2014: the year of the underdog

[ToddF]

Consider these classes of robots:
A) A box on wheels that does nothing but herd balls on the ground. Easily achievable by every team.
B) Robot A, with a "basket" on top which can catch a ball that lands in the basket, and then release that ball onto the floor to be herded. Not much more difficult than A.
C) Robot A, with the added ability of picking a ball from the floor and shooting it into the high goal. By virtue of this ability, robot C can also shoot the ball over the truss. Quite possibly much more difficult than robots A and B.
D) Robot C, which can also catch a ball. Likely extremely difficult.

The extremes:
An alliance of three A robots scores 37 in auto, and 31 points per cycle in teleop.
An alliance of three D robots scores 75 in auto and 60 points per cycle in teleop.

The middle:
An alliance of 2xA, C robots scores 57 in auto and 40 points per cycle in teleop.
An alliance of A, B, C robots scores 57 in auto and 60 points per cycle in teleop.

My take: 2014 is the year of the underdog.

In recent games, an alliance of three great scorers was virtually unstoppable, because multiple game pieces allowed simultaneous scoring. With one ball in play after auto, this advantage is significantly reduced. The only way an alliance of three D robots beats the A, B, C alliance is if their auto shot accuracy is PERFECT. If one D robot of the three misses its shot, the auto score for that alliance becomes 55, and all the extra effort that went into those three D robots is nullified.

It seems that scoring an autonomous goal by pushing the ball into the low goal should have quite high probability of success, and high goal auto shots will be significantly less reliable.

I could easily see three A robots, beating the pants off three D robots. The A robots could use "assembly-line" passing to run up the assist scores, and high probability low goal scoring to reduce cycle time. To keep pace, the D robots need high accuracy shooting into the high goal. If not, chasing rebounds and re-shooting will kill their cycle times.

The top level teams will try to build D robots, with varying levels of success. Depending on a team's resources, they should focus on a C level robot with extremely accurate shooting, or the more easily achievable B level robot. B robots with reliable low goal auto modes will be the unsung heros of regional competition. They are easily achievable, and allow an alliance with just one accurate shooter to be extremely competitive.

This year everything hinges on the accuracy of your high goal shooters. If they are nearly perfect, they win. Anything less, and the tenacious A and B robots will beat them.

If you are a team of limited resources, build yourself a drivetrain as quickly as possible, so your software team can get your low goal auto mode working perfectly. Then give it a basket to be a B robot. Make that easily swappable for an accurate shooter, and only make the swap if that shooter is darn near PERFECT.

This year will be the year of "A good robot built QUICKLY beats a great robot built slowly."

One final thought on the accuracy of high goal shooters. There are NO safe shooting zones. Last year you were safe to shoot when touching the pyramid. The year before, you were safe when shooting from the key. This year, good luck getting a clean shot off. Think you can maintain a high scoring to shot ratio when anyone can ram you while you're shooting?

[Justin Shelley]

I strongly agree that this game is built to even the playing field for all teams. Unless they add some sort of endgame mid season...

[RRLedford]

The opening post of this thread is an extremely astute analysis of this years game considerations, and the advice for the build approach is spot on, IMO.

Our team has decided to build the KOP frame & drivetrain ASAP.

In parallel we are planning to build a precision shooter based on a surgical tubing driven ram with an infinitely variable retraction winder.

We want to determine that we can reach a 90+% success rate on the high goal autonomous shots as soon as possible, and then proceed with detecting of hot goal, ball pickup, and other functions.

-Dick Ledford

[Jacob Bendicksen]

I wouldn't discount the mid-season endgame just yet, though it would probably be sooner rather than later. Maybe that will include a safe zone -- if you're touching the truss you're safe or something along those lines.

[tStano]

I entirely agree. I think this year, it will be very interesting to see how teams with limited resources keep up. I think this game will have everything to do with how fast you can get the ball down the field, and I think teams who throw it all over the place will lose track of the ball very easily (especially considering its relative lightness and bounciness(and varying levels of bounciness due to inflation)) and I think recovery from that is going to take a long time. Therefore, your 'A' and 'B' robots who theoretically have very controlled strategies could indeed do very well. However, I think its harder than we think to bulldoze around a ball due to its lightness and bounciness.

I also can't get myself to ever think of defense when I think of this game being played. That is a criticism of myself; I'm not saying that defense seems unlikely. This game has so many complex strategies, its hard to wrap my head around it.

[Team3266Spencer]

Originally Posted by tStano

I entirely agree. I think this year, it will be very interesting to see how teams with limited resources keep up. I think this game will have everything to do with how fast you can get the ball down the field, and I think teams who throw it all over the place will lose track of the ball very easily (especially considering its relative lightness and bounciness(and varying levels of bounciness due to inflation)) and I think recovery from that is going to take a long time. Therefore, your 'A' and 'B' robots who theoretically have very controlled strategies could indeed do very well. However, I think its harder than we think to bulldoze around a ball due to its lightness and bounciness.

