Am I the only one that thinks that Breakaway is a game for the powerhouse vets?

[Mike Betts]

I'd like to point out two fundamentals that the perennials always have...

1. Well trained drive teams, pit crews and strategists.

2. Good, solid, well built robots.

All of the clever mechanical mechanisms or software routines will do you no good if your robot breaks or your team can not function effectively.

JHMO,

Mike

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

I'd like to point out two fundamentals that the perennials always have...

1. Well trained drive teams, pit crews and strategists.

2. Good, solid, well built robots.

All of the clever mechanical mechanisms or software routines will do you no good if your robot breaks or your team can not function effectively.

I think it is worth noting that the Bobcats have made it to Einstein every year since 2006.* This is probably good advice!

*As far as I can tell, no one else can claim this. 148, 217, 1114, 67, 25 have all fallen short at least once. Now that folks, is consistency.

[Arefin Bari]

Maybe. Just build a better robot to stop them and then you won't feel that way.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

Seems to me that this year, moreso than in the past, the dominant powerhouse veterans are winning the events. A number of the big name teams have utterly dominated their regionals.

67 is Champions at 2 events
217 is Champions at 2 events
25 is Champions at 1 event
148 is Champions at 1 event
254 is Champions at 1 event
1114 is Champions at 1 event

It just seems disproportionate to past years... is this year's game too easy?

(side note: team IFI is cleaning house, the constituent teams have won every event they've gone to).

Pink is a traditional powerhouse and this was the first time they went unpicked in the elimination rounds.

[Enigma's puzzle]

The one thing i think everyone is missing about why vets are on a higher footing than rookies is that they have to foresight because of their past experiences to know what the most beneficial accomplishments/tasks will be and, thus, they will start out a page ahead.

For example: in the 2 competitions I have been to, I have yet to see a rookie with a way to keep the ball in front of the robot why they kick it. And as we have seen ball control is key if you want to score, but it makes it near impossible to kick a ball into the goal from any sort of distance.

I'm also not saying that vets necessarily are always are able to identify these hidden design complications. BUT the "Powerhouse Vets" will find the hidden design complications every time (If they are to remain Powerhouses), mostly because they have great prototyping skills and methods.

[Mr. Pockets]

Just thinking about this concept I find myself at a slight loss as to how the GDC would make a game that the traditional powerhouse teams would do worse comparitively to the rookie teams.

Scenario A: Make a very simple straightforward game, thus theoretically nulling extra years of experience.

Result of A: The powerhouse teams develop simple, but highly effective robots, and perfect them obsessively until competitions. Thus, while newer teams still put out great robots, the highest ranked team's ranks remain roughly static.

Scenario B: Make a very bizzare, and new style game (like lunacy with the regolith) with the intention that rookie teams will have an easier time adapting to the new challenge.

Result of B: The skilled teams have the resources and experience to adapt to the changing environment, while the new teams struggle to meet a challenge through a process that they have little experience with.

If I missed a scenario feel free to post one. As it is I prefer scenario A (which I consider breakaway to fall under) as it makes for very exciting, easy to understand games. This fact also makes it better from a spectator standpoint as well.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Alex Dinsmoor

What we found is that a good magnet may even be more effective than a good kicker. If you have an amazing kicker with a crappy magnet they may not get chosen over a team with an awesome magnet but only a so-so kicker. Magnets let you score, while kickers can only guarantee ball movement.

And with the hanger, yes it is a good point boost if you have one, but more realistically many teams look for an effective scorer over a hanger; since a scorer can put more balls in than the hanger in most cases.

That's what I think at least.

I've found that good drivers trump ball magnets. Our robot doesn't have a ball magnet at all, but our driver is amazing. More important than being able to hold on to a ball is to be able to position your robot to actually get to a ball, or just push one in.

In the last 20 seconds of BMR, our alliance won by out scoring our opponents 3-2, they hung, we herded balls into the goal. No ball magnet, no kicker, just driving.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by efoote868

I've found that good drivers trump ball magnets. Our robot doesn't have a ball magnet at all, but our driver is amazing. More important than being able to hold on to a ball is to be able to position your robot to actually get to a ball, or just push one in.

In the last 20 seconds of BMR, our alliance won by out scoring our opponents 3-2, they hung, we herded balls into the goal. No ball magnet, no kicker, just driving.

While true (and congrats), with only 12 scoring opportunities on the ground at any given time, why would anyone choose not to open as many of them as possible with a magnet? You basically need a magnet or vac to peel balls off walls, and that's where at least half the balls go...

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by Jared341

The members of team IFI were plenty dominant prior to organized collaboration. It should come as no surprise that they continue to do so when working together

Here's some food for thought:

I looked at all of the Regional and District Event winners so far this year, and the #1 seeded alliance has won 64% of the competitions thus far. In fact, only once by my count has an alliance seeded worse than 3rd won the event (I apologize, I don't remember off the top of my head which competition that was).

