Initially, our team reached the general consensus that scoring boulders in the high goals is advantageous. However, I don’t see that much advantage aside from in auto. Is seems to me that it would be better to opt out of the 3 extra points per shot and increase cycle time than spend a lot of time and energy developing a high goal shooter that requires more time to line up shot (even with vision processing) and is even more susceptible/sensitive to defense. Thoughts?
shooting high goal can be hard, and low goal is a safe play. Having a mechanism that can shoot both high and low could be a good compromise if you’re up to the challenge!
I believe that at the highest levels of play, shooting in the high goal is necessary. The breaching points are limited for the powerhouse teams that can consistently and quickly take down all the defenses. Also, an accurate high goal shot from farther away would make for a faster cycle time than rolling up to the batter and scoring in the low goal. High goal shots will be where games are won or lost, imo.
So, if your team’s goal is to build a robot that wins regional, I think scoring in the low goal is not the way to go. Unlike 2014, you can’t park in front of the low goal and score quickly and almost certainly by feeding from the human player’s caught truss shot.
However, if your team’s goal is to build a robot that works, and you’re not confident your team can make a good high goal shooter, it would make sense for your team to go for the low goal.
In addition, if your team’s goal is to challenge yourselves/the students, then of course your team should go for the high goal whether or not that would be wise in terms of winning the competition.
It all depends on your team’s goals. What do you want to do?
It comes down to a preference,whether you know speed or accuracy.I feel as though fast pushing robot is just as effective as an accurate high goal robot.Plus anyone can push a boulder using the front of their robot whereas only the team who making shooters can make high goals and those bots may be seen as more valuable during alliance selection.
Well don’t forget a low goal bot does not have to be a pushing bot. We are primarily designing a low goal, breaching, and climbing bot with active intakes it will also have pitch control so there is a good chance we can make high goals.
In my opinion, a good high goal shooter could score more quickly than a low goal scorer. Why? There is a center high goal, so the shot could be made as soon as the robot clears the defense, whereas to score a low goal, the robot must maneuver around to the side of the tower and approach pretty close to the tower to score.
A low goal is 2 points. A high goal is 5 points. So, you would have to score 2.5 low goals for every high goal.
A high goal can be shot immediately upon crossing the defense. A low goal requires driving all the way to the castle. So, for an accurate shooter, there is not much time difference (time to line up the shot vs time to drive up to the castle).
Note: This presumes that the Alliance can cross enough times (minimum of 8) to “Breach”. Assuming that each bot crosses during Autonomous, that means each bot must complete at least 2 cycles during teleop to Breach. That does not sound too hard, so the Crossing points should not be a factor in the decision of high vs low goal.
As I see it, this years game is all about fast cycle time while weakening the defenses and while weakening the tower. If your team can accomplish this with low goals you will be valuable to your alliance at regionals. The elites will have fast cycle times shooting high goal at championship.
I believe it’s all about maximizing your points and capturing the tower is critical while totally weakening the defenses. The real elites will successfully scale the majority of the time.
Strategy comes into play when you miss a goal. Do you lose cycle time trying to score a second time or repeat cycle to weaken defense? That’s where having the ability to quickly score in low goal comes into play. Great robots will be able to score high and low fast.
Actually, it kinda does, because shooting the ball in will cause it to bounce back out most of the time. The goal is also smaller, and harder to hit, so the times you do hit into it, you need to make sure you didn’t put to much force into your shot so it doesn’t hit the ball director thing inside the tower, and bounce back out.
Your percent accuracy on high goal shots will be very important. Missing one or two of those in eliminations could cause your alliance to run out of time before you’re able to weaken the tower and move onto capturing, which equals big points. It’s not just a matter of 2 points vs 5 points.
This is the mindset that Team 74 has. The high goal is pretty small, and missing 1 or more shots in a match is pretty realistic. At least in the first few weeks of competition, I think the low goals will be more consistent, and allow teams to score more points in the long run.
Just wanted to pointed out that there are no protected areas to line up shots from, as well as the many obstacles which block line of sight.
