Observations First Day of Matches

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Greg Peshek

Traction control makes a huge difference. I watched one match with 121 in it, and the difference it made was huge. Robots with effective traction controls will be precious commodities on alliances.

Also it seems as if it pays to have practice getting out of the scrums and the giant messes in the middle. If you can learn how to effectively back out and get away, you will have a good time scoring on the people that are still stuck in the scrum. Those are the things I saw.

-Greg

Yeah, 121 is a step above the rest. They've torn away from the pack. It seems that every single match they're good for two jam pack full hoppers of Moon Rocks. While most teams slip and slide across the field, 121 barely skids.

At BAE, 20 is scary, but they've just got one big dump. We barely got away from them once, it was awesome (from our perspective) to pull away and watch 20+ balls barely miss our hopper.

In general, you've got to keep moving. I have been mostly unimpressed with human scoring, it didn't seem to make that big of a difference.

It's hard to see. Robots are everywhere, and often get in your way. It's much easier to score when you're on your half of the field.

Practice is huge. Teams who built a second practice robot have a HUGE advantage. With finagled our way into 5 practice matches today, and there was a very noticeable difference in # of points scored in the first and # of balls scored in the last.

Overall, this game is fun to watch. Hard as heck to tell whose winning, but fun to watch. The crowd's great, there's a huge "aawww..." when some one misses an empty cell, and huge cheer when someone dumps big.