So for the people who have already competed, think you guys got any tips to give to the people who haven’t competed yet?
Just win. I’ve seen tons of drive teams (and i’ve been on a few as well). and the thing that i’ve learned is this. Just win. No matter what happens out there, you have to stay calm, listen to the coach, and look for openings in the D while you’re playing your offense. If you’re on D, watch out and make suer that you arent only defending the robot that is about to score, try to make it so you’ll be ready for the one 15 feet away thats picking up a ringer.
as my drive team’s slogan (#2) used to say:
JUST WIN, BABY!
Not a driver but I can suggest looking at semifinal and final round matches and put yourself in the shoes of every robot (yes, watch each match 6 times) and look for openings etc, that the driver did not see. It will give you a more open mind when you are on field and you should remember many of these “slips” of the D when you are behind the station.
as a coach/driver for 381
we have one suggestion
(in the words of the head driver Keith)
!!!DRIVE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT!!!
no Im serious just drive, don’t ram, but don be scared to swap some paint( or bumper in this case)
After seeing the first couple of regionals, I think people are going about this defense thing completely wrong. Most of the matches I see, the defender tries to harrass the scorer the entire time, which often gives the scorer a chance to fake them out and get around the defender. Not only is this obnoxious, it doesn’t work very well!
Team 60 in the Arizona regional played the most effective defense I had seen yet, and their robot has 6 skinny drive wheels and weighs only 84 pounds. All they had to do was sit in front of the rack and take up space, and it worked beautifully.
When robots that are playing D back off and then come for U, U can throw a spin move to get around them. Most important, stay calm and communicate with your coach and alliance partners.
Play to your strengths. If you are on defense and are faster but weaker than who you are defending, get in front of them wherever they are going. If you’re slower but stronger, push them. If you’re stronger and faster, see if there is another robot you can simulaneously defend. If you’re slower and weaker, ask for your alliance partners’ help. If you’re on offense, do the same things only backwards.
Also, NEVER play defense with your arm out. It’s an easy way to get a yellow flag. Every match is winnable so do not ever give up. Have the coach give you time updates so you can keep your eyes on the robot. Once the human player is done throwing tubes, have him or her be a second coach for you. Avoid penalties before, during, and after the match. Control your excitement so that you do not cross the driver line, play defense too aggressively, run out of your alliance station too early, or go on the field before the referee gives the signal.
Finally, when you receive a penalty or yellow flag or a ruling you feel is incorrect, don’t go yelling at the referees, they know what they’re doing. Instead, politely ask what you did wrong until you fully understand so that you will not make the same mistake again.
Good luck and I hope these tips help 
As a driver be careful driving around the rack, especially on the sides. A little miscalculation and the rack will reach out and grap your robot. This ends up in either a time consuming entanglement or a tip over. If you are on defence defending the rack watch out when the offence is scoring. In the semi finals a robot on our team flipped over when they had a ringer on the rack but still attached to their arm and another robot tried to push them away. Be aware of your center of gravity when reaching for the top ringers if you can. If you grab a tube and pop it it’s probably easiest just to grab another, they are extremely hard to score when popped from what ive seen.
Have a bottle of water if you’re going into elimination matches.
You’ll want it.
AMEN! and everybody wonders why i wear my backpack on the field…It’s my stash
Don’t be twitchy, be smooth, calm and collected. Do your best, but don’t flip out if something breaks or doesn’t go as planned. Your team will support you no matter what.
Be a part of the pre-match strat meetings. It will really help out on the field if you have a really good fundamental understanding of the strat instead of just following coaches orders. From my and my co-driver’s huge involvement in the strat meetings, we really didn’t need our coach for a whole lot, just when something went horribly wrong he was there to tell us what we needed to do and also keep on eye on the clock.
Dont be afraid to samsh and bash a little… if youve got bumpers use them, at the PNW regional our team collided with another robot so hard it bent in there front bumper and we still didnt get called… Drive hard but drive cool… and watch the rack, when your not looking itll reach out and grab you!
Dave McLaughlin, Team 1983 Driver
as my coach has said to me on many a time, don’t be afraid to break something.
you can’t reverse time if you lose a match but you can almost always replace or fix a broken part.
Well, I don’t have any tips specific to this year, but I have a few generic tips coming from a programmer:
If you see any strange lights light up on the controller, hit “ROBOT RESET”.
If you find that you can’t control the 'bot anymore, hit “ROBOT RESET”.
If the 'bot is drifting away, hit “ROBOT RESET” and if that didn’t fix it, check the calibration of the joysticks (or have your programmer do it for you:) ) and then put duct tape over them so they don’t get bumped.
Power-cycle the 'bot when you put it on the field (unplug the battery, make sure the robot controller turns off, then plug the battery back in). This will make sure auton actually executes.
And if you see a “Code Error” light turn on, hit “ROBOT RESET” and let the programmer know.
Don’t shake the joysticks violently when you lose control of the 'bot. Do a quick check of your lights and calmly let your programmer know what happened.
And most of all, have fun!
JBot
When I drive, I enter this sort of trance-like state where everything just kind of blurs together. You know, almost to the point where I’m driving by smell and taste. But that doesn’t help other drivers very much.:rolleyes:
When we were just speeding about the field, my coach and operator acted as another two sets of eyes and ears. More specifically, my operator kept an eye out around the robot and our coach kept an eye out on the field. When paired with mecanum drive, we were able to slip in and out of holes in the defense (or just the mess of the field) with ease.
