Midfield Collisions

[Swampdude]

I want to put a warning out to everyone in design build mode, to seriously consider the autonomous midfield collisions that will be taking place. I know many of you will say "well it's not graciously professional to intentionally collide in the game". Well let me say that most of the seasoned teams out there are thinking the only way to pull off autonomous vision caps, or stop them - is to do it as FAST as possible. This means there will be robots going blazing speeds through the coarse with no one at the wheel to avoid a collision. Then to compound the problem, there are only 2 access points to traverse to the opposite side of the field. This means almost by default, this game will begin to boil down to the teams that have the design and guts to come flying through that opening at full speed with the intent to stop a vision tetra cap. So another thing to consider is your tetra gripper mechanism/arm may get attacked in autonomous by a bot traveling 12'/s or more, with no regard to your bots shape or frailties. Basically a computer doesn't care. If the design thats coming after you is rigid you could be looking at some pretty serious damage before autonomous ends.

I know some of you are already brewing at the thought of this happening to your babies. But it's going to be part of the game. So please build them tough and with low CG's. The ref's can't protect you during autonomous. Everyone knows to go easy during manual, but it's the "autonomous valley of death midfield collisions" and the vision tetra seeker stoppers during autonomous that will inflict the most damage.

If you plan to cap during autonomous and your drive or mechanism are slower than around 7 seconds to complete the cap. It's very easy to make the kit chassis stop you. And you WILL get hit with no regard to front/back or sides. So if you're holding a tetra up 8-9' in the air you better do some good scouting before you try.

Also I'm very concerned for the electronics from the kit. I don't know how many Autonomous pounding's they're going to be able to take. If you decide to shoot the gap, and so does the opposing team. And you both meet midfield going 12'/s thats a 24'/s collision. Parts will go flying, batteries will come out. PWM's will pop loose. Arms will swing wildly and twist. Be careful about your choice of autonomous.

You can't blame anyone for using this method either. It's logical to stop the best cappers as fast as possible. With the equipment given in the kit, it's quite easy to do. Although the teams that choose to do this may have a short life span. I predict many of you will decide your arm isn't working out and it's more of a CG risk to keep it, then switch your strategy to a defensive chassis. Before you know it, the only teams left capping will be the ones who heeded this advice, or were thinking of it all along.

I'm going to add a poll to prove my point.