Week 1 Analysis

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Yeah, there's more defense then recent years, but is that really a bad thing?

Yes

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Are you talking about an excess of defense? I think most of that is teams not knowing how to pass the ball, or lacking any kind of strategy to counter defensive robots. Yeah, there's more defense then recent years, but is that really a bad thing?

Either way, you can't deny it makes for exciting games!

I am talking about even if your team runs "the perfect cycle", each robot is relegated to defense for 2/3 of the match.

Even the announcers are like, "team blah blah blah is not moving, something's wrong ... oh wait, they are just waiting for the ball" ... so dumb.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

This game ranks right up there with 2003. May even be "better".

A number of times this morning I said: "This is the worst game since 2003".

By this afternoon, I was saying this is the worst FRC game I've played.

...at least they can't put Championship at the Astrodome anymore.

[PVCpirate]

What happened at the end of Alamo? I just caught the end where they announced that 118's alliance won.

[Canon reeves]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

What happened at the end of Alamo? I just caught the end where they announced that 118's alliance won.

Probably one of the best matches I've ever watched, it was a tie 85 to 85, red alliance had already won the first final, texplosion played amazing defense, robowranglers were scoring great, so were robonauts, but in the end after further review robonauts alliance won by ten points! Can someone post a video of that match?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Canon reeves

Probably one of the best matches I've ever watched, it was a tie 85 to 85, red alliance had already won the first final, texplosion played amazing defense, robowranglers were scoring great, so were robonauts, but in the end after further review robonauts alliance won by ten points! Can someone post a video of that match?

Best you ever watched? I saw half a match of botched gameplay. Yeah, there was good defense, but man that was hard to watch. There were zero points scored in 45+ seconds.

Originally Posted by magnets

Regardless of if this really is an "issue" or not, the fact that FIRST can't figure out a way to fix that goal for under $60k is really scary. Our "cheap and stupid" ball ramp that rolls the ball out the side cost less than $20.

I have seen zero credible sources suggest that a) FIRST would like to "fix" the problem, but cannot afford to, or b) that the cost to do so is $60,000. This rumor seems to have gained legs because one dude heard a guy who knows a guy that...

Maybe it's true, but who knows?

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

What happened at the end of Alamo? I just caught the end where they announced that 118's alliance won.

Apparently they decided after review of the cycles that the real-time score of 85 to 85 was wrong. I believe it would have been a tie otherwise.

Would like to see a video of that match, not because I think they were wrong, but just to see what happened...

[mechanical_robot]

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

On the scoreboard, there is a number adjacent to the team number. What does it represent? Seems too high to be total assists.

Edit: It appears to be the current ranking.

The green dots represent the number of assists. You are talking about the rank number or the team number.

[Akash Shah]

Originally Posted by Sparky3D

I was expecting a ton of defense, but I was expecting "typical" FRC defense: getting rammed by an opponent's bumpers, an opponent getting in the way/pushing you around, opponents using arms to block/deflect shots. What I wasn't expecting was teams using their intakes as battering rams and hitting an opponent at high speed with them to try to dislodge a ball (without fouls being called), or 5 robots being tipped over during 3 finals matches. There is a difference between rough and violent, and some of the matches are really starting to push that line.

I was thinking the same way. I did not expect it to be like battle bots. Even though we did make it to the semi finals at Hatboro-Horsham District Event, we had a terrible experience with violent defense with our Robot breaking every match and fowls not being called when it should be. The qualification matches were all just ramming but the eliminations did calm down.

[Blackphantom91]

Week 1 analysis from a CSA

1. This game is the roughest game I have ever been apart of. (The carnage that is imposed on robots is quite different than recent years of FRC).

2. Lots and lots of CRIO reboots due to impact. (check all your connections on Thursday and make sure they have slack,slack and are tightly in.) Tons of teams lost comms after a hit by one, two, or even three robots. Flakey connections will not cut it this year. It can be the difference between a loss or win quite literally because you are rebooting for at least 30 secs of the match.

