Week 3 Impressions of Rack n' Roll

[PVCMike]

I found that the game went in an interesting direction. My team competed at the BAE GSR and we expected ramps to be an important part, but not a crucial part like they turned out to be. We were unable to ramp, but managed to make it to the semi-finals by scoring quickly and efficiently. It seems that a combination of two fast scoring robots, and one good defensive ramp bot is the key to winning.

Speaking of defense, and having read the feedback about refs, i suppose i'll throw in my opinion. I think the refs have a hard job, which when broken down, really comes down to reading minds and intentions. Despite all our best intentions, some teams may take advantage of this grey area and purposely cause damage or be a little too rough, but overall, remember almost everyone has good intentions, and in the heat of the competiton, things get rough. It happens. Robots break. Getting angry at the ref's calls, or other teams WILL NOT fix your robot. You need to learn to roll with the punches, fix your robot, exercise gracious professionalism and move on. If your defense damages another teams robot, offer to give them a hand fixing it if needed. Instead of arguing about what should have been, learn from the breaks, and celebrate the gracious professionalism being displayed by the other 99% of teams. Word.

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by PVCMike

You need to learn to roll with the punches, fix your robot, exercise gracious professionalism and move on. If your defense damages another teams robot, offer to give them a hand fixing it if needed. Instead of arguing about what should have been, learn from the breaks, and celebrate the gracious professionalism being displayed by the other 99% of teams. Word.

very well said! Couldn't of put it better myself

[Athleticgirl389]

As I saw in the UTC Regional and a little bit in the NYC Regional, ramping did mean a lot, especially in the end. If an alliance just played pure defensive and ramped both robots at the end while the other tried to score within the last few seconds [without being blocked] nor ramped, the team that ramped won. If it was even a close match, getting one robot for 15 bonus points helped lead to a win. Ramping just seems to become more and more important as the weeks are going on; best alliance [i think] will have 2 great scoring robots and a ramp robot that can play defensive and the 2 scorers can get on the ramo robot [just my 2 cents]

I also noticed that the rack didn't seem to be moved [many times] prior to starting the match. Now this could have been due to the fact not many teams were using autonomous mode, but who knows. And when autonomous was being used [by the few robots] they did pretty well. Things just seem to be getting much better and get higher scores as the weeks are going on =)