Actually the current wording of the rules does allow you to safely shoot and score from the outworks if you drive past the outer works and back up so your bumper is overhanging that area and wheels are on the courtyard carpet. I believe you could even backup against a outer works defense and as long as you are touching the courtyard carpet (and only carpet in that zone) you could shoot the ball and not be touched.
You could potentially shoot from the corners of the field, sort of like box shooting from 2014.
Scoring in the low goal could arguably be more reliable for the purpose of weakening the tower, especially if you have a robot that can fit under the low bar, which makes it much easier to cross the outer works. This would be better for racking up ranking points during qualification rounds.
It wouldn’t work that well later in the season when high goal robots are more refined but it would be a good strategy to advance in districts or to reach elims, etc.
Basically, low goal would perform better in early season and high goal would be better late season.
Yep. G43, for those of you interested. There are other threads discussing that matter, but the proof is in the pudding. The rule is solid (in that aspect) as of now. [Rule G43 does have other problems that may lead to revision] - mostly with the phrase “attempting to traverse”
R43 is oddly specific about bumpers. I now agree that there is a band of protected space, the depth of a bumper, from the edge of the COURTYARD going over the ramp of the OUTERWORKS.
I hope it gets clarified by QA.
A lot of people have made a lot of good points here… obviously a HG is worth more (and is the only way to accumulate ‘infinite’ points, making it a key factor at highest levels) and I agree it can often be done faster by elite shooters.
BUT, I think this could be the hardest game to have high shot accuracy (compared to 2006, 2012, 2013, and perhaps even 2014). The goal (HG or LG) is only 2.5 balls high and 1.5 balls wide, making it one of the tightest goals we’ve ever had… I suspect THE tightest. 2006 was quite large compared to the ball, 2012 probably had a comparable or larger “sweet spot” on the backboard for backspun balls, 2013 was far bigger, and 2014 was ~1.5 balls tall and wicked wide. One of the only “protected areas” is backed against the Defenses, which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the super-close fender option that 2012 had.
To make the goal size even more significant, you only get 1 shot per cycle… so if you miss 25% or 33% of your shots or so, the cost is considerably higher (you have much fewer shots AND you can’t use your first as a ‘tracer’ of sorts). Furthermore, and we have yet to see how the Boulders wear… and how that’ll impact various shooter designs. Consider though, that a rare few teams in 2012 actually had a ‘ball stiffness testers’ on their robot to calibrate for each ball’s wear/stiffness…
At any rate, I think that elite HG shooters will be formiddable and will require excellent defense to stop and/or some serious offensive firepower on the other side… that said, I also think that strong HG shooters will be very rare and that many teams attempting HG shooters will (or should, but perhaps won’t) end up prefering the LG.
Prediction: Regionals will be won with alliance captains who either can’t shoot high goals or score almost exclusively low goals this year. Especially at early events, it will be a challenge to get 8 balls in the tower consistently during most qual matches.
After the disaster that was 2015 for the MCC robot, 2016 is looking more like other years, where the jack of all trades is the master of none. I’m a big fan of this game.
We’ve made a different decision than I am seeing here… we’ve decided to not score high or low goals at all, but focus on speed and defeating all the defense obstacles. Our aim is to be able to deliver boulders to alliance members in the courtyard for goal scoring while breaching the outer works. If we can get the speed factor high enough, we can give our alliance members time to line up high goals and evade defense bots - or chase down missed shots and try again - while we bring them ammunition. If we can succeed, our alliance members will be able to spend more time in the courtyard attacking the tower’s strength towards capture, while we focus on breaching the outer works. This strategy will play to our strengths, while presenting a challenge in getting the cycle time low enough to benefit the alliance. Thoughts?
How much time will your robot spend chasing the same boulder around if you miss the high goal? Keep in mind that there are two sets of Defenses that may be obscuring your view of the courtyard your robot is in and that a defending robot will be doing its best to interfere with your robot. It was heartbreaking in 2012 to watch our drivers waste many, many precious seconds where he could not see that the ball he was trying to pick up was really about 2 feet further down the field than the robot was.
Your team needs to be very honest about what it is capable of accomplishing then apply Karthik’s two Golden Rules. Some of the features you then choose to implement may be a stretch but it should be a thoroughly calculated risk.
^ Yes!