I saw a few matches at KSC, enough to get me thinking, where both teams went to their endzones with 10 seconds left and sat there. None of the robots moved, except for an isolated victory dance.
I know the coaching box is confusing and the game moves at a fast pace, I’ve been there. But how could the losing team not know they were losing? And if they knew they were losing, why didn’t they push one or both of the unattended goals out of scoring position for an easy win?
Did these teams calculate that they could get more QP by losing and getting their own points than by winning and getting 3x their opponent’s decreased score? Or did they simply not know what the score was?
I know coaching will improve as the coaches & drivers get more practice, but I was totally surprised by what I saw.
Mike
Quote of the day by the KSC announcer: “Team 654 isn’t going anywhere…because they have no wheels. Otherwise it’s a perfect running robot”
*Originally posted by Mike Soukup * Did these teams calculate that they could get more QP by losing and getting their own points than by winning and getting 3x their opponent’s decreased score?
This is impossible. If they are losing, their opponant’s score is greater than their score, so 3 times their opponents score would always be more than their score.
*Originally posted by Mike Soukup * Or did they simply not know what the score was?
This is the most likely. At our scrimmage, we were the only team who I saw keeping score during their match (our adult member does it).
Personally I know at VCU we kept an accurate score during matches. Many times while holding a goal in our score zone, we would spin around and stick our bot into the other alliances end zone while holding our goal in our scoring position. Mind you, this was done only after triple checking the scores just to be sure.
I can also tell you that teams get VERY excited about getting back to their end zones in time. There was a match or two where I was doing slight blocking to keep our goals where we want them with 15 sec. or so left on the clock. Our partner’s would scream at me to get to the end zone but I would never leave until I knew for sure that the other team would not be able to push our goal out in time.
~Tom Fairchild~, who thinks that if you just remain calm about the whole thing, the game is much easier to play than last year’s.
Ive found that it is good to watch other matches and figure the score. Im getting closer to the point where I can take a quick glance and know the score. A lot of teams have a strategy of waiting till late in the game before throwing balls, so they know whether they need the points to win or they need to rack up the score for QPs.
The two minutes goes by really really really fast. Have your mentor constantly telling you the time.
*Originally posted by Mike Soukup *
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Quote of the day by the KSC announcer: “Team 654 isn’t going anywhere…because they have no wheels. Otherwise it’s a perfect running robot” **
I can tell you, most of the times this did not happen to us, but I remember one match when we had 9 seconds left, and we were done. We knew we had won and we just stood there. It really was an odd feeling, we didn’t know what to do, but, me being coach, I “ordered” a victory dance Since I didn’t control the robot, I did my own dance in the player station, too
Stephen, who hopes no one takes the dance the wrong way
i noticed this kind of thing at Drexel. robots would obviously be losing and instead of trying to know a goal that had balls in it out of their opponents goal zone, the just sat in their endzone. I cannot even comprehend this. in an elimination round, it doesnt matter if you lose by 1 or 21, you still lose, so why not take teh risk to win? Lots of times it was not even a risk. With 15 seconds left, some bots were 5 feet away from an unattended goal in tht oppenents scoring position: any robot can push a goal that is unattended, and even with all the excitement back there, there should be at least one person out of 8 that can see that
Hey,
In one of our qualifying matches, our robot was the only one that worked, the other 3 were all broken/disabled due to previous matches. In 45 seconds we were able to push 3 goals into our zone, and then we sat our robot in their robot sone, to win 40-30. After the first 45 seconds, everything just sat there. True we could have done more, and won 40-40 (give them a goal with 10 balls, and park ourselves in our robot zone, win the tie with the 2 goals) but we didnt know that the other alliance wasnt working, we thought they had some secret strategy. So after getting everything the way we wanted, i pinned a non functional robot to a wall, then sat for 1:15 along with the other 3 robots. Pretty funny, but kinda boring.
Since I didn’t control the robot, I did my own dance in the player station, too