"Playing Cheap"

[SkitzoSmurf]

After my first regional this year, I am kind of dissapointed with the way that some teams are playing. They either get up the ramp during autonomous or immediately after, and then hang. Serving no purpose other than an extra fifty points. I am really confused with the teams that have both alliance partners hang at once. It's not even a competition after that. The two robots are hogging the bar, they have a hundred points, and maybe twenty from human players, and the apposing alliance is struggling to get all the blue balls they can in the goals, and capping them with a doubler. Say they have ten balls, cap it with a doubler, they will only have a hundred points, while the double hanging alliance needs just one blue ball to defeat them by five lousy points. Do you people see what I mean? These teams are not raising the bar, they are lowering it. And it REALLY confuses me when these teams that serve one purpose, (hanging), recieve all the awards.
<~~~~~~ CONFUSED!!!
P.S. I am not trying to insult anyone

[MOEmaniac]

how is it playing cheap when that is their stradigy. and plus it takes a lot more work and engineering to make a hangin robot than it does to make a box bot because a box bot is all that is needed to push the little 5pt balls

[Tom Bottiglieri]

i undertsnad what you are saying, and i also do not like when a team does only one thing. BUT.... that was their strategy. They probably sat down and ocnsidered all the posibilities for this game, and chose the one they thought would give them the maximum to win. I can think of one team who does this excelently. Team 237 onyl does 1 thing this year. They get on the bar and defend it. They lost onyl 1 match at the NJ regional, due to another team blocking them to get to the bar. If you have not realized, in FIRST or in any other type of engineering, more fancy and complex does not always mean better. I have noitced every year that most succesfull teams are the ones that go out and do one thing during the game, but do it consistently. This thing they do may consist of one arm or add on, but that is the only extra thing on their bot that gets time put into and developed.

[ultramrw21]

I saw many teams that did just that. Its best to have a robot that can hang from the side of the platform. That way you can score some goals and also have enough time and room on the bar to hang. This strategy works great when other robots are blocking the base.

[MOEmaniac]

i was at the same regional as ToMMan b182 and team 237 hung from the bar and thats all and a solid 50 points 99.99% of the time is a huge advantage. plus 237 did more than just hangin and i know ToMMan b182 knows wat im talking about. take for instance my teams 2001 robot "Lil' MOE" it was a simple bot that didnt try to do everything. and look what the became of "Lil' MOE" National Champion i dont mean to come off as cocky but a bot that does one thing and does that one thing extraordinarily well is almost always a solid plan and there is less things that can go wrong (most of the time)

[MOEmaniac]

i mean no offence to team 237 but without team 303 they wouldnt have been Champs of the NJ regional because 303 was a great, no not great, excellent small ball and large ball handeler

[Ted Boucher]

Team 237 reilded highly on our alleince partners though all the elmination rounds. They would bascicly be the tie breaker that would win the match for us. It goes to show you that without your alleince partners you will not succeed. Thank you teams 303 and 56.

[Lil' Lavery]

You did watch the Killer Bees, didn't you?

Team 33 dominated with-out ever once hanging from the bar. Other teams, like 346 or 422, could hang from the ground, making it almost immposible for a robot on the bar to stop them. And note the match where all 4 robots got on the bar(yay, my team did something memorable!), teams where trying to stop the other teams from getting on the bar, but they failed, and they got on the bar too. Or the match where 388 capped 33 stationary goal, a WHOLE lotta points where scored then. An alliance in Portland scored 170 with NO robots on the bar, just both goals filled and capped. All stategies can be beaten. Team 33 ball collector could be beaten by forcing them to have to spend most of their time dodging you and moving mobile goals, that is, if you can get a robot on the bar also and a few balls in the goals.

[Trinora]

Originally Posted by MOEmaniac

i mean no offence to team 237 but without team 303 they wouldnt have been Champs of the NJ regional because 303 was a great, no not great, excellent small ball and large ball handeler

Ted said it before, but we KNEW our alliance partners saved us. It's not offensive, it's true. And thank god.

