New VEX Game Announced!

[AlexD744]

Disclaimer: I am not a VRC member, and it's doubtful that I will be. (Sadly ).

Okay so my perspective on this games winning strategy is that whatever team can get the most balls onto his own side in autonomous will win. Lets say that the winning alliance has 2 robots that can succesfully pull the small balls out from under the wall while taking the footballs from the posts and the one in between the posts. I predict that the finals will have no autonomous scoring (except on ones self), because the 5 points will be irrelevant if you can get 6 footballs (3 per robot) and 8(each robot takes 4) small balls onto your side. This gives 17 small balls on your feild, 4 available due to preload, and 8 sucked from under the wall. That is 29 points from small balls, while the opposing alliance has 21 points (17 + 4). Now as for medium balls, 5 on your side, 1 from preload, and 6 knocked from wall. That is 60 points. Assuming that the opposing alliance would take the other 3 medium balls (sitting in the center), they have 11 balls (6+1+3). So far the score is 89 - 71(5 extra for autonmous bonus), of course the dumps would not occur until the end. Now that the balls are on your side one robot would collect the balls while the other would bring the other blocks the goals to ensure that the other alliance could not pull ahead. Now because the large balls are worth 10 points the other alliance could score and the points would weigh out 81-89. This does seems close however, if the robots are designed to function perfectly in autonomous, I feel that this could be a winning strategy.

A robot that can succesfully take at least 5 footballs (from the wall) in autonmous would work just as well, but is probably harder to do that fast enough.

Keep in mind that the score is assuming that the other alliance is able to both take the 3 medium balls from the middle wall before you do and score their large ball. So this is worst case senario as long as you perform your tasks correctly.

The primary scoring robot (the one that collects for the 2 minutes), would need to be able to score over any form of defence, so that eliminates scoring through the base, although it would probably be able to reverse the mechanism that sucked up the small balls. The "shooting" mechanism would probably need to be similar to 67's (FRC) robot except aim higher.

The second robot, known as the defensive robot, would be slightly trickier to design (maybe). It would have to get a cover for the goals and a mechanism that knocks medium balls of different heights and can suck the 4 small balls from under the wall. It wouldn't have to nessicarily be able to score these balls just get them onto it's own side so the "primary scorer could pick them up. This also mean that the preloaded balls would have to leave the robot for the primary scorer to use.

Some harder problems to over come is getting a hopper space to accomodate 29 small balls and 12 footballs. Unless the defesive bot scores, this would have to fit in one bot, and be expelled within aproximately 5 secs. I think a hopper that expands, similar to FRC 45 (i think) in 2004. However, this stress would be alleviated if the defensive bot scored.

The question I would ask is, what should I depend another team to innovate and what should I innovate?

My $0.02

There are proably other strategies which involve scoring the large ball and/or scoring in the goals and/or scoring in autonomous (on the other team), however, I feel this one covers most basis, the tricky part is getting two robots together that can do these tasks and do them well. And I could be 100% wrong and off-base, just giving my opinions.

[ATannahill]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I see no rules preventing covering the triangular goals or blocking the ports in the wall, good defence strategy because I see many teams going for those areas.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

Correct me if I'm wrong but I see no rules preventing covering the triangular goals or blocking the ports in the wall, good defence strategy because I see many teams going for those areas.

You can make a good case for sticking a football into your own goals in auto to prevent the other side from filling them up. The ability to remove that football near the end of the match would be important, too.

[ATannahill]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

You can make a good case for sticking a football into your own goals in auto to prevent the other side from filling them up. The ability to remove that football near the end of the match would be important, too.

I was thinking of a plate place in front of it, but that would work too if the ball was not squished.

[AlexD744]

I think the plate would be much easier. I've already expressed my opinion as far as the reason to be able to defend, even though I think the ability to score in them is superfluous, it could be helpful. So many aspects to wrap your mind around, I love designing.

[The Zevling]

Originally Posted by AlexD744

Disclaimer: I am not a VRC member, and it's doubtful that I will be. (Sadly ).
<long analysis>

The factor you're forgetting (which is completely understandable, considering you aren't an active VRC member) is that matches during the seeding rounds are completely random. If you design your robot defensively, there is no guarantee that your partner is offensive.

Is anyone familiar with the prisoner's dilemma*? That sort of thing could occur here:

1) Because the worst possible scenario is two defensive robots, everyone will build offensive robots.
2) because everyone has offensive robots, a defensive robot will always create the "ideal match-up".
3) Several teams, following this logic, create defensive robots.
4) Several teams, anticipating #3, have to decide whether to create an offensive or defensive robot. It seems safer to make an offensive robot, but that puts you back on #2.

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

Correct me if I'm wrong but I see no rules preventing covering the triangular goals or blocking the ports in the wall, good defence strategy because I see many teams going for those areas.

I myself have found no rule preventing my "uber-wall", which would ideally block all ball transference except where specifically allowed by my robot.