I haven't had a chance to see how this compares to data from years past, but it seems that in 2010 more than ever the high seeds are winning (for example, team 341 has won 4 regionals in the past 4 seasons, and only once - this year - were we the #1 alliance).

IMHO, the field of really effective robots at most events thus far has been fairly shallow; only a handful of alliances seem to end up with prolific scorers and they tend to run away with the trophies. These teams are also aided by the seeding system this year - more than ever, I am seeing #1 seeds that are fairly predictable.

#1 alliance won 57% of the first 3 week events in 2009.
I had a thread about #1 success last year and I've attached the spreadsheet (which is no longer attached to the thread for some reason)

It ended the year at 50% success overall for #1 alliances. 75% of FiM #1 alliances won and 45% for the rest of #1. In events with greater than 50 teams, #1 won 41%, and at smaller events, 58%. In week 1 last year 75% of #1 seeds won.

Like this time last year, #1 has won all 3 FiM districts. I dont expect the small/large event splits to be as drastic because of the new seeding. In the old seeding system you pretty much had to be undefeated to seed #1 because of the low number of matches. A tough draw could ruin a good teams chances and mediocre teams were much more likely to coast to #1 with a favourable schedule. My final prediction on that thread was correct, only 1 #1 alliance made it to Einstein.

After TU16 fixed the seeding system, the seeding results have been excellent in my observation, better than last year. I've see more picking among the alliance captains in the last 2 weeks than I can remember. The system forces you to produce, not just win to seed in the top spot. Those tough hard fought losses to a superior alliance that once removed any hope of a #1 seed are now worth more than ugly 1-0 wins. Teams can improve and rise like a bullet after early struggles. I still dont like the losers geting the winner's score, but I cant argue with good results.

One storyline I am looking forward to this week is:
Will the #1 seed win Philly?
A #1 seed hasn't won Philly since 2001 when the game was played 4v0. There is similar depth at the top and in the field at Philly this year, that would suggest similar parity. However, I am predicting that this is the year a #1 allaince will win Philly.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

While true (and congrats), with only 12 scoring opportunities on the ground at any given time, why would anyone choose not to open as many of them as possible with a magnet? You basically need a magnet or vac to peel balls off walls, and that's where at least half the balls go...

Our robot doesn't have a problem getting balls on the wall... in fact I believe that we're faster at getting balls off the wall than many teams with ball magnets... especially balls in the corners.

I remember one match where we put our robot up against the wall, and drove straight to the goal, scoring 4 balls at once.
To be perfectly honest, we tried adding a ball magnet near the end of the season but scrapped it due to weight, I don't think that's held us back at all.

[Martinez]

Too easy? This is likely the hardest game from FIRST that I've ever played in my last 9 seasons. If anything, it favors the powerhouses because they have the talent and raw personal to get all the big jobs done.

[RRLedford]

I agree that this years game is difficult for BOTH rookie teams and smaller teams to handle - especially if they try to accomplish too much, as our team likely did, and then don't prioritize realistically. Just getting so many systems built was a struggle, forget about testing, troubleshooting and improving them.

As a rookie mentor of a rookie team, at least I had five seniors who had previously been part of a cooperative team (doing electronics & programming mostly), I initially had to rely, perhaps too much, on their past experiences, rather than my own (zero) mentor experience. Being understandingly eager to make a big impact with having their own team - the Robotic Colonels went for a high speed, high traction, high power, short wheelbase, maneuverable, hump climbing tank drive, 4-wheeled bot. They then opted for a full-field capable variable winder high velocity kicker. Ball control was a last minute afterthought, and hanging seemed to be the only thing they could finally abandon as reality started to set in.

With just 11 team members and many of these only part time, it seemed that the work could just not progress fast enough. There was too little time for doing good design, and NO TIME for building bad designs. Doing a mostly hand-tool built bot with the only additional tooling being the the drill press and metal band saw of the school's wood shop, proved very tedious and time consuming. The kicker was really turning into quite a monster as it went from wood prototype to metal.

We finally got focused on the drive system enough to get something we could actually drive by late in the 3rd week after finishing the electronics board, and it then took all of about 3 days more before we broke it driving over our hump. Those dual CIM super shifters on each side proved to be way more powerful than the framing and gearbox mounting scheme could handle. So we finished week three scrambling to rebuild the entire drive with a several fold beefier mount structure for the gearboxes and the wheel wells. By the time we finished this, everything else was bogging down to a standstill.

The seniors were starting to see another year's ship day arriving and a half-built bot scenario again looming over them, so most of the team really kicked up their effort. Meanwhile, we still had no mounted kicker, only winder parts, a marginal trigger idea that was only half built, no pneumatics, and our failed vacuum scheme leaving us with no ball control, but at least all thoughts of doing a hanger were long gone.

