CHS VAHAY Analysis: Why 612 won (but might not win again)

Competition District Events
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To those that were following CHS VAHAY, 612 was a team that unabashedly dominated the whole competition. With average RP score of 2.9, ranking #1 with 11-0 at the end of qualifications, and winning the event along side titans like 2363 and 1731, 612 was an unexpected upset in the CHS district. As a 612 alumni that followed the team’s efforts this year, here is a behind the scenes look at 612’s journey to event winner. TLDR at the bottom.

Before we start, I’d like to say that I’m proud of the hard work and effort everyone in the competition put into their robot. Everyone was competing like crazy and the tight finals series shows this. CHS district, in my biased opinion, is the best, with the most amazing and awesome robots competing hard.

Design principles:
On a first glance, the robot looks and functions like a level 1 cargo and hatch bot with a level 3 hab climb system. To understand how the team arrive at this choice, we have to take a quick journey to the past.
In 2017, 612 had a robot that tried to do everything. We’re talking double channel shooter, gear mechanism, and climber. It was a very poor man’s 254 robot clone, but nothing worked. Team 612 didn’t (and still doesn’t) identify themselves as a team defined by their robot performance. Win or lose, we just had fun with the journey we were on.
In 2018, things changed. Our robot played, but lost in finals three times. First as a 1st pick, then as a captain, and finally as a 2nd pick. What changed? The design culture changed. The 2018 robot feature a total of 5 motors, 3 pneumatic pistons, and no climber. We focused on reliability and specialization of the scale. This got us competitive in an environment with robots with twice or three times our potential. However, our robot had a much lower potential than others. During week 3, our robot out performed other teams, but by district champs, our robot was reaching our max potential and under performing in comparison to other teams. This was just how the design always was.
In 2019, same design principle, but one thing changed. Our robot worked all the time in week 1, where as in week 1 our 2018 robot didn’t quite make it. We came out swing with trying to maximize reliability. The robot was designed as a hab level 3 bot with level 1 cargo and hatch mechanisms designed around it, not the other way around. It was like a self propelled ramp bot, sacrificing space and weight to a hab level 3 mechanism. We aimed for one thing and did one thing well: hab level 3.

Qualifications:
On the surface level, the 11-0 win loss record seems to indicate dominance during qualifications. However, a closer look reveals a different story. Ranking second in OPR, with 614 7 points above, the margins in winning matches were tight. Q37 and Q65 had 612 winning only by a few points. Four of the 11 qualification matches were within a 12 point margin, which we would have lost if we didn’t have a hab level 3 climb. This shows just how dependent 612 was with it’s hab level 3 mechanism (as it was designed to). The 11-0 record wasn’t accomplished with quick hatch or cargo cycles. It was mostly with hab level 3 and a sprinkling of luck. We should have lost Q45 against 2363, but 2363 had an unfortunate accident with their climb which put them out of the game for the whole match.

Playoffs:
Playoffs were the toughest battles, as 3 matches were required in all levels of competition. Finals were won with a harrowing 1 point margin twice. The team only barely eek out a victory with 2363 and 1731 performing amazingly. The supposed “612 dominance” was severely under fire.

The Future:
The reason I think 612 might not win again is because of how I view the FRC season. To me, there are two components to each robot in competition: potential and performance. Potential is the growth potential robot, whereas performance is the current performance of the robot. I feel that everyone at the competition was utilizing 50% of their max potential, whereas we were at 80%. While this sounds good on first glance, I believe CHS robots will reach 60% by week 2, 70% by week 3, 80% by week 4, and 90% by district champs. Team 612 is barely, just by a thin margin (literally one point margins), out performing 50% potential robots at 80% potential. When week 4 rolls by, I’m pretty sure 612 won’t be an alliance captain at all (though I’m confident 612 will make playoffs only because of the hab level 3 climb). This is not me denigrating my own team, I’m sure we’ll be able to improve in some areas, but rather, I’m confident CHS robot performance will outgrow ours.

To me, this is fine. I felt that our robot was always intended to fulfill the 1st pick or 2nd pick criteria at high levels of competition. As a large and generally disorganized team, we built a bot within our capabilities and came out swinging in week 1. Never in a million years did I imagine being able to perform at the levels of performance along side powerhouses like 2363, 1731, 1629, 1418, and 623, let alone being able to pick 2363 and 1731. The journey to event winner was amazing, but it also shows the future of our robot. If anyone is listening, continue to learn, improve, and compete like crazy and I’m sure you’ll be able to beat us handedly.

