Please try to keep this thread on topic and not wander to the specifics.
Visiting the Greater Toronto Regional for my 4th consecutive year, i witnessed something for the first time ever in all of my years in first.
At the start of Semi 2-1, the blue alliance called a time out. After the time out was extinguished, there was only one team on the field. The red alliance was all ready before the timeout and had all three robots on the field. The ruling from the Head Referee was that the blue alliance could only play the match with the one robot.
So, I come to the community of vast knowledge, opinions, and excellent ideas.
What would you do if you were on the alliance with only 1 robot?
What would you do if you were on the alliance with all 3 robots?
Funny but not appropriate - drive clockwise the entire match. Random pirouettes for effect.
Appropriate but not very entertaining - do what 1503 did - their best.
…and then win the next 2 matches with their alliance at full strength.
As for the full strength alliance - they were obligated to play just as passionately as they would have if they were facing 3 robots. Actually, one might think it’s TOUGHER to perform when there’s only one bot facing you, because everyone and their uncle EXPECTS you to win the match.
Do whatever my bot does best, preferably score like a beast (especially in hyrbid). Pray for opposing penalties. Avoid penalties.
2)Play it conservatively, but play my game. Don’t commit penalties. Win.
1.) Show off the skills my robot has (Our would do our full auto, and lap like crazy )
2.) Not play defense on the 1 robot and try to score as much as possible as well
I’d do the same thing; there really isn’t much else that you can do in that situation. If I were the single robot, I might show any cool tricks that I could do.
1.) Play to the very best of my ability. I think one good tactic would be to grab an alliance trackball, and hurdle like crazy, while randomly knocking around the opposite trackballs to just try to keep them bouncing around as much as possible.
2.) Play to the best of my ability. It is insulting to the other alliance to “take it easy.” I know if I were on the handicapped alliance I would rather lose fighting then win through pity.
If i were in the situation 1503 was in, i wouldn’t move my robot at all. Id find an isolated corner and stay there- there are 2 possible matches after this one, so why risk breaking the robot?
If there were any chance to coordinate, an immediate 4 robot e-stop would probably catapult to the top of the list of the most GP things FIRST has ever seen.
Besides that, I would go with what most of the others have said, both alliances have to stick with what they do best. Anything less is unfair to both the spectators and the teams.
I hate this situation with a passion. Last year it happened to us so many times. Teams feel like there not going to playoffs and decide to quit. I think its Un-Gracious Professionalism on their part. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
I think the situation Alex is describing is a bit different than the one you’re describing. None of the teams “quit” and ended up hurting their own alliance. In this case it was the elimination rounds and the referees only allowed one team to play on the blue alliance for that particular match. It was due to the rules about timeouts this year and teams being required to be on the field by the end of their timeout. The GP discussion comes in with whether the one team alliance and/or the 3 team alliance should play to their full potential in this particular situation.
Alright, with a few ideas down already. I’ll give out my thoughts.
If I was on the alliance with only one team, I agree with everyone here. Try my hardest, show off some tricks, and do not get one penalty. Just imagine if this team was a mid ranked team. They would have everyones attention on them, this is good for some teams and bad for others. Hopefully if my team ever have this situation we will not buckle under the pressure. If my team had won, just imagine what those top 8 teams would think? For this game, I would have kept one ball on top (unless the opposing alliance knocked it off), while the robot had a dream day and hurdled as much as possible.
Now, if I was part of the three team alliance, it would be totally different. My first thought was to keep both balls on top and do laps only. Another one would be act like it is an ordinary match and try your hardest and do not change the strategy that was brought to the table before the match. In this case, there was a little time to talk to the other alliance. With it being after a timeout called, I would have watched that clock and watch if the robots were making their way to the field. If the other two robots were not, I would go up to the single team and have a conversation and get their opinions on a few ideas.
I think a coordinated e-stop between all 4 robots would be the most GP thing to do so that the teams could have a fair match with all 6 bots on the field. It would be cool too if all the drivers went clockwise the whole time and just showed off all the cool things that they could do. Either way it would be a memorable match.
I respectfully disagree-one of the challenges in the game is building a reliable, resilient robot. Professionalism is just as important as graciousness, and it is wholly unprofessional, in my opinion, to not take advantage (in a legal way!) of your opponents failures. Of course you should offer to help them with their problems so you can decide the match on the field, but I think forfeiting goes way too far.
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about professionalism.
Just a comment specific to SF 2.1 GTR. In the situation at GTR, it wasn’t a robot failure that kept 247 or 1507 off the field. The field crew and refs determined that they had taken to long to move their robot from queuing to the field (as per the timeout rules), and as such closed the gates. It was a strange situation to say the least. Anyone who was watching, must have seen the confusion on my face while I was introducing the teams and realizing that the match was missing two robots.
I was just as surprised, being a coach on the other side of the field that we were facing only 1 robot.
I can give a bit of commentary on how things unfolded on our side. For this match 1503 was awarded the “Play of the Day” award from our team, and deservedly so. Despite it being a loss for their alliance, at the conclusion of the match, there was a definite air that the alliance back at full strength would be able to do some serious damage, and they did end up winning the next 2 matches, eliminating us from the GTR.
1503 alone did amazingly well, and my guess is that they showed enough firepower to make the decision for 1507 to pin one of our trackballs for the entirety of the ensuing matches an easy one. 1507 was the most consistent hurdler at the GTR outside of 1114 and 2056. The strategy required scoring support from 1503 and 247, which both were able to provide nicely.
We did make an adjustment on our strategy against a solo 1503. Instead of knocking post-hurdled balls back clockwise as 2505 had been doing all of elims, 2505 focused on lapping instead. There were two pretty good reasons to do this, neither of which involved “going easy on a solo robot.” With less hurdles coming over, there’d be less opportunities to knock them back clockwise. Was it worth dedicating 2505 entirely to this strategy? Idle time is wasted time, so probably not. Secondly, we’d broken our robot’s “forks” in nearly every match at GTR. In the elims, massive traffic jams were the side-effect 2505’s knock-back attempts, making the risk of us breaking even higher. We just wanted to make it out alive and well…
While you were responding to Dordai, I was the first one to mention e-stopping in this thread so I felt I should reply to this and explain my position further. Based on what I read regarding the situation the other two robots were working (or at least well enough to go on the field). I suggested a coordinated, immediate e-stop of all 4 robots that would lead to a 24-24 tie (although a bit of a boring 2:15).
At the MN regional our alliance advanced through the quarterfinals through a match where one opposing robot e-stopped after their drive broke down in hybrid. I felt terrible taking a win this way. Being on the “winning” side in this situation is not a whole lot better than being on the losing side.
An immediate e-stop of all 4 robots in an elim match would give the other two robots a chance to get on the field for the next match (or call in a backup bot if one was still broken) so that the match could be played out, fair and square, with six working robots.
I would never look down on someone who would make a different choice here. As you said, building a reliable robot is part of the competition, and I don’t think anyone could be faulted if, presented with the proposal of the e-stop, they chose to play out the match instead.
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