Fuel is for The Few (Not You)

Joe_Johnson · March 3, 2017, 12:43pm

I decided to make my answer its own thing rather than hijack that thread.

Here is how I come to believe that Hanging Robots and Hanging Gears is the key to success for 90-95% of teams this season.

I made some assumptions about robot performance.

Basically I estimated the shape of the curve for robots that can hang gears (what percentage can hang how many gears) then posited that other tasks (like hanging a gear in auto on the easy peg and on the harder pegs and hanging) are positively correlated with that skill.

In rough numbers I estimated that for Week 1, roughly 1/4 of robots would hang, 1/3 could do the easy auto gear, and 1/10 could do the hard auto gear. And I estimated that a team is probably better at these skills if they are able to run more gears (to me this is uncontroversial, perhaps others think it is revolutionary).

http://i.imgur.com/9QRa38x.jpg

You and I can quibble about this or that percentage but I think that the numbers will be more favorable to team performance not less (rotors, hangs, and scores will be lower if anything).

Bottom line, I think that these numbers won’t be too far off the mark.

Using these numbers I can run thousands of simulated matches and see what happens (even including some luck factors where teams over or under-perform based on rolling simulated dice).

I did just that and I get the following three histogram charts:

http://i.imgur.com/UkUthcJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/mbwbITE.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7Yupysd.jpg

Looking at these charts, I just don’t see any way that fuel can move the needle enough to matter for most teams (and believe me, you are almost certainly in that group – don’t be fooled. 50% of FIRST teams think they are in the top 10%).

One thing that is not in the charts but that I calculated was how much margin an alliance had with respect to getting its last rotor, and it tells an interesting story.

Approximately half of the time, the alliances “best performance” with respect to gears is 0, 1, or 2 gears above the number it needs to get its last rotor.

Said another way, half of the time, your alliance needs you running gears or the alliance will lose out on 40 points. What is more, in about half of the cases where your alliance can comfortably make their last rotor without you running gears the whole match, the OPPONENT ALLIANCE is going to need all THEIR robots running gears like madmen to get THEIR last rotors. In those cases, what is your best play? to score fuel (9 balls per point in the low goal or 3 balls per point in the high goal) OR… to stop the opponent robots from getting their last 40 points? Overcoming 40 points takes a LOT of fuel!

So… …that is why I come to the conclusions I come to.

Dr. Joe J.

CIM · March 3, 2017, 12:46pm

Scoring Fuel is for The Few. That doesn’t mean doing other things with Fuel can’t be a benefit to an alliance.

Ryan_Swanson · March 3, 2017, 1:41pm

Do you consider the fact that there is way more traffic when you have 3 robots cycling gears vs 2 robots cycling gears? Based on the level of competition at Lake Superior and Northern Lights I don’t think 12 Gears is going to be a common event in the playoffs. I think 6 Gears is going to be automatic in the playoffs.

So in my mind, 3 Rotors, 3 climbs and 3 moving robots plus a Gear Auton will be required by any competitive playoff alliance. The tie breaker is going to be Fuel. 2 robots will still cycle 6 Gears and it will be cleaner than 3 robots cycling 6 gears.

gorrilla · March 3, 2017, 1:46pm

south florida match was just decided by the 20kpa that pink and voltage scored

Tom_Bottiglieri · March 3, 2017, 1:46pm

I agree. Scoring fuel at volume is the hardest shooting task FIRST has ever given and it is WAY WAY undervalued. I imagine reliable rope climbing robots will dominate earlier weeks. I am excited to see how the game progresses through the season, but I see little reason for 95% of teams to even bother touching fuel.

NShep98 · March 3, 2017, 1:48pm

I’m not outright disagreeing here, but I don’t think fuel can be discounted quite so easily.

By now we should all know that winning a match on fuel alone is virtually impossible unless for some reason all 6 robots are fuel-only.

As has been stated in other threads, fuel scoring is more of a supplement to match scores. Most other objectives result in a few large point additions (40/60 per rotor and 50 per climb), whereas fuel results in potentially many small point additions.

If I’ve got the same number of rotors and/or climbers on my alliance as yours, and I now have to beat out point differentials from fouls, or auto mobility points, or your alliance’s fuel points, I’m going to be glad I invested time in fuel if I can make up those small differences. It may not be the most common scenario, but winning that extra match or two where it does could make all the difference depending on where you are in the competition. For all we know, as the season progresses, alliances might find themselves in this scenario more often as teams improve.

As another example, if my alliance has one more rotor turning, and yours has one more climber, all other points equal, you are now ahead by 10 points. That’s hardly out of range of a team that has constantly improved their shooter over time, especially if they can make auto shots.

TL;DR I might title this thread “Fuel is for the few matches”

SPang · March 3, 2017, 1:52pm

Gears determines the basic escalation of the scoring potential of an alliance (2 rotors, 3 rotors, 4 rotors), so typically we’ll see a lot of alliances that have the capability of scoring a set number of rotors (probably most will be around 3 rotors per match).

