The Finals at both PNW and UCF were Deja Vue all over again.
First Match a Tie,
Second One alliance wins,
Third, Other alliance wins,
Fourth and final match determine winner.
This could be a nightmare demolition derby nationals - Best way to win is not be gracious and professional but bully the weaker of your opponents until the the last second and then hang. I really think there should be no ties in the elimination rounds. Best two out of three with highest points, highest qp, highest hanger, closest to the bar, coin flip breaking the tie at the end of 3.
I can just see the finals going until midnight, tie after tie.
I had realized this, however I had not put it into perspective of what will come of it at Nationals. I can see this highly possible as happening, and having extremely robust machines batling and able to fight till the end, match after match. However, I would think that by match 4, or match 5; soon therafter we would see one of the machines become “exhausted”. Although, it would be sad to see, one of the alliances would get to the point, where they would no longer be able to compete due to unworking status.
… Factors such as the balls and human player abilities will affect the outcomes though after time.
hmmm… “demolition derby” eh? could be a very strong possibility. the elims at GLR were very physical… by the end i doubt that any team team made it through eliminations without damaging/breaking their robot. time-outs were very common in the elims, where teams were rushing to get their robots fixed. :ahh:
yes, the GLR elim rounds where VERY physical. our robot was banged up pretty bad, and I was quite disaapointed that this was what the other teams did. But o well, we did much better than we could have hope for so great job to all the teams at GLR!!!
Yeah GLR was brutal (I didnt mean to I swear (sry about the arm HOT))… I mean I think I broke at least two things just trying to do what I was supolse to. Yeah go Alliance #8! (Bedford, Mach Vee, Chargers!) Well for us a Semi Final finish was great oh and great job to all the other teams there!
The time-out idea is odd because one of the reasons for having alliances was to prevent delays by having a backup robot if one broke. It was a little unnerving to see a robot hanging safely and then two seconds later it was lying on its back because a robot lifted it off the bar. That’s why you build them strong.
i think that if you have 3 ties, then they would just see how many points each alliance scored total in that round and that would determine who wins. It probally has something about it in the rule book.
They did the best average out of 2 matches last year… it was horrible in my opinion. Best of three accounts for one team just having horrible luck in one of their matches… at least more than 2
Yeah we can give credit to TNT for that one. The Dana Team with the red robot (the number slips me… sry guys) was hanging on the bar then TNT hooked came right up underneath them and lifted them up and off the bar. I think that was the only time it happened at GLR but still that was quite the site to see.
At the pittsburg regional the top seeded team, 808 was excellent at getting on the bar, and they crashed to the ground in the elimination matches.
Im not sure if the other bot that was pulling itself up snagged them a little on the way up, unhooking their bar, or if they snagged it somehow and added more weight than it could handle - I think their hook straighten out - they were eliminated in that round
Things werent really that rough at pittsburg, but we did get bashed twice in the very last match - our bot was herding balls on our side of the field, and an opponent bot came over and rammed us going quite fast, smashing two of our tri-wheels on one side.
then they rammed us on the other side, smashing those wheels as well
I saw lots of pushing and shoving around the platform and the bar - but that was the first time I saw a team ram a bot that was herding balls.
Will be interesting to see how this continues this year- we sustained about $750 damage in destroyed custom machined PVC wheels in that one match, and was a little surprized that no penalties were called for the incident.
The fact that a team would smash one side of your wheels sucks, whether it was intentional or not, but to go and do it again to the otherside is just donwright ugly. I really wonder how people can do something like that and then feel good about themselves for it.
well we did learn something cool from the experience - triwheels will rotate around and put a good wheel on the floor when one has been broken - even with 4 of the 6 wheels in our triwheel pair totally smashed, our bot was still able to drag itself towards the corral, and push two more balls in
BTW - we literally lost the last match and missed being regional winner by an inch - our other alliance partner, team 1114 just couldnt quite get up off the floor - they were hook on the bar and just needed a few more seconds - if they had been up we would have won the match.
in st louis we had the tie situation. in quaterfinals, it went like this:
1.Red wins
2.Blue wins
3.Tie (blue has 20 more points, but gets 2 penalties )
4.Tie (blue has 10 more points, but gets 1 penalty )
5.Red wins (both blue bots tip over )
and me being on the blue team. if we had last year’s rules, or even this years rules minus one of the updates, we would have won based on point avg, margin of victory, or highest score, but thats how it goes. btw gg to 1018 and the rest of that team for 5 great matches (in a row…)
5 rounds to deternine a winner? Think about that. Is that fair to you or your opponent? After so many matches the chances of something breaking, or wearing out, or just shear exhaustion can realy take a toll. So the National Champion is decided by the luckiest team whose had easy matches, and the best robots have all destroyed each other because they have had 3 or four matches more than their luckier opponents.
