Shooters

[sgreco]

Has anyone else noticed that shooters dominate?

Team 1114 was a great example of this, although team 25 had to slow down they were awsome as well, and 118 looks like they could be a very strong shooter(although they haven't played yet)

These aren't the only good shooters, they just stood out to me.
If you have other shooters that you want to mention please do.

[Laaba 80]

A few others I liked from Midwest : 71, 1625, 16, and 1024. Also even though 33 wasnt a shooter, their lifter could keep up with most shooters.
Joey

[Akash Rastogi]

Don't forget 103 and also 1980
they rocked the NJ regional once again.

[thefro526]

After seeing video of midwest and being in NJ driving I found that it is not necessarily shooting the ball but the ability to hurdle without stopping. The only real shooters in NJ were 103 and 25 but a couple of robots like 694 and 293 we able to lift the ball up and hurdle it without stopping. I believe team 33? had a similar capability to 293 where the top of the gripper folded down so the robot could go under the overpass without stopping.

[sgreco]

I agree that hurdling without stopping is very important. It seem to me most of the teams that have been mentioned that have competed so far have been highly successful. My team was getting nervous about our launcher, but it seems like we'll be alright

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by thefro526

After seeing video of midwest and being in NJ driving I found that it is not necessarily shooting the ball but the ability to hurdle without stopping. The only real shooters in NJ were 103 and 25 but a couple of robots like 694 and 293 we able to lift the ball up and hurdle it without stopping. I believe team 33? had a similar capability to 293 where the top of the gripper folded down so the robot could go under the overpass without stopping.

The other big stopping point (which is just as important as stopping after hurdling) is the ability to corral the ball after hurdling. It doesn't matter if you have a fantastic full-speed shooter if it takes you 20 seconds to regain control of the ball afterwards. An arm bot with fantastic picking-up abilities will beat a shooter bot who can't load consistently.

Actually, I would argue that pickup is MORE important than hurdling. A good arm bot is only stopped for 5ish seconds following a hurdle while the arm retracts. However, the difference between 1114 and the field was that they could get the ball back under control almost immediately upon reaching it, while other teams were less good at that. The amount of time you lose with a poor pickup is almost certainly greater than the time lost even with the slowest of arm-retractions. I noticed 25 had issues on occasion with poor picking-up and it seemed to hurt their scoring abilities in the qualifying matches.

[jfc358]

Originally Posted by Bongle

The other big stopping point (which is just as important as stopping after hurdling) is the ability to corral the ball after hurdling. It doesn't matter if you have a fantastic full-speed shooter if it takes you 20 seconds to regain control of the ball afterwards. An arm bot with fantastic picking-up abilities will beat a shooter bot who can't load consistently.

Actually, I would argue that pickup is MORE important than hurdling. A good arm bot is only stopped for 5ish seconds following a hurdle while the arm retracts. However, the difference between 1114 and the field was that they could get the ball back under control almost immediately upon reaching it, while other teams were less good at that. The amount of time you lose with a poor pickup is almost certainly greater than the time lost even with the slowest of arm-retractions. I noticed 25 had issues on occasion with poor picking-up and it seemed to hurt their scoring abilities in the qualifying matches.

I agree completely with your point that being able to pickup the ball quickly is more important than being a great hurdler. This will become even more so, as defensive strategies develop in upcoming regionals. For instance, will we see more "deny the opponent the ball" strategies as we move toward Atlanta? A fast arm bot should be able to effectively slow down a great shooter if their pickup is not flawless.

I saw several instances in the NJ regional where the ball was pushed or was stopped on the trailing line of one of the quadrants. 25 was unable to pick up the ball in this case, and if they tried the would run the risk of a line violation penalty. They were fast enough that the could zip around the track and get to a track ball and score, but this cost them valuable time. In the end it didn't matter as they won the regional for the 3rd? year in a row, but I didn't witness any teams really trying to stop them.

I know this game was introduced as a "coopertition", and I think that great defense may be one of those cooperative skills we haven't yet seen. As usual, in the early regionals most teams go with what they designed their robots to do. In this game that means either running laps and/or hurtling, but with only two track balls, how many great hurdlers do you need on an alliance? I think the role of the third pick in the elimination rounds will become more focused on defense and endgame capabilities. Of course a great hybrid mode won't hurt.

[sgreco]

I agree that maybe saying "shooters dominate" was a little bit of an exaggeration. A point was brought up that all the good shooters were very accomplished teams, but I have seen accomplished teams with elevators. From what I observed they can put up a fight against the shooters, but I think more often than not the shooters will win.
From what I've seen it's hard to find many elevators(by accomplished teams or not) that can stack up against shooters like 103, 25, 16, 1024, 1625, 71 and 1114.

[J@GMFlint]

A couple comments on pick-up. From what we experienced and saw between arms & shooters, pick-up probably made the biggest difference between the good and best hurdlers, particularly being able to pick-up in traffic and from the #1 driver station looking through the reflection/glare from the divider.

At MWR, the divider reflection was very challenging- (our base driver who had never driven, or even been to an event before for that matter) initially had a lot of trouble losing sight of the robot. Eventually she settled in and we talked her in but having a claw gripper made it tougher than we would have liked. Whereas the roller feeder robots could just slam into the general area and more easily drive towards the ball and either grab it or drive it to where it could be seen and then grabbed & hurdled. During elims we had a lot of front row opportunities to watch 1114 do this handling very-very effectively. (Great job guys!!)