Fuel doesn’t matter much during quals point-wise, but provides a somewhat more accessible ranking point than attaining 4 rotors (which requires an alliance of at least two dedicated gear cyclers).

However, in elims, fuel is an entirely different story. Since alliances will most likely be matched in gear scoring capability and climbing (if 5 out of 6 robots can climb in the quarterfinals of Week Zero, climbs will become increasingly consistent as weeks progress), fuel will be most likely the decider of high level matches in semi-finals and finals.

However, for the earlier weeks, I definitely agree that what people need to focus on is cycling gears and ensuring that their climbs are consistent (as well as avoiding those tech fouls :yikes:).

Rangel · March 3, 2017, 1:56pm

I would say as a general rule, if you are bad at fuel scoring but can still do it, just get one kpa. If fuel ends up being the tie breaker, you only need one point more than your opponent to win. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 or 100 points if it comes to that.

Jared_Russell · March 3, 2017, 2:27pm

I agree. When the season began, people were talking about the 40 kPa bonus as if it were the “breach” from Stronghold - something (edit: eventually…) most alliances will get. I thought this too until I saw the difficulty teams were having with their prototypes. The accuracy, precision, and throughput required rules out doing this task effectively for 90% of teams.

Jared_Russell · March 3, 2017, 2:30pm

Juggling? Making field reset hate you?

gorrilla · March 3, 2017, 2:35pm

just horde them and shoot them out of the field lol

GeeTwo · March 3, 2017, 2:51pm

Build a long ramp with them so that gears placed in your feeder station roll across the field and end up about 10 feet from your alliance wall. Sort of like building a pyramid in reverse.:]

Seriously, Dr. Joe, while we did not do anywhere near as much math as you did, we came to the same conclusions for the same reasons on kickoff day. As our team has turned completely over students and technical mentors since last time we built a wheeled shooter, we figured we were quite unlikely to be in that top crust.

I KNOW we aren’t going to do twice as well as those two put together!

CIM · March 3, 2017, 2:55pm

Say you have one superstar robot shooting fuel per match. The other two are constantly crossing the field to score gears, so they certainly can be picking up fuel while doing that without much cost. Then what do you do? You don’t want to shoot it, because that takes too long for too little reward, but can you quickly get rid of it? I think you’ll want to feed an alliance partner that fuel if you’re fortunate enough to have one of The Few on your alliance.

efoote868 · March 3, 2017, 2:56pm

Getting/keeping/stoking an overflow cycle going with the low goal? Technically still scoring, but not most efficiently and not the primary task.

KosmicKhaos · March 3, 2017, 3:09pm

I will be interested in seeing the number of matches where the rotors turning for each alliance are the same. If they are the same in most matches than fuel is for everyone even if it’s only a few points worth. In my opionion the title would be better as “40kpa not for everyone”

Lil_Lavery · March 3, 2017, 3:21pm

There are other ways to break ties when rotors are even. The most obvious is hanging. But even when rotors and hanging are event, autonomous points frequently break the ties. Even if its just your mobility bonus, you need to be putting up points in autonomous.

Tim_Sharp · March 3, 2017, 3:28pm

This.

Once an alliance determines that they have started all of the rotors they are likely to achieve, they need to have something to do until time to go climb. The only two options are defense and FUEL.

In matches with equally matched alliances that will start the same number of rotors and have the same number of climbers, the FUEL scored during that time frame could very well provide the margin of victory or defeat.

PayneTrain · March 3, 2017, 3:39pm

FIRST Ropeworks is an early-week-version of Steamworks. It’s a climbing challenge with 2 tiebreakers. 1st tie breaker is the sum of hefty technical fouls and rotors, 2nd tiebreaker is everything else. It will be interesting to parse out the data when the dust settles on Monday to see how often a team won a match with fewer activated touchpads than the other alliance; potentially a lot more interesting to see than the win count for teams with a rotor disadvantage.

catmanjake · March 3, 2017, 3:50pm

Watching Lake Superior:
In playoffs, teams will have 3 rotors going, all teams will climb. Any team that can provide a gear in autonomous has an edge. then it comes down to shooting in high goal.
There is a team here that I is setting themselves up to be a pick because of their high goal shooting and climbing. their record may not be great but they are definitely being noticed.

ngreen · March 3, 2017, 3:54pm

So I watched my first real match (https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2017flwp_qm32), and it just happened to have NUtrons 125 and Krunch 79 together, both with formidable shooter. And they lost.

Even with having 50 more takeoff points. They had a two rotor deficiency (and the other alliance had a 20 point autonomous rotor bonus).

It is a decently compelling example of the how at least for qualifications it may be a tougher task to try and shoot and win.

Now I’m not saying that many matches won’t come down to Pressure pts. But I think for now I’d make shooting a part of a gear cycle, especially when behind the other team in rotor count.