UNH Recap and Robot Rankings NEFirst

[joemost]

UNH was a fun event! Here are just some sort of my notes that I had scribbled down. Only two more competitions in the regular season until the New England Championship at WPI! (Everything on this post is only about New England teams, and in this case specifically the UNH Competition

I am not trying to offend anyone and I am pretty harsh about every team! I would love to hear your comments/ opinions.

Top Tier Stackers: 2342, 3467, 885, 213, 4564
Second Tier Stackers: 58, 3390, 811, 5122
Top Tier Cappers: 138
Second Tier Cappers : 133, 58

2342- Kings of Qualification. Kings of ONLY qualification. 2342 reminds me a lot of 1519 as they have nearly perfected their 3 tote stack auto mode. Capable of getting coop pretty much every round. The weakness of their team in my opinion has been their picking. They seem to like to pick a capper 3rd pick in the playoffs. Picking a robot that could cap their stacks more efficiently in the playoffs would serve them well.

4564 - good stackers, sometimes seems a little clunky

811 - sometimes seems a little slow. But not bad stackers. I look for them to be one of the strongest third picks at WPI, as they will not require a cappers attention.

213 - Wow, big improvement. When I first saw them I wasn't too impressed, but they really stepped up their stacking. The limited productivity early made them a little bit of a sleeper in playoff picks. But boy did 133 get their moneys worth with them.

501 - a strong third pick for WPI. Slow and unstable but with big upside especially in the playoffs.

58 - probably the most versatile team on the field. Not a top tier capper but definitely good. I am unsure that anyone on the field can cap and stack as well as they can. A jack of all trades. Seemed to struggle with getting containers off of the step

133 - Flew under my radar in the Quals, but definitely showed some skill at capping in the playoffs. It seemed to work to their advantage. A capper like 138 looks too good to be picked as the 3rd alliance in the playoffs, while a team like 133 might still be on the board. I think teams that can get a good capper 3rd in the playoffs might end up winning it all.

138 - Struggled in the playoffs and ended up getting knocked out. Often struggles a but in Coop as if they don't have a stacker they can't do a lot. They attempt to stack totes two at a time but it takes a while. Was my pick to win as they are able to control the containers in the playoffs. The double cap was awesome to see. It allowed them to put up some serious points in matches where they were left with robots only capable of making 1 or 2 stacks

5122 - good stackers. In WPI if they focus on more stacks instead of two huge stacks I think they will go far. Need a good capper though, takes too much time to self-cap.

319 - awesome to see in auto, being the only team besides 2342 to get a 3 stack in auto. Doesn't seem to do a ton after that in regular matches. Sometimes they seem to be a very fast stacker. Sometimes it seems to take all day

1058 - a notorious self capper. They were a little consistent, sometimes would make huge stacks sometimes would just struggle at the feeder station most of the match. Often I would only see one big stack from them a match.

885 - impressive stackers. Fast

3390 - stack two at a time. Only downfall is a capper can't cap them until they are done making both stacks. Not as strong for team play. Still good.

3467 - great stackers. Need to focus less on capping their stacks though, only do it if its a must in quals. I loved how they didn't waste time for the little points in auto during the playoffs. I also gotta say, great drive team. I was behind their drive team during one match and the communication between their human player and operator was great. I haven't seen a human player hustle like theres before.

An overall trend I saw was teams like 501 and 5122 getting a little too obsessed with making huge 6 stacks. Every team doing it was only capable of making 1 or 2 in a match and would struggle to get it to the scoring platform. It really seems like 4 is the sweet spot level.