As a strategy buff not participating in any FTC design or competition this year (silly “You’re in college and can’t start your own FTC team” grumble grumble grumble), I’m interested to see what people think of various strategy tradeoffs and designs this year. There are plenty (floor intakes or ramp intakes, hopper designs, single or multi ball shooters), but the one that’s the most interesting to me is the decision to build either a 5 or 10 point goal shooter, or if you can do both, which one would be the primary component of an alliance.
If you’re willing to share at this point, what thoughts went into your decision? What tradeoffs are you making to achieve one over the other? Why did one seem better or more reliable?
(My thoughts: large goal with a doubler ball, given a fast enough output, could allow for double or triple wide shooter and a few hundred points in a few easy seconds is possible without the goal moving on you. that’s just me though)
In all honesty, it really depends on the assumptions you make about the other robots on the field. If you assume your partner can score as well or better than you 50% of the time, but you want to win 100% of the time, then I think you can assume you will:
Get 1 bonus ball in per match
Have a good autonomous as an option, 15-23 balls in the high goal during auton.
Want to only score in one goal or the other, but not both
If you have a spectacular partner who can score 60 balls in the outer goal, then your bot is still better off putting everything in the outer goal than splitting where you and your partner put your wiffle balls … additionally you better be prepared to play ‘wingman’ or take up the slack from all of the defense your partner will receive. If your partner has a magnificent 15-ball autonomous, then you too are better off scoring all of your balls in the high goal during the game. At the end, defend and get the bonus ball. If your partner can only move, and/or barely move – then get them into a strategic location in order to make it difficult for the other team to score simply because another bot is there.
The math works out that the obivous dominative high scoring answer is the outer goal with a bonus ball. But that always assumes an ideal case where the other robots on the field conform to your expectations. The next solution is a magnificent autonomous, but again that assumes you will get the balls you expect to get in autonomous (there may be another bot in the way…).
In my mind, the Outer goal has the highest scoring potential, but it also assumes your opponents will let you get into scoring position.
Assume you are waiting in front of the ball chute to collect the bonus ball. What’s stopping a heavy brute-bot from just planting themselves 1" behind you and keeping you there. It’s not pinning because you can still move, just not very far
At least the 5 point goal is accessible in autonomous, and much harder to block.
Seems to me that you need a “get some points” safety play to go with the “hoard and dump” play. At Nationals we saw some great robots who filled up with pucks and then got blocked from scoring. Not so likely in early qualifying rounds, but very common in eliminations.
Also, there’s nothing stopping an opponent from sitting in front of your ball chute and preventing you from getting the bonus ball. So, now High goal auto balls have the same point value as the outer goal.
In perspective of what my team is doing we have a way of making our shooter shoot in any Goal, though our main strategy will be to collect balls throughout the match and fire the entire payload into the off-feild goal which we have figured out a way to make impossible to block the shooter. Autonomous will basically be driving around collecting balls. A thing I did last year though didn’t have success with it because we didn’t have the time to try, is to have like 15 different autonomous programs so you will have more options.
Another thing to consider is you won’t be partner with the best teams all the time. Last year in 2-3 of our matches we were basically the only robot working. It came to the point sometimes where were killing the other alliance so much we had to score the other alliance points so we would get the Match point.
Never say impossible in FRC. I really doubt this game has a chokehold. Some team will stop you, somehow, in a way you never thought of.
Interesting side note: Nothing in the current rules prohibits clamping to the field border if I read them correctly.
Autonomous will basically be driving around collecting balls. A thing I did last year though didn’t have success with it because we didn’t have the time to try, is to have like 15 different autonomous programs so you will have more options.
That kind of auton sounds really inconsistent depending on if you’re lucky enough not to hit another robot, have balls that happen to be in the robot’s way, etc. Unless you guys have another clever solution for that one like above. Perhaps you won’t be collecting balls from the floor per se…
Another thing to consider is you won’t be partner with the best teams all the time. Last year in 2-3 of our matches we were basically the only robot working. It came to the point sometimes where were killing the other alliance so much we had to score the other alliance points so we would get the Match point.
Since FTC has the unfortunate ruling that only alliance captains advance to the Championship (IMO a very flawed implementation but whatever), building a robot to assist an alliance in some unique fashion is worthless since you might get picked, but you won’t be a captain if you’re very good at helping only very good partners.
The last part of you statement is wrong we won SC FTC Championship and our alliance partner made it via Teir Lottery. Though true indefinitly only the alliance captain is garanteed a spot.
