I’m not in FTC, but I thought a thread should be started about the 2014 FTC game: Block Party!
My initial thoughts on the game: Raising the flag and hanging will be among some of the biggest scoring opportunities. Balancing the high goals is a big opportunity too (pushing into the low goals seems like less of an advantage).
Any other thoughts?
Raising the flag seems like a pretty easy task to me for the amount of points it’s worth. Also having done a VEX game involving cubes before, I think it will be very easy to score cubes. Balancing the goals sounds fun.
Auto looks big this year, and more manageable/doable than last year.
Does anyone have projected high scores?
I think that swerve drive can have lots of advantages for this game!
How so? The only one I can think of is in Auton (driving sideways to find the goal with the IR beneath it. Like driving sideways scanning for it or similar) or doing the same in teleop, when trying to make the top goals even.
I think that it will have a great advantage in Teleop as well. It could be much easier to put equal amount of blocks on both sides of the balance. Also swerve drive does have its advantage against defense in FTC as well.Also I think that it could be a great help with aligning with the corner flags.
This reminds me of Rebound Rumble.
First, here’s a fairly bare-bones google doc I made breaking down scoring for the game (just create a copy to use it yourself; comment any issues you find please!). A couple small things about that-- auto scoring is worth 42-3 or 22-3 points because the block is scored after teleop too. I’ll also be editing this to make it more intuitive to use and to comply with any rule changes that are introduced, as well as adding estimate points for different “archetypes” of robots.
Based on that spreadsheet (which hopefully isn’t too far off of reality), here’s my general predictions:
1: A single robot should be able to score 20-40 points in autonomous mode fairly consistently (plus another 20 if they can do IR). This of course assumes that the robot is designed to quickly complete the autonomous mode, which most likely won’t be the case for teams with pincer-arms.
2: Flag raising is easy. Based on experiments with the field at our kickoff event, it takes about 17 turns to raise the flag all the way. If you can manage 2 turns a second, it’s less than 10 seconds for raising the flag.
3: Balance bonus is awesome. It provides an opportunity for teams to really jump up from behind.
4: Balancing is potentially worth more than hanging and flag raising combined.
5: Scoring on the lower level looks surprisingly profitable-- those count as block points too if it’s balanced!
6: Defence will be difficult. Pendulums are almost as bad as pyramids from Ultimate Ascent, and the flag is even more restrictive.
Those are my thoughts right now. I’m probably going to be thinking though mechanisms and how to play the game all night, so I might add to this.
Hi there,
Shameless plug!
A few Pigmice alumni and current team members have gotten together for the Autodesk Week 1 FTC Build.
We will be sharing our take on the game as well as our design, prototyping and building process in a live stream as well as video clips posted separately.
See ya all around!
Garrett
Really liking this. Thank you for doing this, I’ll definitely be showing it to my FTC students and mentors!
If you only push into the low goals you are automatically balanced so it does have a slight advantage there. I haven’t read the manual but it seems like scoring in your opponents pendulum to throw it off balance might be worth it.
You cannot put blocks in your opponents’ goal during the end game. This is probably to prevent the sabotage of the balance bonus. You could, however, dump a ton of blocks one one side of their pendulum before the end game starts, so the opposing alliance cannot balance it in time. But you would be giving up a ton of points, and you might do more harm for your alliance than good.
Hmm… After last season for FTC I was able to catch the very end of the season of an FRC team. With springs allowed in the game manual (It may always be that way, we were a rookie team last year and everything was a scramble) I hope that we can implement some lifting system similar to the one we used for Ultimate Ascent.
I wish I had some affiliation with FTC this year… I’ve built a bot for a somewhat similar VEX game. :rolleyes:
Check out WPI Savage Soccer 2012. The game was played with wooden cubes. We had one of the highest scoring bots. Here’s the link to a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMWYcsjCLNw
I think autonomous could be a huge advantage in this game. Would it be possible to collect a full load of cubes and score them in autonomous?
No, the rules state that if any blocks other than the pre-loaded autonomous blocks are scored in auto, the alliance’s entire block score from auto is discounted.
Would it still be legal to reload the bot with four blocks ready to be placed before driving up onto the bridge? Or would it be ineffective? It’s all a matter of time, I guess. A few seconds saved might not be worth the effort of autonomous loading. With the bridge score, if you can make full bridge, is worth more than the twelve points you could have as soon as teleop begins. If the best you can do reliably is the ten-point half bridge, then maybe that twelve point capability with the little bit of saved time could be a good thing.
Is there anything in the rules about raising flags in auton/raising your opposing alliance’s flag? That could be done in auton to sabotoge the other alliance’s end game.
<GS6> states “During the Autonomous period, robots can only score pre-loaded blocks. If any other blocks other than the two autonomous blocks are scored by an Alliance during the autonomous period, their autonomous period block score is zero…” Would it be possible to score in the opposing alliance pendulum/floor goal so that they score three blocks, thus making their autonomous score zero? …Or would it put our alliance score at zero?
The rule seems pretty specific that it applies to the Alliance performing the action.
<GS6> During the Autonomous Period, Robots can only Score pre-loaded Blocks. If any Blocks other than the two Autonomous Blocks are **Scored *by an Alliance *during the Autonomous Period, their Autonomous Period Block Score is zero. They can, however, still get a Bridge Bonus.