With the conclusion of week 1-2 events, I was wondering about how many teams brought a shooter the event vs. the amount who actually used one.
548 used their shooter a couple times to shoot a handful of balls, but it was not a planned strategy.
We decided to focus on gears on our week 2 event. After seeing success with our current strategy we’ve decided for our next event to continue improving what we currently do best at and probably removing our shooter.
1706 used our shooter throughout quals and playoffs. Achieved >40 kPa in 10 total matches including 6 for 6 in playoffs. This was the key goal for our strategy in the playoffs. This combined with 1732’s amazing floor gear pickup and 537’s shooting and defense propelled us to the Regional win.
Big thanks to 1732, the number 1 seed for picking us.
At Central Valley, we (5401, 4255, and my team) had won one and lost one in quaterfinals and went to a tie breaker where we proceeded to have a tie. Going into the tie breaker breaker, we knew we would have to shoot some fuel to win and we ended up winning by just 5 points because of it.
We used our shooter only during auto to basically fill those extra 10 seconds after gear placement. Worked well for us, and though we usually only got 2-5 in, those were the tiebreaker points sometimes.
We originally designed our bot to try for 40kPa in auto (with hopper dump) using the roller system (in miniature) from team 95 in 2006 that shot Basketballs. It was not accurate enough with wiffle balls (shoot 40 get 5 in testing ) ultimately with the Fuel. So we had to adjust to being mostly a Gear bot/climber in San Diego. We invested a lot of build time in Fuel capacity/shooting and Drive Base and Gears was literally a 30 minute bolt on deal.
I was talking to my son also a mentor about hindsight after watching Week 0/1 … I could see a really great Defender that Climbed every time as being a great option before our week 2 competition. After our competition and seeing some live gameplay, I changed my mind back to Fuel definitely matters. We are going into Ventura planning to do Fuel (try some improvements) and Gears when it makes sense to do so… so yes we are glad we have Fuel capabilities. The ultimate winner San Diego was Team Paradox 2102’s alliance #2 and they were one of the best Fuel bots there. Fuel is a winning strategy if you can pull it off.
I half want to say that we regretted using it, because we only used it twice, but we did win a match or two based on the very few points we got from the fuel.
The first option shouldn’t exist as it decreases the percentages that actually matter.
Our team won’t be hitting the field until week 4.
However, over the past weekend we had a discussion about removing our fuel capabilities entirely and building our climber center mass. After watching the first week we determined that we need to be able to climb 100% of the time. So doing anything and everything to improve our chances of that was priority one.
On the flip side we put a lot of time, effort and time(3d printing) in to our fuel system. It would be a shame to have that go to waste. Especially since over the weekend was the first time we got to all together and working. It may not be top tier, but $@#$@#$@#$@# are we impressed with ourselves for what we built!
In the end we decided we would make what improvements we can to the climber in it’s current state and try to roll with the fuel system. Providing we can tune it appropriately.
Reason: As long as we can shoot our 10 pre-loaded fuel and score some of them we think it will be worth it. We don’t expect to use our shooter beyond auto.
2363 used our shooter during autonomous the first day of our week one event. We had difficulty navigating to the hopper accurately enough to reliably trigger the hopper. Without the hopper dumping balls into the bot, doing a ball auto rather than a gear auto was not worth it.
We decided to change our approach to dumping the hopper, scoring a gear first. We hope approaching the hopper from the airship, rather than the alliance wall, will make hopper dumping more reliable. We are re-configuring our robot to shoot out the sides, rather than out the front. If we’re lucky, we’ll be scoring auto balls by the time elims roll around at our next district event. If not, that will be the goal for the district championship.
It’s worth noting that we only used it once outside of auto, and that the winning couple of fuel points didn’t come from our shooter but from 2839 Daedalus. That said, I’m glad we invested the time in it. Our gear mechanism was designed by a freshman team to give them some basic design experience, and it worked well enough to score a few gears per match. Most of our engineering resources went to all the various fuel-related systems. Assuming the chatter on CD is correct, fuel will matter more and more as the season progresses, and the time investment will pay off down the road.
We have a decent shooter, but never used it in our PNW district event and focused on running gears. We ended up winning paired with another strong gear runner and a defense/climber robot. Our basic strategy was 3 rotors then defense and climb. We were very consistent at this. But I don’t think that’s going to work at our next event when more robots are consistent - it will take fuel to win. I see alliances as being one strong shooter and one strong gear runner, plus a multipurpose robot.
We expected 4 rotors to be more prevalent, but seeing how easy good defense is to play, I don’t think that is a good strategy going forward for elims. Maybe 3 good gear runners can do it, but I’m scared to see what defense will get to in that scenario. One robot played great defense around the center peg and could just ram robots anytime they got close to a spring. Ouch.
At the Ontario Central Event at Ryerson, our Auto routine hangs a gear and then shoots at the boiler with about an 70-80% success rate once it was calibrated properly.
However, 1114 was also there and their Auto went straight for hopper and shot at the boiler and did score lots of fuel in Auto (I’m talking in the mid-20s to 30 fuel). They were picked by the #1 seed (610) and collectively hit the 40kPA mark in most of their matches (610 has a good shooter and a great gear cycle time), which got them the nice bonus during eliminations.
Irwin Tan
Team 1310
Quick, I need one of those memes that says “you can’t use your shooter if you never built a shooter”
Even though we actually got a foul for shooting fuel at Orlando? Huh…
Our shooter will make its debut a week from this Friday. The most likely scenario is running it in auton, if our gear isn’t needed to get the first rotor.
As has been stated, our team used our shooter a little through the event; however, most of the points we scored doing that were in autonomous. At this point, not many alliances have been able to develop a strategy that involves getting 3 rotors and 40kPa without a super-fuel robot, but I suspect as teams get more time to work out autonomous routines involving fuel it will be more important.
333, 2791, and 5952 won the Tech Valley Regional scoring no fuel in playoffs.
However, the Bridgewater-Raritan MAR event told a different story. Two robots on the #1 alliance, captain 2168 and first pick 303, scored fuel and a gear in autonomous, which gave them a major edge in making their way to the finals. In those finals, their opponent 747 spent a large chunk of time in teleop shooting, drawing defense from 2168 and 303. If 747’s alliance did not miss a climb in each finals match, their and 219’s shooting would have won them the event.
We have a shooter, used it a few times, and found some errors with it. However, we have been working to improve it for our next event, and I feel that it will be infinitely more important/useful due to the evolution of the game.
Wait, are you telling me our robot had a shooter?