or so.

3. The match looks like a soccer game played by 6 year olds at the beginning. If you've seen one, you know what I mean.

[SteveGPage]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Here's what I saw while on a practice field yesterday. ...

3. The match looks like a soccer game played by 6 year olds at the beginning. If you've seen one, you know what I mean.

"Herd ball" with robots! This should be fun! Maybe by the later tournaments we will figure out how to call plays!

... I coached my son's team - from 6 years old, all the way to High School. They eventually learned how to play the game. I hope our teams learn how to play this game in weeks and not months!

[Cjmovie]

Originally Posted by Ian S.

I learned that small robots that only pick up moon rocks/empty cells and dump them to the payload specialists can be very important, because with the 6 bots and trailers on the field the human players have somewhat easy targets for tossing.

Like others I think that dumpers are better than shooters; however if the camera programming is good enough on the shooting teams I may be wrong.

Could some people post videos of scrimmages? I'd love to see some more around and I had trouble finding them through youtube.

Here's a small piece one of our mentors took at our local scrimmage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bryo8...e=channel_page

It ends right before our lovely blue smoke ordeal

[ehochstein]

Does anyone have links to videos or a website where there are videos from the weekend scrimmages?

[dsmoker]

We had never been to a scrimage before, and what a valuable experience it was. With respect to our specific bot, we were able to see how our dumper mechanism (which we just put on that morning) worked, and figure out how to get the kinks out regarding balls jamming in the hopper. With respect to the game in general, I agree the moving in autonomous is vital. I also think that scouting will be difficult, as you essentially need two scouts per team: one to watch the human player and one to watch the robot. Strategy regarding who picks up the empty cells and where to deliver them to will also be important, I think. Finally, a fast, efficient dumper can be an effective weapon. Shooters may become more important as the weeks go by, but at the scrimage we attended they were not, on the whole, very effective.