Terrifying Karthik

[jweston]

My biggest concern is how low bar teams did their cost-benefit analysis. The poll suggests many teams felt there will be a huge speed pay off to going under the low bar. This speed pay off has to be high enough to outweigh the compromises made to effectiveness at goal shooting, breaching, climbing, and blocking.

The special thing these low bar bots bring to the table is the ability to ferry balls into the courtyard quickly, as well as breach the low bar. But points are scored on scoring goals, breaching, and climbing, not ferrying balls.

It gets interesting when you have so many teams making the same types of trade-offs. The more teams doing the low bar, the less of a premium there is to it. In the meantime, they must live with the design compromises made in order to make it under the low bar. This makes it more likely that there will be a premium on bots that can do well with goal shooting, other types of breaching, climbing and blocking.

Getting under the low bar is nice for an alliance to have, but it's not a killer feature. An alliance can score in all ways without a low bar bot. I'm not as sure that an all-low-bar alliance is as likely to be equally effective. There's just too many other aspects of the game that a low bar bot team might have underestimated in value or in difficulty. Time will tell.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by jweston

The special thing these low bar bots bring to the table is the ability to ferry balls into the courtyard quickly, as well as breach the low bar. But points are scored on scoring goals, breaching, and climbing, not ferrying balls.

You're overlooking a very big part of the game, and ultimately what pushed many teams toward a low bar oriented strategy. You need 8 balls scored to capture. If you want to reliably get that ranking point, especially at early events, you will want to do that by ferrying balls into the low goal. The low bar is probably the only reasonable shot of a single robot trying to stuff anywhere close to 8 balls in that goal every match. Trying to get an 8 ball throughput, even spread across the entire alliance, will require going to the secret passage early and often, and there's no faster way to it than the low bar.

If one of the ranking points was not predicated on scoring a high volume of balls I do not think the low bar would have been such a high priority for so many teams. But maybe I'm overestimating the depths of team strategic analysis, and people just decided to try and do everything.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

You're overlooking a very big part of the game, and ultimately what pushed many teams toward a low bar oriented strategy. You need 8 balls scored to capture. If you want to reliably get that ranking point, especially at early events, you will want to do that by ferrying balls into the low goal. The low bar is probably the only reasonable shot of a single robot trying to stuff anywhere close to 8 balls in that goal every match. Trying to get an 8 ball throughput, even spread across the entire alliance, will require going to the secret passage early and often, and there's no faster way to it than the low bar.

I had taken the tower strength into account. There is 15s in auto and 135s in teleop. Let's say you can round trip a shot in 15s, probably faster doing the low bar. If you plan to capture or climb in the last 20s (i.e. you're going for that capture rank point), you can still get 8 shots in between auto and teleop. More shots are better of course, especially if you miss. My concern is if a design compromises the shooting accuracy even if it is low goal, more round trips are required to get the same effectiveness, potentially making the extra speed a wash.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If one of the ranking points was not predicated on scoring a high volume of balls I do not think the low bar would have been such a high priority for so many teams. But maybe I'm overestimating the depths of team strategic analysis, and people just decided to try and do everything.

Winning gets you two rank points. Breaching also gets a ranking point. The low bar gets you up to 10 points, it works as one of the four defenses needed to breach, and it cycles the ball faster. It's a nice piece to something bigger. If reality ends up reflecting this poll, low bar capable bots will be a very plentiful resource.

Of course, if a team can pull off the low bar and excellent shooting and/or a variety of defense breaching, that will be a very effective bot indeed.

[Torvando]

I think that Karthik is terrified because he doesn't want to make everyone feel bad when they show up with a low bar bot that unfolds to shoot 100% at 54 inches.
He also could have thought that it would be a less utilized strategy. Now he is sad that he wont have a unique robot.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Torvando

I think that Karthik is terrified because he doesn't want to make everyone feel bad when they show up with a low bar bot that unfolds to shoot 100% at 54 inches.
He also could have thought that it would be a less utilized strategy. Now he is sad that he wont have a unique robot.

