OK, so I know we can’t blame it all on luck, but I think our team had some of the worse luck I have ever experienced. We went in with some expectations after our awesome showing at regionals, but it just wasn’t our weekend. In the first match our partner sat dead, second our left wheel gearbox went on us, and we lost by 2, then in the next matches our basket continued to be evil, we lost every match on Friday, and on Saturday we finally thought we won a match in our first one, but we ended up losing 50-49, I hit the floor after that one, just not believing this is happening, we finally won our last match 34-34 winning the ball tiebreaker. Oh well, it was fun and we’ll get them next year.
Our team calls the game the random number generator, and I really think it is its all about the luck.
asher
Keep in mind, luck isnt always a factor, there are teams that do consistantly well no matter who they’re partnered with. Not to say that our team is one of them, but if you have a great bot, it shows through. 862 had a great day, we were lucky to get paired with a lot of great teams. btw thanks to all our alliance partners during the seeding and finals. we lost two matches during the entire competition one of which was the highest scoring match on Einstien doh! Hopefully someday we will become a team that doesnt need luck. 
Luck???
Double DQ!
Nuff said!
We had the best luck! LOL
We had fairly good luck through most of the competition. We went 6-1 in the elims, and made it to the division finals. We had good partners, and enough luck to help us through. Our robot held up with only a few minor problems (a bent gripper, lost tread, and bad Operator Interface), and we were able to fix those with little difficulty. Unlike last year, luck seemed to be on our side.
Luck was with us in the quallification rounds going 7-0 and the quarter finals of the divisional finals…then it ran out in the semi’s
In the qualification matches, we were with 330 and a PVM cable broke which controlled the motors on our ball collector…luckily our opponent who was an excellent ball bot crashed into a goal and tripped their breaker at the start of the match We came out of it with a win, but it wasn’t a very good one. Beachbot did everything it needed to do, we just had a minor problem…
We started out horrible losing our first match because our partner made a horrible error that was very unnecessary. Our second match our partner didn’t even work but still got us the 10 points for not leaving the homezone (still won the match though). Then our thrid match we stoped working halfway in the match for some unknown reason.
Then it got good because we didn’t lose any more matches and we got really high scores including the highest score in the universe- a 198.
Then it got bad, real bad. In the championship match in our division we won the 1st match but broke our goal grabber. Then in the second one we lost and I don’t want to remember why. Then the last one, we had to win it, we lost it by a matter of inches literally. Our partners tounge was like half an inch from our zone and we tripped our breaker trying to rush back to our zone in the last few seconds and stopped inches from our zone. If either one of us had made it home we would have won. O WELL, it was a blast anyways.
At the beggining of a match our robot couldn’t move. One of the threads stopped and the other one couldn’t do anything alone.
I was sad wondering what happened. Did the guys forget to tight the sprockets’ screws? Did we run out of battery? Was there a loose wire?
Here’s what happened:
There was a screw on the floor. When the match started our robot went exactly where the screw was, and in a special way: the screw went between the pulley and the belt, and it got stuck in a way that the screw ripped the belt and stood there not to let us play and to make sure the Murphy’s law was correct once more.
We had never seen that kind of screw before. It means it wasn’t ours.
It wouldn’t have happened if the screw was a little bit smaller, a little bit bigger or if it was one centimeter away in any direction of the place it was.
So THAT is what I call “bad luck”.
We had many other bad lucks, but I can’t complain at all about reaching the division’s quarter-finals in a national competition. I’m really happy about the 2002 Championship.
While in our last match on Saturday a chain fell off our robot (probally when we pushed it over at the start zone so it would be in position) and we could not drive it around very well. This agianst team 173 (RAGE). We had the perfect plan to win by keep the 173 robot back in there home zone for the entire match. But since a chain came off, we could not move around very well and we just had to watch and RAGE sucked up ball after ball after ball after ball… and put them into goals.