TLDR:
Team 612 will be out performed by other teams as CHS teams learn and improve faster, while 612 improvements will be capped by the robot design.

Edit:
612 members, if this annoys you, prove me wrong. I’d love to be wrong! :grin:

Edit 2:
Earlier I said “won’t win”, I really mean “might not win”. Bad mistake on my part.

Clarification:
I’ve been talking to @seg9585 and it seems like this post needs some clarification.
I am not saying that 612 cannot improve. On the contrary, @seg9585 has highlighted key areas to transform the robot in other ways.
I am not saying that 612 cannot win. I am thinking about the meta of the game and how it changes. I think that the game meta will change to favor rocket focused robots over low level robots.
My clarification of 80% potential is that the robot will not be able to do rocket (without drastic change), and the team’s potential to expand the robots capabilities is hindered by this fact. I’m not saying the team won’t be competitive or won’t improve. On the contrary, I know that they will. This analysis was written with the intent to explore how a level 1 cargo/hatch and hab level 3 robot dominated the competition at VAHAY and my opinion that it will change in the future at CHS. I did not intend to say that team 612 is a bad team or you shouldn’t pick them or anything of the sort. Looking back on the post with a more critical eye, I can see how others would take it as “team 612 can’t improve at all and they will fall into the middle of the pack”. This is not the message I was trying to send at all. To be honest, I’m considering deleting this post because the way I worded stuff was pretty bad. I injected some of my experiences from last year (I’m not saying the experiences last year was bad, on the contrary, it was the best in my four years in the team) and it carried over to some of the analysis. I hope you all understand that I in no way was trying to harm the reputation of 612’s 2019 robot. I will leave this post up in hopes that some meaningful dialog can still be gained from this conversation.

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I want to commend you on your excellent analysis of the manner in which robots improve over the season, as well as the keys to winning a Week 1 event. Well done!

Personally, for Week 1, I think there are two keys:

(1) Correctly identifying the right robot capabilities to win matches at Week 1. You did that, with the HAB L3 climb, and scoring into the cargo ship.

(2) Building a robot that has those capabilities working reliably. Reliably means every match, no exceptions. The difference between #1 seed and #5 seed is usually less than 2 wins. It is far better to have 2 mechanisms working at even 80% than 4 mechanisms working at 50% each.

Excellent analysis, and congratulations on executing a build season strategy to achieve it!

PS: The question now is whether or not your team has the remaining resources and motivation to transform your robot to add another capability for your Week 4 event using your “withholding allowance” and “out-of-bag” time. If you can do that in the next 3 weeks (nearly half a build season), you’ve got a shot at another blue banner.

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I think our team is going to spend the next weeks improving with extensive drive practice and more programming time. From a team with literally having 20 mins of time to program on the actual robot in 2017, to finishing the robot mechanically and electrically week and a half before bag and tag, I think the team will focus on refining the current design and shoot for 1st or 2nd pick bot status instead of trying to match powerhouse teams in CHS mentioned above (and more at VAGLE).

While this might seem crazy or counter productive to not try to create new capabilities and reach for more,and instead be more like a “rookie” team design, keep in mind that our team is one of the largest teams. I’m talking 100+ members and 40-60 active members at any given point. The mechanical team alone is 20+ members. The team tries to teach skills across everyone instead of concentrating skill and experience only among few members. Simple robot design and striving for precision, quality, and reliability within our capability serves more towards the mission of educating more people and this now reflects our robot design. If this were a “typical” FRC team, we might go down the route of adding capabilities, but refinement and keeping the robot within our capabilities to maintain and function is more important to the unique structure of our team.

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I wouldn’t say that 612 is at only 80% of their potential. The cargo intake on the robot looks very simple, and it had a hard time collecting cargo NOT up against a wall or other cargo. Some improvements to the intake would make cycle times much faster and require a few days of work. Very doable.

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Nice. I’m going to reference this as a ‘must read’ for our future teams.