When we were planning our bot, as I am sure all of you did, we talked about what we would do. And We decided we could handle doing one thing this year, and doing it well. Hanging was that single option. It's not cheap, just as it isn't cheap to have a bot that catches balls in autonomous or one that uses goals to block chutes.

Rest assured, our strategies will change and we do love effective alliance partners. And I applaud teams that make our lives just a little bit more difficult. ^.^

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by MOEmaniac

i mean no offence to team 237 but without team 303 they wouldnt have been Champs of the NJ regional because 303 was a great, no not great, excellent small ball and large ball handeler

No offense taken!! Team 237 thanks 303 and 56 for their awesome skills in doing what they do. That is why we chose them, because we know we can't do it all, and never wanted to. We chose to design a robot that could do one thing great, and that's it.

Well, One thing great, and maybe a couple other things ok.

We have learned in our 6 years being involved in FIRST that there is a system of checks and balances. Some years we have been greedy and chose to try and do everything, re:2001. But in the end, we were unsucessfull in all approaches and never had the tskills to even be picked in the finals since we didn't qualify high enough.

The bottom line is: K.I.S.S.

[Greg Perkins]

our bots main purpose was to hang, thats it...we had a hugely consistent autonomous, and that was it. we then got the idea to put on ball wings, but we ran into a huge problem when whe tried to herd them into the corral...we always got inside the players station. so to avoid the problem of getting d'qed we took off the wings, and went straight for the bar after... we also had one of the best drives at BAE, so sometimes we would wait and block the ramp, in one match, we went against a team who collected all the small balls in auto., and pushed them out of the way, so only 6-7 balls accumulated into their hopper, then hung. we hung 7 out of our 8 matches.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I'll toss in my 2 cents and say that I don't think that any robots or strategies are invulnerable this year. Ken has already pointed out that 2 robots hanging immediately will give free reign to the small ballers and cappers. Simillarly, one could assume that small ballers and cappers are not going to be good at hanging from the bar. Thus, efficient, quick hanging robots should be able to spend a large portion of the game defending players stations and keeping such teams from delivering their small or large balls. The balling teams would either then have to block the hangers from getting to the bar, or get to the bar themselves, etc, etc, etc. The strategies and counter strategies can go on for a very long time. The only invincible robot would really be one that can do everything and do everything very well, but that's the case every year and if a team can build that bot in 6 weeks, kudos to them.
I'll say the best strategy to win this year will be good scouting, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and those of your enemy, and knowing how to capitalize on said strengths and weaknesses.

[Crop-Circles]

If a team can only get 130 points max, you can win with 14 capped balls or 27 non-capped. You don't need 240 points, only 135. That's not including the potential of 10 point balls.

Besides, wouldn't it be cheaper for a team to just make drivetrain and push ball with a plow? You could collect enough balls to be somewhat competitive and it wouldn't be as difficult to build. (Note: I'm not saying it would be "cheap," I'm just trying to make a point.)

The strategy does not break any of the rules, nor does it contradict the spirit of the rules. I don't see how it is cheap when the teams still had to put work into their robot. It doesn't make for the most exciting matches, but if you ask me, this is not a new problem. There were a lot of matches last year that were basically decided in autonomous mode. It doesn't make the strategy cheap, although you could argue that there may be something wrong with the game.

[MOEmaniac]

even though 237's robot mainly hangs and hangs with amazing skill, it makes for one of the most exciting and nail bitting matches u will ever have. i know from experience lol but i enjoyed every bit of it

[Matt Adams]

A strategy is a strategy. Two robots quickly hanging is far from unbeatable.

Moreover... I think that the small balls will be much more deciding than hanging when the big boys and girls come out to play at some of regionals with older teams and or (historically) sound robots. I don't think the first weekend will be representative of the whole season.

Getting 10 balls and capping in 1:45 should not be a problem for a well made robot with a ball hearder and an arm. It will be a significant problem for a team that trys to simply push them around. I heard the someone compare it to "hearding cats" - I'd have to agree!

It's definitely a rock-paper-scissors sort of competition. Hanging robots that require a lot of room and time to hang will have little to no choice but to do so at the start of the round. Those that can hang from on the floor or while not needing to be on the top lip will be at a great advantage.

Matt