Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day

[Squeakypig]

Our team originally made our floor pick-up for autonomous mode, so no harm done there. However, a large concern in the design of our pick-up was inverted discs. We decided we needed to be able to right them since the "hammer throw" was the most common way we could see teams throwing discs at the end, and they landed upside-down. We could have designed a much simpler frisbee pick-up if we knew that there probably wasn't going to be very many (if any) upside down frisbees.

That being said, +24 points in autonomous is still too good to pass up!

[Brandon Holley]

While the blizzard of frisbees at the end of a match was not they key driver in a floor pickup mechanism for us, it certainly was a benefit we were planning on enjoying.

I have two main issues with the update. As Cory stated a few pages back, how could the GDC not have seen this coming? That is one I will never understand.

The other issue, and the more important one, is the mitigation steps taken to avoid the safety hazard. They did not need to eliminate all throwing of white frisbees to make a safe environment around the field. Adding penalties for discs thrown outside the field of play or limiting the number of discs able to be tossed all help the issue.

I'm definitely disappointed by the update. I definitely understand the reasoning behind it. I wish there was some better forethought on the GDC's part. I also hope they considered less drastic ways of altering the game before coming to this conclusion.

-Brando

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Then there is the time allotted for HP activity. I wonder if the GDC even considered reducing it to 20 or 15 seconds or even 10. Maybe that's too great a change to the match management software to have been considered. We should be used to the GDC offering only partial explanations for their decisions by now.

You think telling 6 overzealous teenagers that now they only have 15 seconds to score as many points as possible is going to make things less crazy? One of the recorded matches from Suffield shows an HP hurling frisbees overhand behind his back every 1-2 seconds. Spray and Pray sure came to mind there.

I think telling them they only have 6 discs and 30 seconds makes things better. Then they have an incentive to make every disc count and are much more likely to be accurate.

[Bill_B]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

You think telling 6 overzealous teenagers that now they only have 15 seconds to score as many points as possible is going to make things less crazy? One of the recorded matches from Suffield shows an HP hurling frisbees overhand behind his back every 1-2 seconds. Spray and Pray sure came to mind there.

I think telling them they only have 6 discs and 30 seconds makes things better. Then they have an incentive to make every disc count and are much more likely to be accurate.

*I* don't think shortening the time would change much. I was only wondering if it had been considered.

The six disk count is further reduced by the number of 5-pt goal shots being attempted by robots. We're wondering what we have to do on an alliance to convince our partners we "deserve" custody of the colored disks for dumping. Maybe they should consider increasing the number of colored disks? IRI?

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

*I* don't think shortening the time would change much. I was only wondering if it had been considered.

The six disk count is further reduced by the number of 5-pt goal shots being attempted by robots. We're wondering what we have to do on an alliance to convince our partners we "deserve" custody of the colored disks for dumping. Maybe they should consider increasing the number of colored disks? IRI?

I wouldn't be too concerned about not getting the colored discs-I don't know about others, but I'd be much more trusting in a robot to score the discs than a HP, especially in early qualification matches.

[connor.worley]

Originally Posted by jd09cw

SOOO looking forward to watching finals on Einstein with 6 - 100% accurate full court shooters... at least 2 robots playing defence on each other for access to the un-protected feeding stations will provide some contrast.

Not.

TOTALLY looking forward to seeing 84" plastic sheetbots shut down full court shooters.

[Garten Haeska]

When I first read this, my heart dropped. We focused on making our robot pick up this year, mainly in the last 30 seconds was the easiest because of the surplus of Frisbees. Nevertheless, we are still glad we made our robot pick up because we can for sure shoot 4 frisbees in auto, but are still working on getting that 5th one in there.

We cant change it for safety reasons, but with this being said, there are those teams that are happy with the choice, and those who are utterly upset that this came on bag and tag day, and then we have all of the human players that are mad because they cant show off their skills.

[RoboTigers1796]

As others have said, I see this only affecting elims and championships.
Standard qualification matches will still have bountiful discs to pick up in my opinion.
However, I think a lot are over anticipating how many discs will be on the field without the blizzard, remember a lot of what I saw anyway from suffield was the result of not having 6 robots on the field and teams still fine tuning their shooters.
However, once you get to eliminations when there are 6(4?) of the best scorers on the field, I feel the supply on the floor will dissipate quickly before the end of the match, and that's why I'm disappointed to see it go. When it counts the most, what we believed to be an upper hand has turned into a vastly less significant feature.
*I am not trying to complain, I understand the need to take action for safety's sake, just discussing the strategy we had that was lost by the update

[Donut]

Originally Posted by SM987

Given that it's stop build day, I haven't seen anyone overreact. That said, this is a minor plus for climbers and a minor bummer for floor loaders. I don't see it being a huge issue in anything but the highest level of competition.

I think this could have a drastic effect in low level qualification matches. Say you are a floor loader and are partnered with two robots with broken/inoperable/nonexistent shooters; the only method of getting frisbees is to get them from the loading station yourself, pick up the handful on your side of the field at the start of the match, or have human players throw them in the last 30 seconds. That last option is now gone, which means there is no way to get a suddenly large influx of discs that your rapid fire shooter can score. If you're going up against a good alliance that round what was already a difficult qualification match to win just became almost impossible.

The changes at the highest level of competition are up in the air to me. At the highest level most of the shooters would be very accurate and many teams would probably have floor pickups, which means there are likely to be few if any missed shots lying around before the last 30 seconds. Depending on how defense plays out this year though the alliance may have already exhausted most of the 45 human loading frisbees, in which case there's no difference since there is nothing to throw. I think the effect on the high level will be dependent on how effective defense is.

[Madison]

They wrote a rule that allowed human players to throw a large quantity of frisbees at goals 50' away -- but only in a limited time frame -- and they're surprised that .. they do? I don't understand how you could ever imagine that the last 30 seconds was going to play out any other way.

[Ankit S.]

Well our human players are gonna be bummed...

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Inside the nets are refs, scorers, field reset, etc. The refs in particular have to work right next to the field to properly ref the game.

I think the refs are outside the nets actually, but I can double check today.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Madison

They wrote a rule that allowed human players to throw a large quantity of frisbees at goals 50' away -- but only in a limited time frame -- and they're surprised that .. they do? I don't understand how you could ever imagine that the last 30 seconds was going to play out any other way.

I think they expected the nets to work significantly better than they seemed to/found the large amount to be significantly distracting to the audience close to the field-even if the nets worked fine.

Overall, I'm not sure how to feel about this; again, it makes floor pickup feel more like something we could have possibly given up, but I'm confident it's importance isn't TOTALLY diminished now...I guess my opinion will depend on how our climbing mechanism goes...

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Madison

They wrote a rule that allowed human players to throw a large quantity of frisbees at goals 50' away -- but only in a limited time frame -- and they're surprised that .. they do? I don't understand how you could ever imagine that the last 30 seconds was going to play out any other way.

I agree - I find it incredibly disappointing and borderline unbelievable that the GDC did not anticipate what was going to happen during the last 30 seconds of the game. What other possible outcome could there be, other than all of the remaining frisbees being thrown as quickly as possible in the vague direction of a goal or robot? And why could they not simply expand the nets, for example, rather than changing a clearly stated rule on the last day of build?

[Hjelstrom]

Now they should lower the climb points to 5,10,15 to even it out! :-)

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Hjelstrom

Now they should lower the climb points to 5,10,15 to even it out! :-)

No. Climbing would not even be worth it if they were that low.