Team Hammond

[The Lucas]

Seeding has more to do with luck and playing style than ability to win.

Parings in QP matches are random so the luck of the draw decides how even the teams are. Often the bot with the worst partner in a close match often loses and suffers the low score. Bots paired with better partners that win get the same score even if they break or get disabled early in the match.

Executing your strategy the best and winning doesnt guarantee high QP's. Last year Beatty grabbed three goal and crawled into their scoring zone making it impossible for their opponents to win. They never got the 30 points for those goals, because QPs last year were 3X the losing score last year (possibly zero point for winning). Ball bots seeded better last year. Beatty did not seed but was the first pick by #1 seed Rage 173 (a great ball bot). This year some bots colluded to keep the score high win or lose. Fixing matches is not a feature that will help a bot win elims but they got high seeds. In 2001, seeding was more meaningful because the objective of the 4 bot alliance was to score the absolute highest amount of points possible.

[Adam Y.]

Don’t get me wrong. The pushing, shoving, and the battles for the top made for an exciting game. On the other hand, some of us have serious doubts as to whether we can stay below the $3.5k ceiling while building our machines to military specs in order to survive the game.

Actually building a durable machine is not as hard as you think it is. 80/20 Profile and Bosch Profile is tough as nails and easy to assemble. I know quite a few people have used it in their battlebots and this is the second year our team has used it. We have never had a problem with the robot breaking. It is easy to assemble and durable. (We let last years robot roll off the table with only minor damage) It can take a fall off a bench top and still be good to go. Not to mention the oddles and oddles of fun connectors you can buy. Its a tad expensive than just plain old metal and bolts but it's much more versitile.

[Ian Mathew]

Originally posted by Jack Jones
You can wish/hope/pray all you want; but the question posed was – What happened to Hammond? In my opinion (to which I believe I’m entitled) the best way to counter Hammond’s awesome flailer was to hit them hard before they could deploy. That fact wasn’t lost on Hammond’s opponents, as evidenced by the number of times they were run at in the Regionals as well as the Nats, where they were toppled out-of-bounds and had their pivot tubes bent in the process. The referees endorsed the tactic by disabling #71 and not penalizing the Bot that put them there.

Don’t get me wrong. The pushing, shoving, and the battles for the top made for an exciting game. On the other hand, some of us have serious doubts as to whether we can stay below the $3.5k ceiling while building our machines to military specs in order to survive the game.

So, let’s be careful what we wish. Or, we’ll end up wearing asbestos suits and sporting heavy armor plate as we try to dodge the Pulverizer.

Easy solution: build a bot that doesn't get pushed easily, and can withstand being hit. For example(I don't mean to be egotistical, but I know more about our robot than I do about others): During a match in our division elimination rounds, we were flipped completely upside down. We were like that for probably a good 1:15 before being flipped back over by our alliance partners, 302. We were still able to drive, clear out boxes, and eventually win the match. We ran it in the next match, and it worked perfect. Another exaple is the Martians, team 494. They were a fast robot that was kind of difficult to control. Their speed gave them great advantages in getting to the wall in auto, and knocking down stacks. They caused, and took many hits and still managed to make it to every qualification match in the two regionals I saw them in, and not break once. Also, I specifically asked a Referee while waiting in line at Six Flags, if a robot who is pushed outside the arena would be disabled. She said yes. When battling for a stack, you must be responsible for keeping yourself inside the field, not your opponents.

[Ryan Dognaux]

71's arm was the best that I saw at Nationals. Period. It was fast and simple. If you had an arm on your bot it was very tough not to have a high center of gravity. In case you strategists haven't figured out by now, a great strategy to stop arm bots is to either 1) put something in the way of the arm such as a robot or 2) go back into them under the bar and push them, if that's possible. #2 may not work on some robots due to the fact that they can't be pushed around easily.

In my opinion, we sorta over-engineered our arm. It was too heavy and too large for the job we wanted it to do. Cudos to 71

[Brian Beatty]

Here is the short version.

We saw 25 line up to come under the bar to push us. We then switched to another little seen auto program that can hit the bins the "conventional" way and then park on top of the ramp. Once on top of the ramp, we are tough to remove. However, Team 25 shot under the bar and just clipped our tail which caused our auto to hit the outside wall. After auto, we were pushed out-of bounds by 25. Even then, it would not have mattered because we had lost a chain during the beating. Our partner ( 522 ) was tipped early and the match was lost. For Wayne: As for looking a "little slow", we all looked slow compared to your team's machine. More amazing than the speed was that the driver had any control at all. While I am not a fan of the strategy, that was the game this year and your team always finds a way to be competitive.

Sincerely,

Brian Beatty

[Elyse Holguin]

thanks guys... but as for the battlebots becoming ever present in FIRST.... well, that's why we like 111 so much: they depended on some amazing engineering rather than being one of about 200 plus bots tht did nothing but bulldoze and beat up another robot. we didn't want to go with the flock, and you can't win 'em all. but we did show what we could do, and we had a LOT of fun while doing that.