Before you can hurdle or place the ball, you have to be able to get the ball!! We're be looking at possibly upgrading or revising our gripper prior to West Michigan.

Regarding our arm. We were happy it performed as well as it did, but agreed it needs to be faster- we used the van door motor for the arm and globe for the wrist- Making the 180 deg. swing front & back took more time than we liked and required more anticipation on the arm drivers part to be ready to grab, but again it functioned when needed and we saw a lot of teams successfully using the VDM on their arms.

The wrist was another story though. The globe motor was fine until it got hot, it took a while for us to figure this out very late Friday by then it was too late to do much about it besides replace it and plan for the next event. We'd do fine the first couple matches and practice (we actually made it out for practice match #1- a big accomplishment for us, especially at the 1st event of the season ) but then as the pace picked up the performance was sketchy and we couldn't figure out what happened until it finally outright failed.

On Elevators, (btw: Wildstang, 1504 and one of the Winners- sorry I forget their name right now, were Elevator robots as was Team #33 I believe.) The biggest challenges we saw were them getting caught up on the overpass, and in many cases high CG tipping when loaded with a raised ball in traffic, or again hitting the over pass, hanging up or close-lined. Also, air consumption of larger cylinders used on some robots often meant that tactical adjustments had to be made to allow for recharging the air systems between hurdle attempts. All of which were manageable and less of a challenge as the event went on.

As always though, it comes down to robot capability, field tactics, and simple execution out there, especially in the elims. Every type of robot can play this game and play it well once they align their tactics and strategy with their capabilities and execute their plan.

Biggest word of advice to all teams: Watch the penalties!! With all the action going on especially when chasing hurdled balls in traffic jams, the refs can't always tell if you broke a plan on purpose or were pushed so for consistency it seems they typically hit you anytime the robot broke a plane- unless it was very obvious.

[Dad1279]

Originally Posted by thefro526

.....
The only real shooters in NJ were 103 and 25
......

I can think of at least one more

[lukevanoort]

I think we can all agree on this: exceptional robots do exceptionally. Yes, 33 has an amazing arm bot that can score really fast, and yes, 1114 can hurdle at a blistering pace. The same goes for 111, 16, 25, 103, 1625, 71, and so on. You could go tit-for-tat for days citing good arms and good shooters and never reach a conclusion over which is the superior design. The only real conclusion you could ever reach by looking at specific robots is that you need a good robot to have a good robot. Duh!

On a purely theory based level with all other things being equal, I think shooters do have a higher upper bound on their hurdling rate than arms - most shooters can save time by not stopping. Arms are clearly more versatile than shooters; it may be possible for some shooters to fire a low-powered shot onto the overpass, but I highly doubt such a strategy will have anywhere near the placing reliability that a decent arm does.

Regardless of the hurdling method used, it is clear that the biggest determinant in a given robot design's effectiveness in this game is its ability to acquire the ball reliably. You can have the most amazing arm/shooter in the world, but if you can't get the ball to it, it is useless. I imagine that, in many cases, this is where shooters fall short. Many of the average and below-average arms fall short here too. All the good hurdlers have mastered acquiring the ball, and that is really what matters in this game, not whether the robot is a shooter or an arm bot.

For the record, my team's robot is both (if we get the shooting portion to work properly).

[Davey H]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

A few others I liked from Midwest : 71, 1625, 16, and 1024. Also even though 33 wasnt a shooter their lifter could keep up with most shooters.
Joey

Our robot isn't exactly a shooter, it does have a small launcher in the claw that kicks the ball over, I would say it's more of a hybrid, and we are working on an even more effective launcher for our next regional

[hipsterjr]

1726 defiantly stands out to me, watch out for them in Arizona! 342 also has a good shooter. We're coming out week 3 at Florida.

[dtengineering]

Based on what I saw in Portland, grabbing the ball quickly and reliably is more important than hurdling quickly. The team from Hawaii (368) could approach the ball at basically full speed and just vacuum it up then pause slightly to hurdle. They were, imho, the most dangerous robot on the floor at that tournament. Any time they spent stopping to hurdle was compensated for the fact that they didn't need to stop to grab the ball. Team 100 could suck the ball right off the overpass, meaning they didn't need to compete for a ball at the start of most matches, and could suck it up off the floor almost as well as 368. Most shooters had to stop to grab the ball.... with the occasional exception of 472 who completed the "shoot bounce grab" routine without even slowing down at least once... and to a loud round of applause.

That said, there were only three real "shooter" bots out of 55 machines at the competion... us, 472, and 360... all of whom were in the elminations, 472 right up to the end. Just because you can shoot doesn't mean you CAN'T grab the ball... you just sacrice a bit of time doing it relative to a great lifter.

A shooter like 1114, however, appears to shift the balance by combining the speed of pickup of a good lifter with the speed of hurdling of a good shooter.

Darn sneaky Simbotics folks. They are doing it again!

Jason

[sgreco]

I definitely agree that a solid pick-up is key to being a successful robot. I feel like people have been under estimating shooters, but we'll wait and see what happens in a couple more weeks. Maybe shooters won't end up being as valuable as I observed them to be in the first week of competition.