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Sorry about this - since I’m taking you slightly off topic…I really want to hear more (maybe at Oxen Hill?) about how a team of your size operates.
1731 usually has about 10-12 students, so between programming, electrical, mechanical, driving, scouting, and so on, it gets really tight.
Back to topic - thanks for kick starting our thoughts on what to do after Haymarket…lots of discussion between refining a climber (level 2 or 3?) or decreasing cycle times, or adding cameras/sensors to help with sandstorm, or simply having more drive time.

We’re a one robot team…

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Totally, I might of exaggerated with 80%, but I have no doubt other teams will grow faster than us since we are limited in terms of robot design and team structure.

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I’d like to chime in here to provide even more insight as 612’s mentor and VaHay drive coach…

Early in the season, the team was actually working on a lift system to support all level rocket scoring, and mostly ignoring the level 3 climb (a climb system was prototyped but it actually required getting to level 2 first, as a multi-stage system).

1.5 weeks in, after the first chassis was already cut and team leadership was hosting their “final design meeting”, some events transpired at this meeting (won’t get into details here) which immediately resulted in a complete pivot of the team strategy. The chassis was re-shaped at this meeting and the bot was structured to focus on the level 3 climb.

Second priority was always the cargo, and the team immediately got to work on a pivoting system. Granted, the intake part of this was very minimally tested and has significant potential for very quick improvement in future weeks. But the pivot arm itself is rock solid and there was a lot of attention to detail put on this aspect of it.

Third priority was the hatches, and you may have noticed we opted not to play the hatch game very often at VaHay because of reliability concerns. The team’s primary hatch collection device had some aspects of uncertain legality, and we opted to demonstrate the system to lead inspectors before installing it. Therefore we opted to install our “backup” hatch system, which was finalized during unbag time just last week. For the record, the system was fully vetted and deemed legal by the head ref, and documented as such, and will make its appearance at Oxon Hill. In combination with the vision system which was never actually used at Battlefield, the team believes hatches will be a much bigger part of team strategy at the next event.

So I disagree with you on both accounts: there is significant room for improvement in hatch and cargo cycling that’s already planned. The climbing system took a LOT of time and resources to perfect, and it proved to be, as we suspected, a true game changer and was literally the only climber which demonstrated 100% reliability in VaHay quals.

In regards to the team structure, stop by one of the future team meetings and you will see significant improvements over last year, which had significant improvements over the year before. Students are actively engaged, motivated to work on all sorts of improvements, and subteams (especially programming) have grown in size significantly.

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OP: I’d pick 612 in their current state any day. The fact that they plan to keep improving means we’re that much more likely to want to play with them at Oxon Hill. Were they as fast as 614 at cargo in Week 1? No. Yet the things that would make them faster are … simple.

I also disagree with your assessment of 612’s potential last year. 5546 / 836 / 612 were 2 plays away from a very different DCMP outcome.

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No doubt there is room to improve. I however suspect that we may not be able to keep up with the rest of CHS powerhouse teams in terms of playing at the very highest of levels of competition. To be able to say that we will be just as dominant during week 4 as we were here is I think a little arrogant.

As a team that radically shifted internally in 2018, no doubt our team structure improved this year over the last. My point is that a conservative robot design with simplicity in mind is part of an effort to get everyone engaged and motivated. It’s hard to program a robot that isn’t even wired. I believe this strategy of member engagement and motivation has worked enormously. I’m not saying that the structure is faulty or bad, its just the current team culture and structure favors a conservative design to get everyone engaged.

In conclusion, to me, 612 did better than expected because of the focus on the right priorities and a focus on reliability and precision. But as the competition heats up, 612 isn’t quite at the position to compete with the top of CHS teams this year. However, I’m excited to see the team grow into potentially a “powerhouse” team.

If this still annoys you, prove me wrong. I’d love to be wrong! :grin:

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My assessment of potential was more on the basis of future robot grow in 2018. To me, our team was hitting the end of the rope as we were straining to remain competitive. We had no climber, almost no sensors for auto, and ounces from the weight limit. Of course we did everything we could and more to improve and I’m proud of the team rising up to the challenge. We didn’t do so well at worlds and that was fine. It was the first time we went to worlds based on robot performance and it was my best memory as a senior.

My point isn’t that you shouldn’t pick 612. In fact I agree with you in terms of picking us at week 4 (in my biased opinion), but I’m saying this team probably isn’t going at the level of the top teams in CHS. I do think that the team will grow to become one in the coming years.