3. If you get into a pushing match with 6 cims behind you may trip a breaker so be weary of that.

Robot/Game analysis.
1. Penalties need to be lessened and rules hopefully should be uniform from tournament to tournament.(Matches decided by penalties always taste bad.) The amount of discrepancy between tournaments is staggering this year, but fixable in the long run of weeks.

2. The refs have the hardest job in FRC this year. They have to take care of at least three different actions while trying to make sure that robots are not committing fouls. This is just too much on them this year. I hope to see this changed so that they can make the right calls. (aka more personnel to help)

3. I for the first time do not envy anyone playing in districts or 3 regionals this year. The amount of punishment I thought the robots took last year was incredible. At this point in the game the amount of hard hits and robots falling apart is way more than I would have ever imaged for only the first week of competition. Many teams play at least 2 or more events before championships I saw great teams fall apart in the final rounds of eliminations due to the nature of the game. If this state of play keeps up they may not have much left by State or even world championships.

4. The game forces even the best scorers to actively play defence between each transfer of the ball. This allows for an almost seamless transfer of control and play. That being said, this is where the majority of the problems start between congestion, guarding, penalties, and just straight up hard defence. After watching the shut down D that was played when 188 had a chance to to win by 610 was smart. It's easy to get stuck in the mode of score, score, score.

Something I love about this game when teams work together to pull a plan off. That takes a ton of moxie and coordination.

Question: how do your think they fix the pedistool problem? That one makes me the most uneasy.

TLR
All in all teams be safe out there. Do what you can to ensure your robot will survive this current game.

[Zuelu562]

As a queuer, I didn't get to see ALL of the carnage and craziness that was going on, but boy did I sure hear about it. Talking to the GSDE refs at Lunch on Saturday, even they were saying they NEED 8 Refs (there are 6 including Head Ref), the additional 2 refs solely watching for penalties or scores, with the current team handling the other.

This game has so much potential when played at high levels if some things are just cleared up, like G40, the bar (whether fixed or left as is), among others.

[Akash Shah]

During our time at our first competition, we broke several things such as very expensive pneumatic cylinders, pickup system, and bearings from other robots ramming into us and using there pickup as an attack

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by Akash Shah

During our time at our first competition, we broke several things such as very expensive pneumatic cylinders, pickup system, and bearings from other robots ramming into us and using there pickup as an attack

Watched you carrying your bot, like a Greek Hero fallen on the field of battle. It was inspiring. Congrats on your awards today, by the way!

We made a weird choice this year, and decided that minimal weight, rather than the 120 lbs, was ideal. We not only felt like moving quickly (to get away from defense and collisions) was the way to go, but that having more mass would make it more likely that we would absorb collisions, rather than bounce away from them.

Even so, we might be replacing some of our frame tubing with thicker stuff, depending on how early rounds go in Utah. Here's hoping that things smooth out before then...

[Racer26]

I can't be the only one that hearkens from the olden days of FRC (my rookie year was 2003). I like this return to the violent defense of yesteryear. Intentionally breaking robots should still be a no-no.

I took one look at this years game and immediately knew violent defense was going to be a thing, and consequently ROBOTs (and especially MECHANISMs that extend beyond the FRAME PERIMETER) would need to be built to withstand a beating. With BUMPERs nowadays though, you don't see nearly as much in the way of bent frames like you used to back in 03/04.

4343 ran an AM14U kit chassis with some added stiffening measures through 14 matches of rough play this weekend at GTRW and it seems to have held up just fine.

I suspect many of the elites tested the robustness of their intakes by crashing their Ultimate Ascent bot (or another past robot) into it at full speed. I haven't seen any of the stronger teams have an intake I would consider 'fragile'.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Racer26

With BUMPERs nowadays though, you don't see nearly as much in the way of bent frames like you used to back in 03/04.

In 2001/2002, we (now-defunct 827) had a welded box steel frame, because you'd have been crazy not to!