I was wondering what people thought the best way to put the tubes into play and what the advantages and disadvantages would be. Post Back
I know you’re on a rookie team, but what do YOU think the advantages and disadvantages are? It will be helpful if you come up with your own answers and reasoning to discuss with users on CD instead of soliciting answers for such a general question.
Personally, I think it’s almost silly to throw a tube over the wall because you risk losing that tube, unless you throw it right in front of your robot (in the lane in front of you, par example.)
It really depends on where your robot is, in relation to the other robots on the field.
Summary: Only throw if you’re guaranteed to retrieve it with your robot.
Just my $0.02 CDN.
-Nick
it would be best to feed the tubes. throwing them would result in them landing in a unwanted place and make it hard to drive the feild
Neither. Feeding the robot to your tube means that your gripper/manipulator needs to be at a required height. Throwing the tubes onto the field increases your chance it will fall out out of the lane where an opponent can grab it, or fall into an odd position up against the field elements.
I would highly recommend dropping the tubes through the feeder on the ground. I did some testing at the field in Manchester and found that lightly dropping them onto the ground puts them in the same place in the lane each and every time nice and flat.
Those are my thoughts.
I think throwing the game pieces into play could have a major advantage in saving time by not having the robot come all the way back across the field to the feeder slot to retrieve a game piece. Of course their are issues such as picking it up, throwing it accurately and such. But if one were to really practice this tactic it could prove to be a definite time saving advantage.
Thanks Everyone.
What about throwing the tube across the field? In '07, human players could easily hit the rack with a strong throw, likewise, I don’t think it’ll take too much to get the tube to the tubes a way past the half way mark.
- Sunny
In 2007 there were red tubes for the red alliance, and blue tubes for the blue alliance. In this game either alliance can use pieces that are thrown onto the field. This is a big argument against throwing them.
We haven’t really done any tests with the logo pieces yet, but it seems to me that it would be very hard to throw them to your end of the field. By throwing the tubes you would probably end up helping the other alliance more unless you manage to throw the tube right to where your robot is.
Punching a tube through the slot can reliably get tubes all the way to the end of the lane without leaving them open for getting stolen. Shaves off a couple seconds.
Throwing tubes will likely end up being situational… If you know the other alliance can’t pick up tubes from the ground, go ahead and throw. If you know you can get it near your robot while no one from the other alliance is near by, go ahead and throw. if you’re amazing enough to get it into the 7’ protection zone on the other end of the field, go ahead and throw. Otherwise, punching it out the hole to get it to the end of the lane is going to be your best bet - it’s closer to your robot, and the other team can’t touch it.
I’m not really affiliated with any teams at the moment, so I can’t say that this is or is not used by any teams I’ve worked with prior. I will say that an idea I had was to have a pole of sorts on the robot for the human player to toss a ring onto that then has a claw take it off in order to score while your driving to the other side of the field could save enough time for an extra tube every match if you had a reliable human player. Also, you wouldn’t even have to take it off of the pole, if the pole was a part of your manipulator(say one part of the claw). I’m just kind of throwing the idea out there to see what others think of the feasibility of it.
That would require one heck of a human player. If memory serves they’d have to hit the pole on the robot after throwing it OVER the player station wall.
also handing it to your bot over the wall like 111 did in 07 could prove to be a solid strategy. I think we will rarely see tubes be thrown to bots unless one alliance cant ground load
it depends on how your robot recieves the game pieces. If your robot grabs better from the slot then use that idea, but if you can throw the piece over with accuracy than use that option
Remember, the alliance wall is 6.5’ high, you would need a really tall human player to throw the tubes over the wall efficiently. It would be better if you fed the tubes to the robot instead
Outright tube throwing is beneficial in only a few situations:
First, a blowout match. You’ve got 67 and 1114, they have 3XXX, 3XXX, and that one team that hasn’t moved all regional. Throwing tubes will allow them to score more, but you’ll almost certainly still beat them, so you’ll get more ranking points. I expect this to rarely be the case for my team but something to consider.
Second, when your alliance has at least two more ground loaders than the other alliance. Throwing tubes becomes strategically advantageous if 2 of your robots both score better than the sole ground loader.
I do think if HPs are good enough to throw tubes in a dead straight line that throwing them to the end of the lane is beneficial.
Other than that, loader all the way, and never ever drop a tube.
My personal opinion is that Handing the Tube to the Robot, either via the Feeding Slot or over the Wall, is the best method. You can control the orientation of the tube with the Human Player, and you effectively negate the possibility of losing the tube to the other alliance.
If your robot can pick up the floor, and that is your preferred method, then dropping the tubes on the floor, or lightly tossing them into the protected lane is probably also a decent idea.
There will be cases where throwing tubes out of the lane would be worth the risk, either as a Buzzer Beater sort of play, or during a blowout match where every tube will not matter. But more often than not, I’d say don’t throw tubes.
Id personally make it depend on the type of robot. What if (if your “feeding”) you had a system that allows some tolerance of where its put into play? I.e. make an area designed for the tup to fall into, like a laundry chute? if your throwing, Make a wide area on top for the tube to fall into kinda like in lunacy. These are just my opinions. Whatever your doing, hope it works great.