[ssjcell]

Originally posted by goosefrom71
thanks guys... but as for the battlebots becoming ever present in FIRST.... well, that's why we like 111 so much: they depended on some amazing engineering rather than being one of about 200 plus bots tht did nothing but bulldoze and beat up another robot. we didn't want to go with the flock, and you can't win 'em all. but we did show what we could do, and we had a LOT of fun while doing that.

... i like bulldozing the flock


so are you saying that it doesnt take "amazing" engineering ability to create a powerful drive train, along with a universal gearbox

[Madison]

Originally posted by Brian Beatty
More amazing than the speed was that the driver had any control at all. While I am not a fan of the strategy, that was the game this year and your team always finds a way to be competitive.

Sincerely,

Brian Beatty

Ouch.

I think, in your defense, what you probably intended to say was that you didn't like how the rules and gameplay were biased in such a way as to promote their strategy.

I, like you, it seems, had hoped that more robots would do some amazing things with bins, stacks, and multipliers. But, I didn't properly interpret the rules and examine likely scoring scenarios. For that, I'm a fool, not the people who took the simple, straightforward approach and did so well.

[Mike Schroeder]

Originally posted by Jack Jones
A:

FIRST-2003 resembled/allowed/became Battle Bots. Hammond was the natural target!

could someone please contact me with the requirements on how someone becomes a "natural target" i am avalible through email, aim, and MSN messanger, and yahoo

and to bring this thread WAY off topic, wood was right, everyone complained that there was not enough contact in games like 2001, and now there is too much contact, i dont ever think FIRST will bring a "perfect median" they try to please everyone while making it a Veiwer friendly competition, so with that i thank all the people in first for all either hard work setting this game up

[Jack Jones]

Originally posted by "Big Mike"
could someone please contact me with the requirements on how someone becomes a "natural target" i am avalible through email, aim, and MSN messanger, and yahoo

and to bring this thread WAY off topic, wood was right, everyone complained that there was not enough contact in games like 2001, and now there is too much contact, i dont ever think FIRST will bring a "perfect median" they try to please everyone while making it a Veiwer friendly competition, so with that i thank all the people in first for all either hard work setting this game up

With respect to forum contributions in general:
A “natural target” would be a post where the message was derogated due to a total disregard for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

With respect to my contribution:
A “natural target” would be the one team that may lay claim to three national championships.

[Gadget470]

Hammond as a "Natural Target" pretty much means that a lot of teams wanted to dethrone them from their back-to-back championships by any means necessary.

[Brian Beatty]

I normally do not comment about replies to my posts as that is the process. But just to clarify my position so there is no misunderstanding. I have been a big fan of team 25 since the 2000 game with their arm--great, original thinking. Just because I am not a "fan" of the strategy does not mean I am upset or disrespect what team 25 and others did. Yes, like every year, the game drove the strategy--the 12 finalist teams looked like a line of Abrahms tanks. We felt that was where the game was going( look at Car Knack predictions ), but our challenge was to design a machine that could compete without being a total tank. If we built a tank, we would have been one of a couple of hundred tanks. We built a very good tank in 2002, but we did not like the game or the strategy necessary to do well. We don't want FIRST to become Battlebots or tank building contests every year--machines are about helping mankind to do bigger and better things. We think the 2001 game was great, although we realize we are in the minority.

In conclusion, my feeling is the challenge for FIRST is to design a game that has "vigorous interaction", but does not let this interaction be the driving component of the game.

Sincerely,

Brian Beatty

[Ben Mitchell]

Well said, Mr. Beatty. I also loved the 2001 game, and I disliked both this years game, and last years game, because all you needed to do well was a fast or powerful drive train.

FIRST should put more emphasis on dexterity and BUILDING something, as opposed to power, and tearing things down.

The game was called "Stack Attack."

Need I say more?

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally posted by Brian Beatty
We don't want FIRST to become Battlebots or tank building contests every year--machines are about helping mankind to do bigger and better things.

And that's what FIRST's all about right there. I challenge all you teams out there... when next year's game comes out... to not resort to an incredibly powerful box. Go against the norm.

[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Ben Mitchell
Well said, Mr. Beatty. I also loved the 2001 game, and I disliked both this years game, and last years game, because all you needed to do well was a fast or powerful drive train.

FIRST should put more emphasis on dexterity and BUILDING something, as opposed to power, and tearing things down.

The game was called "Stack Attack."

Need I say more?

I believe that FIRST was trying to put more emphasis on dexterity and BUILDING something this year. However the reality of the situation was that stacks were very hard to build quickly and hard to defend.

In other sports, they have years to fine tune the rules to balance the game. We don't have that luxury because the game is different every year.

Like Team 71, our robot had a big arm for hitting the stack. We also had 2 other arms for stacking which saw no action except to push bins. In hind sight, what change to this year's game would have shifted the importance from speed and power to stacking, dexterity, etc.? That could be valuable in helping to make next year's game better. (Maybe that should be a new thread, so I'll start one.)