Week 2: Any new lessons learned?

[Billfred]

So it seems hard to believe, but there are some of us who have yet to play Logomotion. (We're up this week, with the rest of the Columbia area teams up next week.)

I was able to catch some of the Week 1 event webcasts, but was shut out on Week 2 due to work. We know the GDC didn't change the game up for this week, but has the game changed itself from the power of observation? Are minibots still dominating tube strategies? Are yellow cards still being given out like AOL demo CDs in the late 90s?

Enquiring chickens minds want to know!

[Bjenks548]

Minibots are still super important. At waterford in elims, the speed of minibots became really important. We had only 1 minibot on our alliance and in the semifinals our opponents had 2. Lucky for us our one minibot was the fastest at the district. We were able to outscore them on tubes and win the minibot race to get the win. If you have a consistent deployment, I would suggest getting your minibot under 2 seconds to stay super competitive in elimination rounds.

[BrendanB]

Got penalties? I watched WPI on Friday and attended on Saturday and I was shocked at how many penalties were committed! A few quals had none most had 1 or several and the elims saw a couple of DQ's that cost one alliance their shot at an upset.


Lesson learned- read the rules... again.

[dodar]

We learned that even if your robot can score an ubertube and 6+ tele-op tubes, if you dont have a fast minibot you still get beaten.

[Nuttyman54]

If you want to control your destiny, you must be able to play all aspects of the game well. If you have a consistent minibot, you will do better in qualifications than if you just have good tube scoring.

Minibot speed doesn't matter as much as consistency in qualifcations, but it definitely matters in eliminations. If you don't have all three aspects of the game covered in your eliminations alliance, you will be at a disadvantage.

Defense can be and was effectively played, even with all the penalty possibilities. The middle of the field can be hard to navigate with lots of robots, and smart driving can definitely hinder a good tube scorer.

Watch the yellow cards. It's a fine line between pushing someone into a zone on accident, and pushing them to draw a penalty and getting yourself a yellow card. Especially in eliminations, if you do that twice you're gonna lose yourself the match, no matter how good your defense is. The refs at WPI gave the benefit of the doubt for first offenses, but if you repeated the offense in the second match they assumed it was purposeful and issued red cards.

[Ian Curtis]

It seems to me that Logomotion is really two games masquerading itself as one. There is the tube placing game, and the race. Winning either of them is good enough to get you playing on Saturday afternoon... but you need to win at both of them to make it out of the quarterfinals.

It's extremely difficult to place enough tubes to guarantee that a minibot (or worse, two minibots) won't flip the winner. If you can't place tubes, it's hard to play effective defense without getting penalties/DQs, even if they are accidental.

Watching WPI, I did see some great defense in the middle of the field. Far and away the most entertaining defensive play I've seen in quite some time, because there wasn't any of that ramming while scoring business. It was all about heading robots off at the pass and juking and jiving to make it to the rack.

However, most of the defense near the yellow line was a lot more painful to watch. Having been on the wrong end of the 2005 human loading penalty, I would want anything to do with a robot on the rack side of the yellow lines.

Also, it seemed like many teams weren't really aware enough of the lanes. Often times tubes would get shoved in the lanes or a team would drop a tube while attempting to place it. They would then run after it, seemingly without realizing they had just got themselves a lane infraction penalty.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

However, most of the defense near the yellow line was a lot more painful to watch. Having been on the wrong end of the 2005 human loading penalty, I would want nothing to do with a robot on the rack side of the yellow lines.

There was a double red card at Florida in the quarters and 2425 got the decisive red card the next match doing the exact same thing.
I know it's hard to see the lines but you really shouldn't be going over there whatsoever if you have no idea where you are at. It's way to easy to make an alliance killing mistake over there. Just cut them off in the middle where you're less likely to attract a red card.