Only by the 65 pound withholding miracle would we have been able to have anything more than a minimally functional bot for the Midwest regional. Still, without a CAD model, and still having to finish making so many tight fitting hardware items with no robot to measure, nearly killed us. The bumper mounts would not fit either, we ended the first day with only the ability to drive fast and push balls poorly. Our pneumatics were only intermittently shifting gears, but they would not fire the kicker trigger at all, and the winder was barely 2/3 assembled.

We entered qualification rounds thinking we might at least defend well. We next found out that the added weight of pneumatics and winder h/w had now also made us too rear heavy to make it over the humps, so we just focused on learning how to drive what soon proved to be an exceptionally well performing tank drive scheme. As Day 2 progressed, it was clear our stellar drive performance let us get to locations quickly enough to harass the more nimble swerve and mecanum bots, to the point of neutralizing much of their scoring and other capabilities, by effectively pushing them away from where they wanted to be or go. In the pits we struggled to finish assembly while troubleshooting multiple pneumatic valve problems, a winder encoder failure, adding ball control, dealing with penalty producing problems,,,

So by the end of Day 2, being still unable to kick or control balls, sitting at 29th position, we were not expecting to make it into the elimination rounds. Since we were also attending the Northstar Regional in two weeks, we began focusing on what we needed to do to have a better working bot by the 2nd day there. We even thought we should maybe decline any alliance invitations to better use the time for fixing our bots shortcomings.

Day 3 begins, and what happens next? We complete our remaining elimination matches and only to find out we've jumped ahead some in the standings. We then end up being picked to be with Wildstang and Winovation -- How can we decline? Now we have to refocus. How can we up our game? Can we bail on position encoded kicker winding and go to timed winding scheme? Will our untested winder-kicker stay out too long if we activate it? Can we improve our ball pushing, or even get our basic ball magnet installed in time? What about all the things coming loose on our bot? Can we tighten up the ship enough to avoid penalties. One of our four chains seems to have started getting looser with each match, and we don't have time to shim the gearbox properly. Can it survive into the finals?

We weren't exactly expecting to be under this much pressure for Day 3. We really appreciate all the help and parts sharing that sustained us throughout the competition, and allowed us to accomplish much more that would have otherwise been possible. These are the times that make you feel really glad you are a participant in FIRST program. I look forward to days when a less stressful pit scenario may allow me to also help some other teams a bit too.

So we complete as many critical bot tunings as we can, and then proceed to make it with our veteran partners past the quarter finals and into the semifinals. At this stage is when things start going downhill, as multiple failures start hitting all the members of our alliance. In our final match we shatter one sprocket and rip the pieces right off the wheel breaking the chain as well.

Finally, getting back to the question posed in the thread though, it does seem to me that Breakaway is a very challenging game, especially for the rookies, but also quite challenging for even many of the powerhouse veteran teams. Making it to the finals demands a lot of capabilities in your bot and a good synergy of these capabilities within the alliance. Plus, the individual bot breakdowns must be avoided or handled swiftly, and any multi-bot breakdowns in alliances quickly spells doom. Between the field bumps and the high traction/velocity collisions, it also seemed like there was a lot of damage and disruption of robot functionality at the Midwest Regional.

Despite getting knocked out in the semifinals, even with two powerhouse vets as our partners, we were able to end up receiving the Midwest Rookie All Star award! Now we have to see if we can switch our trip plans from going to Minneapolis to going to Atlanta instead! Not a bad problem to have.

-Dick Ledford

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

A #1 seed hasn't won Philly since 2001 when the game was played 4v0. There is similar depth at the top and in the field at Philly this year, that would suggest similar parity. However, I am predicting that this is the year a #1 allaince will win Philly.

I could have sworn your team, MOE, and Robbie Extreme won as a #1 seed in 2005.

Were you actually the #2 seed?

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by RRLedford

Despite getting knocked out in the semifinals, even with two powerhouse vets as our partners, we were able to end up receiving the Midwest Rookie All Star award! Now we have to see if we can switch our trip plans from going to Minneapolis to going to Atlanta instead! Not a bad problem to have.

A small aside: the play on the field is excellent but the excellence off the field is what helps garner awards such as the Rookie All Star Award. Teams like Exploding Bacon, FRC 1902, can share their Rookie All Star year and experiences with you. They were amazing then and are amazing now - and in their 5th year as an FRC team, they garnered the Chairman's Award at the Florida Regional this season. I think that is really super awesome, but I remember their rookie year and the impact they made on FRC, immediately.

The great thing about being a rookie team is that you are a rookie team and every experience is new and challenging. The other great thing about being a rookie team is that you are only a rookie team once. Next season - you become a veteran team with a year's experience under your belt. It will still be new, and a lot of young teams make the mistake of thinking they know it all, having been through it once or twice. Nope. We never know it all. That's part of being an FRC team.

Good luck at the Championships and enjoy it!

Jane

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

I could have sworn your team, MOE, and Robbie Extreme won as a #1 seed in 2005.

Were you actually the #2 seed?

1184 was #1 seed, 365 was #2, and 56 was #3.