Ok i was lying, we did have some bad luck, in the first match of quaterfinals, a roll of duct tape was left on the playing field. our partner didnt see it over their bot, rolled over it and got stuck outside the field, we probably would have lost because we were against 121 who is phenomal (sp?) but thats alright. thats about the only bad luck we had.
We had good luck.
It was great even when we took on a 2v1 because our alliance was a dead robot. Somehow, we managed to win and come out with more than 100 qp’s
Awesome luck I’d say. We did go to finals with 60 and 64!
Luckly all our bad luck happened on Thursday, in the three practice matches we lost a chain twice, never had a chance to debug our mouse and in the last match we shelled our transmission. We had to work until 7pm to adjust the wheel mounts, replace the drive transmission and get the mouse to work. Then on Friday and Saturday everything work flawlessly.
As rob said, we had some bad luck. probably worse than anyone else.
we had the perfect oppurtunity to beat rage. we had the strategy, the alliance partner, and most importantly, now we had the power (at SPBLI our robot had major problems). so, we pout the robot down, go behind the plexiglass shield, match starts, and i’m the driver. full forward on the joysticks. then, i notice the robot veer off to the right. i tried to correct, but couldn’t figure out what was happening. when the robot finally smashed into the side, it hit me. chain, off, on the right side. right away, i managed to get back into our home zone. then, i test out the right side alone. no response what so ever. not only had just the front or back chain fallen off, both had! so, all we could do was spin in circles. needless to say, we lost the match, and i’m still trying to figure out how that darn chain fell off. oh well, next year, i say make a robot with no chains. transfer the power from the motor to the wheel through the air. it hasn’t been done yet, but it will be!! (now you should all know why i’m a programmer :p)
i have to say luck is always a factor
power could go out, the alliance might break down outside of the zone, someone could get dqed, the human player might miss the one ball needed to tie… etc
of course good robots generally do better, but ive seen some high quality stuff fall to the bottom… ive also seen low quality stuff rise to the top…
and in the finals the quality of robots is always so high and the matches are so close that luck is a huge factor… if any regional or national was played all over again, someone else would probably win…
theres also the factors of strategy and driving… which arent always consistant and therefore luck based
At WMR team 66, 322, and 27 lost the third round of the finals by one point. One bloody soccer ball…
On friday we had our first match at einstein after replacing our treads… Well turns out the apoxy hadn;t dried properly and we lost 2 treads and had to push a robot on metal rims (hehe we did it too). we found a solution before the next match… ya gotta love pop rivets
we sure had our share of bad luck…lady luck definitely skipped our pit…in philly alone we ran with 5 robots that were dead (granted that is ten points) but our robot had to fight off two other robots and in three of those matches we lost by 2 points or less…the one round was something like 42-41 and there was a 34-32 also…also in philly we ran WITH the same robot as our partner 3 times and another twice…so that means half of our matches were with the same robot…but we had fun and we wound up doing well, quarter-finalist…so it all worked out in the long run…
there shouldnt be as much “luck” as there is…but its there and it always will be so theres no use getting all hype about it…
We did Ok.
We had 6 rounds (which we won) with teams that we never heard of before. (It’s nice to meet team 308 when there on your alliance)
Round 7, we were with Wildstang. We were so pysched.
I still don’t know why we lost.
As for good luck? 3 times in the pit (over the course of the entire event) one of the engineers pulled on the chain. 3 times it fell off. It appears one of our gears kept walking off the motor, but it never happened in a match, only in the pit.
Bad luck…
Getting knocked out in the Quarter Finals (Is the first round Quarters or Semi’s?), well we can’t blame them, it’s happened to everyone, but our alliance’s control system was plugged in backwards, and they could not correct it during the match.
That was bad luck
We didnt have that bad of luck
We won all of our seeding matches - except the last one
Due to our only mechanical failure all year -
Right drivetrain failed in the final seconds
We were seeded ninth in archimedes and didnt get selected
I had a good time at nats, we did pretty good for rookies i think
cant wait till next season