[Refresh]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Got penalties? I watched WPI on Friday and attended on Saturday and I was shocked at how many penalties were committed! A few quals had none most had 1 or several and the elims saw a couple of DQ's that cost one alliance their shot at an upset.


Lesson learned- read the rules... again.

^THIS

Watching the Waterford webcast, I heard a lot of teams getting called on zone violation. You got to know where the line is and to not drive into it.

Also Human players need to be careful when feeding tubes. I heard a few of those penalties also.

[Kevin Ray]

I visited NYC and watched the webcast of the finals today and have to agree with Ian and Nuttyman, you need to effectively master both parts of the game if you wish to make it to the end of the elimination matches. Minibots are truely paramount and merely having one doesn't mean much.
Teams need to be able to deploy quickly and consistently to be effective. They may get selected or be selecting with just a minibot, but in the elimination matches you'll need to be able to place tubes also.
I can't imagine, well yes I can, what it is going to be like at St. Louis in the finals on Einstein.

BTW NYC had excellent coverage of the competition. Cameras switched to coincide with the announcer's commentary.

[pfreivald]

I watched as much of Pittsburgh and Florida as I could, and I think this post stands:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...24#post1036324

[George Nishimura]

I think at WPI, especially in the final, a lot of penalties were called because defence was being played by teams that don't usually play defence, haven't played defence or are ill-suited for defence. If you don't have maneuvrability or pushing power, don't defend or you are likely to concede a penalty.

We played defence a couple of times in the qualifications for practice, and we conceded a couple of penalties. By eliminations, we knew how to avoid those penalties.

Human player is important in strategy. Make sure he/she knows the game and strategy well.

Also I found (as Coach) that I couldn't pay attention to our rack at the same time as their rack and watching the human player. The Analyst is actually useful. Who knew?

[Mike dennis]

Make sure that when your mini-bot falls back down the tower that if it lands on part of your robot it is not above the deployment line. Our solution is to just back up and let it hit the deck.

[pfreivald]

We played defense in several matches, and never got any penalties... But then, we were using our maneuverability to try to deny tubes of specific colors to the opposing alliance, to prevent them from hanging logos.

Of course, it didn't work all that well, but it worked better than robot-to-robot defense did!

[Alex Cormier]

One major issue:


Make sure the host bot doesn't stay in contact with the mini-bot once the mini-bot it past the deployment line.

For an example, if your mini-bot is 1" underneath the line and it's on a 3" tall piece, when you deploy the mini-bot will be above the line while still in contact with the piece.

I saw numerous teams not thinking about this small fact, but it could hurt you really badly if a referee catches it.

[Karibou]

From a volunteer point of view:

-If your minibot doesn't come down at the end of the match, you need to get to the pole right away as soon as you're given the okay to get your robots. While most minibots can be easily taken down by setting the hook on top of it and pulling down, there were a few teams who told us to pull on the wheels instead, or some other part. Until you tell us how to take your minibot down - at least the first time it happens - we can't do anything. We don't want to break your minibot, but we also can't spend forever standing next to the tower.

-Tubes can be popped by pushing them really hard into the tower, or a wall, or another robot. Avoid crushing them.

-It only takes a tiny tiny tiny hole to pop a tube. You would be very surprised. I'm going to echo every inspector and volunteer out there when I say PLEASE do not have ANY sharp edges on your robot.

-Regarding tube inflation: it seemed that the tubes deflated slightly with use. They may have been placed on the field initially as brand new and fully inflated (using the guide), but after a few matches, they will be slightly smaller. Keep in mind that the crew simply doesn't have enough time between matches to re-pump all 42 tubes on the field, and that you may get ones that are up to an inch smaller.

-There were a lot of minibots that fell off of robots during teleop. Make sure they're secure until deployment!


EDIT: FIRST (or maybe FiM, but I assume it was from the folks in Manchester) sent us a nice package of parts and instructions to fix the tower triggering problem. It works very nicely. There weren't any false triggers at Waterford, to my knowledge.