I’m really not trying to trash talk my own team. I’m super proud of the hard work everyone has been putting in. I’m just really mainly focusing on the way CHS teams grow in comparison to ours in terms of robot performance. Like I said, to think that 612 will still be the top team by week 4 is too arrogant.

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I would like to refer to 2910’s robot and performance at Mount Vernon this weekend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZFD4sW9wac

Proves that a level 1 robot can still compete with the best of them. No robot will be able to fully outfit 12 cargo bays with cargo and hatches. Doesn’t matter if you place 10 game pieces on a rocket or a cargo ship. If 612 can keep up the performance, get better with hatches, and smooth out their cycle times, there is no reason they can’t compete with the other top robots at DCMP (or Week 4).

In my totally unbiased opinion, that is.

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The question is really at or with the top robots? With the top robots? I have no doubts in my mind. At the top? I think based on how CHS robots grow, its going to be hard.

I could be completely wrong. The game meta might just be that rocket focused robots are almost going to be surpassed by level 1 cargo and hatch robots throughout the season.

An interesting study would be how the game from last year changed this years design. Did teams focus on rocket because of the scale last year? Is there still the perception that low level 1 cargo/hatch bots are going to not be competitive in the future? Will the meta reverse from last year and have competitive alliances be two level 1 bots and one rocket bot?

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No such arrogance was ever implied here. At Vahay 612 knew its strengths and weaknesses, clearly expressed them to our alliance partners, and asked for help in those weaker areas. In several matches we ran out of places to score cargo (after scoring 6 in null hatches) and went to climb earlier than necessary. Some members of the drive team never even had a chance to learn the controls before Week 1 due to efforts required in completing the bot during unbag time – in fact, I printed out a button map spreadsheet for them to “study” and memorize Friday night before our first match.
Time will tell what it takes to continue to perform – undeniably all teams will step up their game over the coming weeks, and that could only mean GOOD things for 612 in its current state. More places to score cargo (strong hatchbots give us places to score), faster cycles thanks to intake improvements (we ran out of usable cargo sometimes because balls were jammed in the corner or in the human intake station), better alignment to avoid double-scoring in the same bay (our driver cam was not working well in early matches due to bad port selection, and this was fixed in elims).

Matches were indeed close – that’s the nature of this competition. I expected to see a huge number of match scores finish in the 35-55 realm just as a mathematical statistic, and this will bump up as weeks go by. In VaHay finals we were up against a VERY strong trio of teams who were capable of 2 consistent second level climbs, scoring hatches and balls all over the place, while fielding our own offensive power with 2363 and 1731 – knowing full well only one of us could climb to Lvl 3 (as you noticed, we chose to keep 2 bots on level 1 at the end). Those matches could have gone either way of course, but sure were exciting!

Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for what more there is to come out of 612 this year. With improvements to game piece handling already planned and a very detailed application of changes based on lessons learned from Week 1, I really don’t see any reason why the team cannot continue to compete at a high level this year. From a production standpoint, being able to absolutely guarantee 36 points from one bot alone (6 sandstorm drive, 12 climb, and 18 cargo which was a pretty typical team teleop performance this weekend), that’s going to hold up well in all district events and still be competitive in district champs

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I could be completely reading the game meta wrong in my analysis. As you said, I’m excited for what 612 will do this year and beyond. If the game meta changes by week 4, we may not be at the top in terms of competitiveness. Who knows what could happen.

This is a complicated and nuanced topic. I hope I’m not treading on toes by implying that either 612 or other teams aren’t trying their hardest. I’m trying to look at how VAHAY went for 612 and as @seg9585 kindly pointed out, there seems to be two narratives. Mine is focused on the past design principles and how last year carried over to the simple design of this year. @seg9585’s focused on the various improvements still to come.

It might seem like I’m implying that 612 will inevitably fail, which I am not. I just look at what I think the reasons why 612 dominates and from that, I don’t think the current reasons that explain 612’s win at VAHAY will hold at week 4. Of course, @seg9585 counter arguments are highlighting new reasons why 612 will do well in the future, of which I am super excited for.

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@Alexbay218 this is a great thread. I’m going to be sharing it with my students.