Think about the nationals where we repeat this in both the division and national titles. I agree the two game only rule last year was bad, but only bcause the score was based on QPs not overall points. If you lost a close first round, it was impossible to recover. If the two matches were based on winning points, there rarely would have to be a third tie breaking match. I strongly suggest the rules for the nationls be changed to make the winner the best 2 out of 3 if the teams split. So first team to win two rounds, or after three games, highest points scored by any team, highest qp by anyteam, coin toss.
We want the most capable robot alliance to win. As it stands now, the best robot to have for the national champion is a battlebot that can hang quickly. It wins by knocking opponents over or disabling them, playing king of the hill, and hanging at the last minute. Opponents a good ball herder? (knock em over) a big ball handler? (knock em over) can hang? (knock em over). As a ref it is really hard to judge intention. Were they trying to prevent the other robot from scoring, or were they malicious? That is an almost impossible call to make.
Having teams play more than three matches to dermine the round is not in anyone’s best interest. I don’t know how we get the attention of the rules committee on this.
if someone is trying to score and you get it front of them, get in their path, and block it or push them backwards, you are defending the goal
but if a bot is trying to score and you fly across the field and slam into their back or side your intent is obvious - you are not stopping them from reaching the goal, you are attacking the robot - esp obvious if serious damage results fom the impact.
kinda like if a hockey player skates up from behind and punches another player in the back of the head, knocking him unconscience, and then jumps on him and hits him again - if an attack like that is not even allowed in hockey, you would think an attack like that against a robot would not be allowed in FIRST
Actually, the situation in St. Louis is similar to most of the other times that the elimination rounds have gone on to a fourth or fifth match. It really comes down to this (and this is also true for the qualification matches): if you want to win, cleanly and quickly, then DON’T GET ANY PENALTIES! Penalties can (and many time do) make the difference between winning and losing a match.
There is a slightly subtle, but VERY important difference between this year’s game and prior versions. In prior years, the rules typically stated “you can’t do action xxxx during a match” but never really specified what would happen if you violated the rule. This year, almost all the rules are stated in the form “you can’t do action xxxx during a match; if you do there will be a penalty of yyyy.” Personally, I think this is a very good thing, and it helps remove a lot of ambiguity and inconsistency that we have seen in the past. Yes, there is still some, and things can still be cleaned up a little more, but I think this is a big step forward.
Ain’t gonna happen. The absolute worst think that FIRST could do at this point would be to change the scheme used to conduct the competitions. The robots have been built, they have been shipped to the competition sites, regional events have been held, games have been played, and we are nearly half way into the competition season. Changing the rules in as massive a way as you are suggesting would be an insane move for FIRST to make.
Plus, who says that having teams play just three rounds is some sort of panacea for ANY problem? Does anyone remember kick off? Does anyone remember the explicit and implicit message that FIRST has been giving this season? Does anyone remember the whole discussion about the necessity to BUILD ROBUST ROBOTS? If a team has built a robot that can just barely survive three rounds, but can’t last through a fourth, then why should we be considering torqueing the entire competition process around just to appease them? Particularly when there are other teams that have listened to the ROBUSTNESS message, and designed their robots accordingly?
One more thought on this. From the audience entertainment/involvement standpoint, going into an extra “overtime” match or two due to a tie situation is GREAT! It very definitely adds to the drama of the event, and kicks the excitement level up a notch or two. Given the clearly stated objective from FIRST to increase the general public awareness and involvement, and to make the competitions more attractive to the public and mass media, this is a very good thing. The “unwashed masses” love to see the sort of extended play, sudden death, tie-breaker overtime matches that these opportunities create. It draws them in, helps make fans of them, and opens the door a little bit for FIRST to expand their message. Conversely, having the final game of an elimination match decided by the flip of a coin is about as boring and anti-climatic a way to determine a winner as I could possibly imagine.
Alan, I have read your messages on this topic (all of them, on this and other forii), but with all due respect, I gotta disagree with you on this one.
)