I also can't get myself to ever think of defense when I think of this game being played. That is a criticism of myself; I'm not saying that defense seems unlikely. This game has so many complex strategies, its hard to wrap my head around it.

I think not being capable of good defense could lead to some missed opportunities. Consider that since there will be only one ball in "the cycle of assists" once you've completed your third of the exchange you'll likely have some dead time to fill before the next ball comes, especially when working with a slower alliance. That dead time seems like a great defensive opportunity to me.

[pruo95]

I don't disagree with you, but you should be careful. Teams with a D robot are usually high profile and high budget teams. If they have the resources, couldn't they make a universal robot. And if they notice a strategy begins to fail, they could just change and go back to beating the A, B, and C robots.

[AndyBare]

Originally Posted by pruo95

I don't disagree with you, but you should be careful. Teams with a D robot are usually high profile and high budget teams. If they have the resources, couldn't they make a universal robot. And if they notice a strategy begins to fail, they could just change and go back to beating the A, B, and C robots.

I definately agree with this. It is extremely difficult to add during competition, but way easy to strip a bot. If they plan on being 120 pounds with a D bot, by the time those teams get to their A or B bot, they'll be much less, possibly even giving them an edge over other A's and B's. I am not saying it would be wise to strip a bot in competition I'm just saying it could end up helping in the end, if this proves true. But by the time World's roles around, I think the winning alliance will have all this under wraps. Many D's will do extremely well.

[StewyJ]

So true, Todd. You wrote so well what I have been thinking all night. Could be an interesting to see what approaches teams take this year.

[bduddy]

One thing I have learned from watching FIRST for many years is that the top teams are not just the top teams because they build the best robots. They're the top teams because year after year, most of them understand the game and plan strategies far better than the average FRC team. Considering the depth of misunderstanding of the rules and potential strategies that have been seen on this forum today, I don't see that changing, and I don't think the theoretical ability of less-sophisticated robots to keep up will, by itself, help "underdogs" all that much.

[ToddF]

Originally Posted by bduddy

I don't think the theoretical ability of less-sophisticated robots to keep up will, by itself, help "underdogs" all that much.

Agreed. The key to an underdog team doing well this year is recognizing the high value in finishing an A class robot in 4 weeks and practicing for two weeks rather than finishing a C class robot in 6 weeks and getting no practice. The extra abilities of the C class robot are easily negated by middling defense, and have cost them two weeks of practice time.

[JesseK]

I disagree about the 'year of defense' thought Todd. A robot that is pure defense is denying their own alliance 20 points from the 3rd assist. The time to score the goal (either goal) is when the 'defensive' robot goes to get the assist for their alliance.

I think it's really more a year of smart strategists and smart drivers. Paying attention to the opponents' real-time strategy will be key. Paying attention to which opponents have an assist on a given cycle is a must. Even paying attention to which side a ball is about to inbounded from is a must.

Edit - come to think of it, Aerial Assist is more like Ultimate Frisbee that Ultimate Ascent was. There will be some cycles where the opposing team will say 'wtf just happened?!'.

[themccannman]

This is the first game in a long time where the bottom goal is a totally viable option. You only lose 15% of your score on a max point cycle going for the low goal rather than high. Which means if you can decrease your cycle time by 15% by going for the low goal you have effectively made up the points lost form not hitting the high goal. In a 30 second cycle, if you take 4.5 fewer seconds to score in the low goal than the high goal, you have the same scoring efficiency.

[asid61]

I think that this closes the gap quite a bit. Although as stated, the tradoff for defense is that your alliance won't be able to get the third assist (20 points). Unless you can escape the robot you are defending, gain possession, then pass it off and return before the opposing alliance can pass to the defended, defense might just be removing two robots from the game.
Although because of the difficulty of shooting, defense on high shooters can be easily accomplished with a good drivetrain and a 4-5' tall robot.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by themccannman

This is the first game in a long time where the bottom goal is a totally viable option. You only lose 15% of your score on a max point cycle going for the low goal rather than high. Which means if you can decrease your cycle time by 15% by going for the low goal you have effectively made up the points lost form not hitting the high goal. In a 30 second cycle, if you take 4.5 fewer seconds to score in the low goal than the high goal, you have the same scoring efficiency.

I would actually disagree that the low goal is a viable option. The low goal is small. To actually score, you need to get right up next to the goal. Chances of shooting the ball in from any sort of distance is incredibly low. A good defensive robot could easily block one of the goals off from your alliance and then probably delay a score in the other goal. It will take much more effort to actually get to the low goals.

The high goals on the other hand are so wide that if you have a shooter that is decent you should be able to get to a spot to shoot within a short matter of seconds if you have anything comparable to a kitbot drive. Additionally, if you pick your shooting position correctly, a goalie should be a non-factor in blocking the shots.

I'm sure that there will be at least one team that proves me wrong but for the vast majority of teams I feel that the high goal is a much easier scoring option when facing defense in eliminations. The easiest comparison would be fender shooters vs. key shooters in 2012. Fender shooters were effective in qualification matches but they were neutralized in eliminations when defense stepped up.