2010 week 1 low scores

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

It's the worst I've ever seen it.

Imagine both alliances playing for 2 minutes 15 seconds and not a single robot being able to herd a SINGLE BALL across the scoring line. Not once. It's happening with frightening frequency. Issues I'm seeing:

1. People drastically underestimated the importance of an effective ball magnet.
2. People drastically underestimated the importance of hanging.
3. People clearly do NOT UNDERSTAND the scoring rules and are playing big-time defense, and the teams who DO understand the rules are absolutely running-away score wise.
4. The penalties this year are epic. In one match we saw a bot waved for 12 penalties because their kicker was staying out of package to long - and they continued to kick over and over.

I thought last years game was slow. I stand very, very corrected.

I don't think teams underestimated hanging. If hanging was a bigger bonus, say 5 points. There would definitely be more hangers. Making a good, reliable kicker that can pump out balls quickly is not worth the sacrifice to hang especially if you can score more than 2 balls in the finale. I don't think it is teams underestimating it, it is just that it isn't worth it.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I don't think teams underestimated hanging. If hanging was a bigger bonus, say 5 points. There would definitely be more hangers. Making a good, reliable kicker that can pump out balls quickly is not worth the sacrifice to hang especially if you can score more than 2 balls in the finale. I don't think it is teams underestimating it, it is just that it isn't worth it.

I think people overestimated their own kickers when making this tradeoff. Teams never fail to overestimate their own scoring ability.

[BrendanB]

Very, very true Chris!

[Enigma's puzzle]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I think people overestimated their own kickers when making this tradeoff. Teams never fail to overestimate their own scoring ability.

I believe that they did not overestimated there own kickers, but more overestimated their ability to line up kicks and to have the ball in the right position. I'm sure there kickers worked fine in the shop when the ball want rolling away.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Enigma's puzzle

I believe that they did not overestimated there own kickers, but more overestimated their ability to line up kicks and to have the ball in the right position. I'm sure there kickers worked fine in the shop when the ball want rolling away.

To clarify, I think they misjudged how well their ball manipulation assembly would work, in terms of making and maintaining possession, aiming, and firing.

[Enigma's puzzle]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

To clarify, I think they misjudged how well their ball manipulation assembly would work, in terms of making and maintaining possession, aiming, and firing.

Yea, I figured as much, thats why i posted what your really meant.


I think we are going to see a lot of teams bring ball handling mechanisms to their robots at competition. I saw alot of teams that were scoping out and gawking at the best handling mechanisms at Kettering. That includes the better teams looking at the best because only a couple of teams had a magnet that could take the ball backwards with them.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I don't think teams underestimated hanging. If hanging was a bigger bonus, say 5 points. There would definitely be more hangers. Making a good, reliable kicker that can pump out balls quickly is not worth the sacrifice to hang especially if you can score more than 2 balls in the finale. I don't think it is teams underestimating it, it is just that it isn't worth it.

So far on webcasts I have seen about 5 robots with the kicker+possession combination good enough that I would make that tradeoff.

2 of those 5 do not have hangers, I know at least 2 of the other 3 do, although I only saw 1 of the 5 successfully use their hanger.

[1986titans]

In KC, we had a few matches today with two robots from the same alliance hanging. A few more individual teams hung, and some came very close.

Teams playing defense may not always be able to cross the bump, so it may not be strategy for them.

Penalties are very costly in this year's game. There was a team today that got down to -4. Yes, it only counts as 0 at the end of the game, but it is a large deficit to get out. There were a lot of matches lost to penalties.

Most robots probably were not sitting by choice. Most were disabled, and a couple of stations seemed to have problems more than others. It's probably just the "week 1 cobwebs," but things seem to be moving a lot smoother than last year.

[Alex Dinsmoor]

Originally Posted by hg273

Update from Autodesk Oregon:

Not a single team has hung yet through 61 competition matches

That almost scares me. Here at Kettering there are about 3-4 robots that can consistently hang, and only 1 out of the top 5 ranked robots hang.

I know as a team we try hanging every time, and we're only 1 of 2 teams that does that

Originally Posted by 1986titans

Teams playing defense may not always be able to cross the bump, so it may not be strategy for them.

Penalties are very costly in this year's game. There was a team today that got down to -4. Yes, it only counts as 0 at the end of the game, but it is a large deficit to get out. There were a lot of matches lost to penalties.

Most robots probably were not sitting by choice. Most were disabled, and a couple of stations seemed to have problems more than others. It's probably just the "week 1 cobwebs," but things seem to be moving a lot smoother than last year.

When strategizing this year we found that a majority of the "defense bots" this year did so because a) they couldn't traverse the bump and b) their kicker didn't work. Unfortunately a lot of these robots didn't want to be "defense bots" initially...

And this is certianly the year of the penalty. One team in a match this year racked up 11 penalties due to a kicker malfunction. Fortunately their alliance didn't score so it didn't hurt them.

And I have to agree with you on the field issues. There were matches where 5/6 robots were disabled because of field issues. When we first started today we had to program all of the radios twice because of field issues. Due to that there was only 1 practice match. Hopefully week 2 will run much smoother!