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Clarification:
I’ve been talking to @seg9585 and it seems like this post needs some clarification.
I am not saying that 612 cannot improve. On the contrary, @seg9585 has highlighted key areas to transform the robot in other ways.
I am not saying that 612 cannot win. I am thinking about the meta of the game and how it changes. I think that the game meta will change to favor rocket focused robots over low level robots.
My clarification of 80% potential is that the robot will not be able to do rocket (without drastic change), and the team’s potential to expand the robots capabilities is hindered by this fact. I’m not saying the team won’t be competitive or won’t improve. On the contrary, I know that they will. This analysis was written with the intent to explore how a level 1 cargo/hatch and hab level 3 robot dominated the competition at VAHAY and my opinion that it will change in the future at CHS. I did not intend to say that team 612 is a bad team or you shouldn’t pick them or anything of the sort. Looking back on the post with a more critical eye, I can see how others would take it as “team 612 can’t improve at all and they will fall into the middle of the pack”. This is not the message I was trying to send at all. To be honest, I’m considering deleting this post because the way I worded stuff was pretty bad. I injected some of my experiences from last year (I’m not saying the experiences last year was bad, on the contrary, it was the best in my four years in the team) and it carried over to some of the analysis. I hope you all understand that I in no way was trying to harm the reputation of 612’s 2019 robot. I will leave this post up in hopes that some meaningful dialog can still be gained from this conversation.

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Shaun, I’m glad that you not only have this awareness that your current observations are colored by your past experience with the team, but that you also want to share that special perspective with others. It’s great also that you’ve put some serious thought into how you wish to be heard (the tough thing about communication is that it tricks you into believing that it has occurred correctly!). A number of your comments I felt were right on the money, and others I thought were probably just wrong-- but like you, my handicap is that I can only see through my unique lens, and I don’t have full access to yours. Sharing perspectives is a fundamental struggle.

When FRC is working at it’s absolute best, it’s a machine for creating these awesome moments of self realization for people (students, mentors, volunteers, etc). We come out of this experience better able to engage with other humans in the things we’re passionate about. Having some familiarity with 612, I believe they are particularly good at this.

Keep doing cool stuff!

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As the lead mentor for 612, and with a total of 8 years with the team, I wanted to chime in on this discussion. Our views are colored by what we see and don’t see, and as a 2018 graduate of 612 @Alexbay218 has not seen the entirety of where 612 has been and how much it has grown over just the past 2 years. Love you Shawn, but with graciousness, I would suggest that you (and a good message for many of us) have someone review messages such as this before posting. 612 as a team is at maybe 40 - 50% of its potential, many of our members see that and have linked together and with mentors to grow and mature. Its a big challenge with over 100 students and about 8 mentors. The robot, one of our more complex with three game mechanisms. FRC is a great challenge because it makes teams pick and choose what they want to do, and those that try to do it all are usually disappointed. Our strategy was the climb RP as were other teams. Item 2 was balls, and 3 was hatch. We got climb working well. Balls, we kept bending the alum bars, hard to pick up balls when the bottom of your intake is missing ;). Noted and will be improved. Hatch was #3 and thus less focus. We changed our build process, had the robot wired and code running in week 4, that 's a first for 612 in a while.
Our success at Haymarket was not a fluke, it was the fruit of our labor over the past few years. Sure, going undefeated in qualification matches was some luck and great alliance partners, we don’t achieve much alone. And we should have lost one match because we did not play well, but our opponent, 2363, had a mistake that cost them the match. They are friends of 612 and my heart sank for them. We also wanted 2363 in our alliance because we didn’t want to compete against them :slight_smile:
Back to the fruits of our labor, 2 years ago, 612 could not have built this year’s robot and been successful. Now we can, and we’re continuing on that growth path. I would be happy to chat with others on our hurdles, what we’ve done and what we are doing. Its been an amazing ride.
Lastly, game statistics, crunching the numbers, for all those that love the math of scouting. Don’t forget to actually look at the robots and the teams, the numbers only tell part of the story. Our number 2 pick, 1731, was ranked 32, and there were many others available higher then them. Our scouting data had them ranked low. (FYI, our scouting data had us as #5 :slight_smile:) But they had a good robot and drive team, I saw them perform and they did not look like a #32 team, they were a hidden gem that others did not see, and we got to add them to our alliance.
I look forward to Oxen Hill and seeing how the game play improves for everyone in CHS.

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Congrats on the incredible success at Haymarket. It is incredible to see the level of play in CHS increase every year.