Also, each person should keep an eye out for their positions. I paid attention to things like the drivetrain working properly and which way the robot was pointed (it’s pretty hard to tell which way is “forwards”, especially after our flag fell off… again). My operator kept track of whether the arm was tucked in (for lowering the ramp or defending), arm extension, etc. Our coach kept track of the field, noting where we’d been, where we are, and where we need to go.
On a tangent, I just realized that our coach’s mentality is exactly like figuring out fingerings for piano. You need to know where your hand was, where it needs to be, and where it’s going afterwards.
Above all, you need to remain cool. I worked with one team at VCU whose driver had the shakes so badly while trying to rewire their robot in the queue that I had to tell him to calm down and step away while I brought in the electronics guru on my drive team to finish the job. You need to not only remain cool on field, but also off the field, and hey, why not, in life too. Don’t fret about bad matches and such. Sometimes, @#$! happens. Instead, quickly get necessary repairs and modifications done and start prepping for the next match. We started off Friday at VCU by losing 3 in a row. As disappointed as I was, I found that I actually didn’t even have time to fret over losing (especially when it wasn’t our fault each match).
This post is getting kind of long-winded and everybody drives differently, so I think the best way to sum things up is this:
“Feel, don’t think. Trust your instincts.” (And your drive team and your alliance).
Take it easy.
If you find that you are running the robot where you don’t want it to be, slow it down a bit. There’s no use in gunning it at full power when you can’t do what you want with it.
You wrote a PID control loop for your coach? Whoa.
I can offer a bit of advice:
1- If defending, present the side of your robot perpendicular to your wheels (you waste no power and they waste plenty), and when they try to get around drive forward and backward. Being able to outguess and out-play other base drivers is necessary in all the FIRST games and certainly this one.
2- At all times, dont view the controls as buttons, but as a sharpshooter would view the trigger. Rough handling only makes you spastic, and not smooth. Feather those sticks!
3- Like in motorsports, the key to driving many of these robots is maintaining the “center of balance”. people that have driven cars at the limits of tire adhesion know of this, and keeping your robot’s weight balanced at the proper point will get you turning faster, and that can help you juke & jive.
4- If for some reason the battery in your robot is low, the worst you can do is attack the sticks. slowly bring them to power and the robot will move.
5- STAY CALM, DON’T PANIC
More specific to this game -
1- in most fairly competitive matches, you will have approx 1.5-3 seconds to drive up and score a tube, so act quickly and decisively.
2- Someone mentioned before, tagging someone the entire match is fairly wasteful, in most, if not all cases. stay between the scoring robot and the rack, and dont give him a leverage point to spin you around and overtake you.
3- With all the activity nearby the rack, traffic-running is key. It is often faster to go around a robot then try to plow through him. Plus, many operators are so concentrated on what they are doing they dont even notice, as long as you dont start smashing into them!
I didnt want to make this post enormous, sorry, but remember to remind yourselves…this IS supposed to be fun, so have at it!
Apologies in advance for this long post, writing about something I love is going to take a while 
The biggest, most important thing is to RELAX. My operator and I spend the 30 seconds or so right before the match (waiting for auton to start) dancing to the music behind the player station wall; I’ve noticed that we’re the only ones out there doing it, but it’s a fun way to loosen up and realize that you’re just out there to have fun.
Listen to your coach, even if it goes against your own best judgment. Paul made a call or two that, at the time, were not what I would have chosen if I had been alone. However, watching the videos later, I saw that it was strategically the best thing to do (i.e. switching to scoring on the middle row randomly in the middle of a match).
There is really no time to think; 2 minutes goes by a heck of a lot faster than you may realize. If you see an opening or a strategical groove to drive, just freaking do it. There is no time at all to have a self-debate over the pros and cons of an action. This game [due to, IMO, the effectively small playing field] is based on split second, make-or-break decisions. If you spend too much time thinking about what to do, before you know it the other team is going to be on you or scoring tubes.
On a related note, I read a quote in an earlier one of these threads that I really liked. “You can always fix a robot; you can never replay a match.” During the build season, I was primarily on the mechanical build team, so I had a lot of effort and sweat put into that robot. Before my first match, I was so scared to touch other robots, I figured I would be a horrible defensive player. However, in the heat of the match, I just put those thoughts out of my mind and focused on the task at hand (plus the fact that I couldn’t really think about what I was doing, again with the whole time and pressure thing).
Be on good terms with your operator (or vice versa). This may seem obvious, but just trust me. Don’t let personal issues with them affect you during the matches; focus only on your task at hand (drive to tube, drive to rack, place tube, drive back. rinse, repeat). Don’t worry about the people in the stands, don’t worry about your ex girlfriend back home, don’t worry about the math test you’re missing.
Have fun with it. I see some people trying to act like they’re professional robot drivers out there or something, it’s a much better experience if you just rock out with it. For my first regional, I spiked up my hair and got all the swag I could find for ‘good luck’ (buttons, necklaces, armbands, whatever lol) and had a ball with it. Dance before matches, heck dance during matches if you can get the extra thought process (I think I bobbed my head a couple times when we were doing well).
Again, above all, RELAXX. If you feel yourself getting twitchy and jumpy, just take a second and breathe. Let up on the joysticks/gamepad a little; driving it a second slower and making the tube cleanly is a heckuva lot better than driving it 2 seconds faster, dropping the tube, hitting another robot, and losing your chance altogether.
Wow… that was really long. Uhh… have fun driving, and good luck 
I’d like to thank posters on behalf of myself and new drivers everywhere. there great advice. our 1st competition’s in 3 days and I’m pretty excited/anxious