Hmmm....

[Kingland093]

Originally Posted by jweston

The special thing these low bar bots bring to the table is the ability to ferry balls into the courtyard quickly, as well as breach the low bar. But points are scored on scoring goals, breaching, and climbing, not ferrying balls.

This is what we are trying to do. We always try to go for the supporting role as we just don't have the resources or the capabilities to be an all out offense robot. Unfortunately, I think a lot of teams this year have picked up on that strategy. (i suppose that's good for tall shooter robots who will have a lot of options come alliance selections)

I'm predicting that in the first few weeks of regionals, there will be several winning alliances that cheescaked a tall blocker onto one of the small support robots that will shut down the alliances of small shooters.

[BotDesigner]

My team is building a low bar low goal robot. We also have a 3ft long arm we use for defense manipulation as well as scaling. After seeing the polls about a week ago, we decided to mount a large plastic sheet to the arm for blocking shots. With all the short shooters I have a feeling we will mainly be using the arm for defense.

I don't know why Karthik is terrified, but my team could not be happier about the results of these polls.

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by BotDesigner

My team is building a low bar low goal robot. We also have a 3ft long arm we use for defense manipulation as well as scaling. After seeing the polls about a week ago, we decided to mount a large plastic sheet to the arm for blocking shots. With all the short shooters I have a feeling we will mainly be using the arm for defense.

I don't know why Karthik is terrified, but my team could not be happier about the results of these polls.

Here is a possible reason why Karthik is terrified. Think about the following:

How many points do you think you can score with your strategy?
Could you build a tall robot that scores more points?
Do you have the resources to do so?
If you did, would you choose the low bar robot anyways?

It appears many teams are. Those teams are going to score fewer points than the tall counterparts, and the robots that are relying on passing through the low bar (apparently about 90% of teams are going to for the most part) are going to experience a lot of congestion that will slow down gameplay even more. 4/5 of the field will not be utilized to its full potential in that case (except for perhaps the breach points), which makes for a much more boring game. Not to mention, defense selection is going to be a lot less valuable than we thought.

However, one of the biggest problems is when defense is stronger than offense. If an underdog alliance can shut down a powerhouse alliance from defense, it gets exciting because the playing field is more level. If neither alliance can score boulders due to defensive wall bots (which are easy to make), then the game will also be extremely boring. It's like a game of basketball where neither team can score.

[GaryVoshol]

I was tempted to say something about giant balloons being terrifying ...

[swaxman12345]

Bees? Bees!

[PayneTrain]

FYI my final answer is Karthik is mostly terrified of the near certainty that somewhere in the world someone has unironically written Karthik Kanagasabapathy fanficition.

[cait.schroeder]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Best contributor to the thread (as of Wednesday at Midnight): 12 Cans of Mt. Dew coming your way to support you during the home stretch of the build season.

It is not just one response but the entire contribution from a CD user that is being judged. Of course, Karthik is not eligible**

Cheers,
Dr. Joe J.

*as judged by yours truly. I'm buying the Dew, I'm making the call.

**but he can feel free to help me sort the wheat from the chaff -- I won't turn him away. I still get final call on the winner.

So Joe, who is the winner?!?

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by cait.schroeder

So Joe, who is the winner?!?

He probably hasn't decided and/or is getting a 2nd opinion (maybe from Karthik himself?)

Patience...

[GeeTwo]

I'm probably too late for the Mountain Dew (don't drink it anyway), but here goes:

The poll results terrify Karthik. If these results were expected, they would not terrify Karthik. Therefore these results were unexpected. This means that the Simbotics strategy committee miscalculated the frequency of strategies being employed by teams. To someone as good at understanding and predicting strategy as Karthik, that in itself could be terrifying.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Best contributor to the thread (as of Wednesday at Midnight): 12 Cans of Mt. Dew coming your way to support you during the home stretch of the build season.

Did I miss the post? Is Karthik still terrified?