First seed alliance captain: Low Bar or not?

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

So after two weeks of competition, there's been only 1 non-low bar capable #1 seed. Guess even the powerhouses decided to go low.

Why do so many top teams end up going low?

1. Powerhouses weren't going to blame the lack of a breach on a random alliance partners getting irrevocably stuck on a defense. They assumed it would happen and wanted to make sure they could still do the other 4. (By themselves if necessary.)
2. Class C defenses are a time suck. In eliminations top alliances are still skipping them, making low bar a faster option if capable.
3. Some of them dreamed of 2 ball autonomous modes. Low bar gave a consistent option for them to design around.
4. They remember what aggressive defense felt like in 2014 and keeping the center of gravity low to avoid being flipped correlated well with the low goal.
5. Parabolic shot trajectories from short robots can still be unblockable from the outerworks given the height restrictions of the defenses.

[TheNerdJedi]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

Why do so many top teams end up going low?

1. Powerhouses weren't going to blame the lack of a breach on a random alliance partners getting irrevocably stuck on a defense. They assumed it would happen and wanted to make sure they could still do the other 4. (By themselves if necessary.)
2. Class C defenses are a time suck. In eliminations top alliances are still skipping them, making low bar a faster option if capable.
3. Some of them dreamed of 2 ball autonomous modes. Low bar gave a consistent option for them to design around.
4. They remember what aggressive defense felt like in 2014 and keeping the center of gravity low to avoid being flipped correlated well with the low goal.
5. Parabolic shot trajectories from short robots can still be unblockable from the outerworks given the height restrictions of the defenses.

Alpha Beta is right, with the ability to do "everything" teams do not have to rely on their team mates to make sure they rank high.

But one thing that bugged me in the matches was the fact that low bots were often the ones that got run over by other bots in matches. Teams should take care into consideration of making sure that their robot is robustly built. I've seen robots that have gotten disabled in math due to another robot running them over.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

5. Parabolic shot trajectories from short robots can still be unblockable from the outerworks given the height restrictions of the defenses.

It's not the shot that will get blocked necessarily--it's the camera sight. Watch for more blockers to proliferate. I think every elim alliance had one at CVR.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

Why do so many top teams end up going low?

1. Powerhouses weren't going to blame the lack of a breach on a random alliance partners getting irrevocably stuck on a defense. They assumed it would happen and wanted to make sure they could still do the other 4. (By themselves if necessary.)
2. Class C defenses are a time suck. In eliminations top alliances are still skipping them, making low bar a faster option if capable.

One of the two non-low-bar captains made a pretty decent living doing a Class C in AUTO(and in teleop). And showed Class A ability in elims, too.

1197 designed to be capable of handling anything that isn't low bar. Part of that was figuring out that with everybody else going low, we didn't need to!

[Legator91]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

So after two weeks of competition, there's been only 1 non-low bar capable #1 seed. Guess even the powerhouses decided to go low.

Take my team for example. Going low was the best option. By ensuring you could go through the low bar you always gave yourself an easy entrance and exit to the courtyard. It also meant that our robot would have a low CG making the chance of tipping over much lower. This made it much easier for us to go over other defenses like the moat, wall, and rough terrain. Plus, the low bar is one of the easiest defenses to get through (if you fit), so it helps ensure a quick cycle time.

This also gave us the confidence that our robot could defeat each defense, score, and hang. That way no matter what teams were on our alliance we could easily adapt to perform the needed tasks.

The 15 inch rule allowed us to package our entire ball intake and shooter outside of the frame. This made packaging low much easier.

[Hikel team 319]

319 is a low bar bot, was number one seed (and event winner with 1058 and 6161) at North Shore District.

[JABot67]

Now that 2 weeks of competition have played out, I honestly don't see what's so terrifying about the plethora of low bar capable robots. It was the right call for my team, and likely the same for most others who made the decision. As member of #TeamRhinoTreads, it is great to have a defense we can traverse both backward and forward. We used it a whole lot as a way of getting between the courtyard and the neutral zone.

[juju_beans]

Originally Posted by Boltman

5805 is low bar capable, they did awesome for a rookie team pretty much securing #1 the entire qualifications they earned RAS

So many things went wrong afterwards... my team's autonomous lowbar got caught for the first time (we actually had the highest auto score in quals at 186), our alliance wasn't able to feed balls fast enough to our shooter 3882 (which had the highest points of goals at 190) and after 5805 ran over us one of our pipes got loose and we lost all of our air and weren't able to scale.

Then the second match 3882's camera broke and they couldn't aim and near the end all 3 of our robots froze for a few seconds and 3647's hook got caught behind thr hanging bar.

[Giantwalker]

238 number one seed at Granite State is low bar capable.

[Kristian Calhoun]

25 at Hatboro-Horsham is low bar capable.

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by juju_beans

So many things went wrong afterwards... my team's autonomous lowbar got caught for the first time (we actually had the highest auto score in quals at 186), our alliance wasn't able to feed balls fast enough to our shooter 3882 (which had the highest points of goals at 190) and after 5805 ran over us one of our pipes got loose and we lost all of our air and weren't able to scale.

Then the second match 3882's camera broke "our shooter was not connected at end of the QF" and they couldn't aim and near the end all 3 of our robots froze for a few seconds and 3647's hook got caught behind thr hanging bar.

Ya tell me about it... our shooter hex shaft broke in QF we were very lucky the Top Hats THANK YOU !!!!! happened to have the exact size laying around. and we had about an hour between our QF and SF since we were first up as alliance 8. I cannot believe we fixed it in time. It was amazing and tons of work to drill tap and attach.

We are going to a Steel Hex shaft in CV.

Also our camera was bent too "went unnoticed" in massive repair commotion so we were driving blind in SF and then our shooter jammed the ball in SF.... I think 3255 lost their drive train in QF too and another bot on their alliance in QF had issues too. It happens.

Basically in this game expect to be broken, and bring every spare part possible. We let our alliance down due to that our shooter was jamming in SF, we are doing everything possible not to have that issue next week in central valley. We'll need to be flawless to beat that amazing world-class field. But we have practice

[Richard Wallace]

1918 at FiM Standish-Sterling is low bar capable, if I am reading this post correctly.

[Nuwanda]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

1918 at FiM Standish-Sterling is low bar capable, if I am reading this post correctly.

Your assumption was accurate. They had a pretty consistent low bar/high goal auton as well.

[Dezion]

NC Guilford County's 1st seed was a Low Bar capable robot, but the first seed's first pick was a non low-bar capable robot. (They go on losing to Alliance #8, three low bar capable robots).

[Lij2015]

Chesapeake: Northern Virginia's #1 seed (and subsequent winner) 2363 was low bar capable.