You don’t necessarily need to put the cubes in the vault, many teams just leave the cubes in front of the vault, if they need to activate a power-up, in the case you need more cubes on the field, you can feed it back out the exchange through the portal on top which is rarely used.
I understand that you can pre-stage cubes outside/infront of the vault.
I just wanted to ensure that it was understood you can’t take them out of the vault once they’ve been put in.
Emphasis mine.
We were able to have 6-7 cubes in the vault, and if blue started playing switch defense we were able to come back and use the ones we needed from the vault to maintain switch ownership.
Autonomous will make or break your match. Consistency is huge as always.
Tipping over in the finals is bad. Don’t do that.
We were able to have 6-7 cubes in the vault, and if blue started playing switch defense we were able to come back and use the ones we needed from the vault to maintain switch ownership.
Poor wording on my part; ‘behind the driver station wall’ would’ve been more accurate.
RIP
Note: Plans in place to make sure it doesn’t happen at worlds :]
There are no failures, only lessons right? Some Texas robot guy said that I think.
few Random observations
- Auto is much more critical than it has been
- teams that haven’t planned for game piece starvation will be behind the 8 ball
- surprised to see fewer switch only bots in first round of draft
- if you can’t buddy climb you won’t seed first in your division
- mostly watched Ontario but there wasn’t as much battling for opposing switches. Battles were primarily for the scale
This seemed to be a pretty common theme across all District Champs. Most alliances only chose to attack the opposing Switch after they built up a lead on the Scale.
I would say that this makes all the sense in the world. While good defensive play (which is effectively what attacking the opposing switch is) is a huge benefit to teams’ chances to win matches, you cannot win without scoring substantial numbers of points, and playing the scale achieves both goals simultaneously (plus provides a greater offensive benefit, to boot, than playing one’s own switch does)
To be fair, it might work out if you can manage to tangle with an opponent’s robot for the rest of the match 
I’m impressed at your guys’ growth the season and what you were able to accomplish. The finals had me on the edge of my seat!
Best of luck in Detroit! You’ll make Indiana proud!
That’s what I saw some of the best teams perform time after time…
- Gain control of one’s Alliance’s Switch and the Scale, ideally in Auto, even better if you can place 2 or 3 Power Cubes on the Scale and Switch…
- Work towards achieving the Levitate bonus…
- Throw the opposing Alliance on their heels by attacking their Switch…
- Protect your own Switch and maintain your lead on the Scale…
- Accumulate Power Cubes in the vault as time and cube availability permit to boost point advantage
Playing catch-up is really tough in those conditions.
One can expect at Champs that both Alliances will score the Automode points.
During the Endgame, timing will be knuckle gnawing, or not, depending on how many robots attempt to go Fight the Boss, driven by how tight the point gap is and how many robots maintain the fight for the Scale or Switch ownership.
The least slip-ups (e.g. dropping power cubes) or robot malfunctions will be determining.
Indeed! I saw very few games in which a defensive strategy allowed a team to come back from behind. The only way out, generally, is to work to gain the Scale and get your Switch back if taken and stick as close as possible in points behind your opponent hoping they slip-up more than you do or suffer a robot malfunction.
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With that, make sure you know how other teams prefer to retrieve cubes from the portal. Do what is best and gives the best cycle times for the whole alliance.
Above all else, pay attention when you are at the portal!
The number 1 alliance in NE took the scale in auto and went quickly after the number 2 alliance switch. Result: Cubes were in short supply down the stretch and although the number 2 alliance took the scale back, they were unable to use power ups to capitalize.
Buddy climb or otherwise, being able to get 4RP matches is a huge help for ranking. After some discouraging losses on our first day on the Science field, we were ranked like 35th out of 40. The following day we shot up to 6th, thanks in part to buddy climbs with 2200, 2056, and others climbing on our own buddy bar.
We had a match where we drove up to the portal and waited… and started “waving” our elevator up and down in front of the human player’s face to get their attention.
Other notes: by DCMP and Worlds, you really should have solved your wiring and disconnection problems. Unfortunately in our case we had a couple of gremlins creep in. One particularly fun one: a Sharp IR sensor, with a plastic enclosure, was shorting to our robot frame. We thought it was the metal contacts on the PCB – nope, the enclosure itself! This caused a short and a radio reboot. Our switch auto had been 100% rock-solid reliable – until our match with 2056. 
It actually almost did - I was really impressed with 5188 & 1741 for immediately changing strategies and still getting the double climb! Talk about thinking on the fly.
Thanks, good luck to 868 as well. I’d say your growth was even more impressive this season - not getting picked at your first event and then winning every Indiana event you attended is no small feat!
Regardless of how frowned upon they may be, one has to admire 254 - Cheesy Poofs for their perfect 4.0 RP record at SVR this year. The strategy they executed will be that which teams will need to beat at Champs, IMHO.
254 - Cheesy Poofs 2018 FRC matches playlist
After a few difficult (relatively speaking) matches at ANR, they tuned their strategy and went on to a perfect record at SVR.
That Ontario is miles ahead more competitive all-round than any other region.
Y’all watch New England or Michigan district championships? If you’re not careful all the West Coast Best Coast people are going to start a riot.
lol okay