*The prisoner's dilemma:
You and your partner in crime are captured, and the police want confessions. So you are separated, and the police make the following deal to you and your partner:
1) If you confess and your partner stays silent, you get off scott free, and your partner gets 20 yrs in jail, and vis versa.
2) If you both stay silent, you are both confined to a holding time of 2 yrs.
3) If you both confess, you both get 10 yrs in jail.
Assuming you don't have any feelings for your partner, and you know that your partner is just as smart and logical as you are, and has no loyalty to you either, do you choose to confess or stay silent?

[phr34kR]

Just to clear things up i only disliked the chain in the way she was using it
(we will be using quite a bit of chain this year) Also i think improving is a good thing we completely redesigned and rebuilt our robot in the week and a half before we flew to Dallas, luckily it worked out for us and we made the semi finals at worlds

[Chris is me]

So in my endless quest to play with design ideas for a game I'm not playing, I'm currently working on a design very similar to FRC 1625's robot in FRC, but with an omni drive chassis so that you can slide horizontally along the wall to avoid robots trying to play defense. Ideally the hopper would be able to "catch" some of the balls people are throwing over, too

Having the 3-part tread with really wide feed solves the different length issues, but the problem arises with the slightly wider footballs. I'm thinking of making one or two of the center treads slightly closer to the wall (that the balls roll up), so balls will corral there while footballs will go up the edges (kind of like the gripper things that 1114 had on their bot this year in a way). That or perhaps advanced tread flippers to hold balls.

Basically I wanna build real bad :/

[Smoores]

what if you dropped a football in an opponent's triangle? that would block it, and that would be a score for you. Is that legal?




If so I have a perfect design.

[ttldomination]

Going a little off topic, but does anyone know what the regional registration fees generally range? We're trying to register and we'd like the infor.

[595294001]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

So in my endless quest to play with design ideas for a game I'm not playing...

Me too!!!!!! Unfortunately my design actually uses stuff allowed in the FTC rules (idk about vex, hence I'm not competing, though it could probably be done in Vex too).

A Large 16x16x10-ish box, framed in metal, with string strung from top to bottom. Attached to the chassis on parallel bars, for lifting. The box is heldheld 4-5" of the ground. At the front there are Lego motors (feeling the FTC????) that turn a robot-wide sweeper (similar to many FRC bots, or FTC Team Power Surge), with sticky material (I was thinking about non-stick pad), that hits the ground. When it rotates, the friction pulls the balls (or footballs) underneath it, and then up a ramp (attached to the chassis), into the hopper. You can than lift the scoop up so that the it is covering the opponents triangle, and when you reverse the ball collector, it dumps in your own. Or you can lift it over the wall and reverse it to drop, many balls quickly onto the opposite side.
Good balance of D and offense.

<Confusion> Also for added capacity, you could have it made of two 4/6ths cubes, that folded into each other (one is slightly smaller), and are then separated by servos, to add capacity (almost twice as much length), it would work as long as continuity could be maintained between the two, so that balls wouldn't stick.</Confusion>

No Idea if its possible, but It looks cool in my head.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

Going a little off topic, but does anyone know what the regional registration fees generally range? We're trying to register and we'd like the infor.

Registering a VEX team with IFI is $75. The second through "nth" teams in the same school/club are $25 each. Most VRC tournaments are $50-100 per robot, except for Worlds, which is $250 per robot. If you have one robot, and attend two tournaments, you would spend $175 to $275 in registration fees. Our registration costs for the year for our five* VRC teams was $175 to IFI, plus $750 in registration fees for three tournaments, plus $1,250 to register for Worlds, for a total of $2,175. These are all 2008-2009 season costs. I don't know how much it will cost to attend Worlds in 2010. Hope this helps.

* We added a sixth team for our last tournament, which cost us an additional $75 in registration fees.

[The Zevling]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

So in my endless quest to play with design ideas for a game I'm not playing, I'm currently working on a design very similar to FRC 1625's robot in FRC, but with an omni drive chassis so that you can slide horizontally along the wall to avoid robots trying to play defense. Ideally the hopper would be able to "catch" some of the balls people are throwing over, too

Having the 3-part tread with really wide feed solves the different length issues, but the problem arises with the slightly wider footballs. I'm thinking of making one or two of the center treads slightly closer to the wall (that the balls roll up), so balls will corral there while footballs will go up the edges (kind of like the gripper things that 1114 had on their bot this year in a way). That or perhaps advanced tread flippers to hold balls.

Basically I wanna build real bad :/

I've always used zipties on the treads, which are probably easier to get ahold of than tread flippers, and longer (even if they fall of right and left).

Originally Posted by Smoores

what if you dropped a football in an opponent's triangle? that would block it, and that would be a score for you. Is that legal?




If so I have a perfect design.

Aren't the triangles your opponents are trying to score in on your side? I thought they were. If they are, than jamming footballs in them would give your opponents the football's points, not you.

[ttldomination]

In this case, Zip Ties might actually make more sense considering that zip ties are more flexible than the flaps. The flaps might cause jamming and they're a pain to deal with.

[Rick TYler]

With the right design, you don't need anything on the VEX treads to lift objects. Here's a picture and a description of VRC 418, showing off a tread design several of our robots used this year in Elevation: http://www.vexforum.com/gallery/show...hp?i=3366&c=26. Make sure you scroll down for the description.