It doesn’t prevent defense, but one of the most effective ways to defend robots that can shoot from anywhere is to focus on maintaining bumper contact rather than just pushing in a specific direction, which makes it incredibly difficult to rotate and aim. Turrets take this away, as a defender cannot legally mess with them. Auto-targeting turrets are especially difficult to disrupt and can’t really be done without a well-timed bump.
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Ultimately the return on cycle time vs robot complexity only becomes apparent at higher levels of play. According to TBA Insights so far, the average winning margin of Quals has been ~23 points, ~27 points for Playoffs. Odds are adding a turret to a winning bot will just make you win more at that point. However, let’s consider event Finals, District Championships, and Worlds, where matches can be won or lost in single digits. At that point every cycle matters and every second shaved adds up to another cycle.
If you’re already gunning for the edge of performance, every advantage matters.
99% of the teams think they’re in the 1% that need that edge.
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I do agree with turrets making defense a lot more difficult. Wouldn’t adding brakes (like 95 with swerve be very similar, as you just move to the side aim and then engage your brakes, which would take slightly longer. I guess it’s back to the point of shaving seconds of cycle time, which is the point of turrets for higher tier teams.
With a Center goal hub, and enough power to hit the hub from just about anywhere on the field, I would personally take turret over swerve drive for this game.
While swerve can certainly be handy, the ability to drive and shoot would be great and not having to slow/stop to aim would make a huge difference in keeping defence at bay.
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The problem is that whole you’re aligning and before the brakes are set, you’re vulnerable to being pushed off-target.
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What asid61 said. If you’re aimed, the defense likely already lost regardless with a fast shooter. The problem is before you aim; it’s far easier to keep a non-turret from aiming in the first place, since a defender can actually contact the device that’s doing the aiming (in this case, the robot frame). In general, it’s easier to keep an opposing robot from turning than it is to actually turn it. Defense doesn’t always mean pushing; it often just means being in the way.
The advantage swerve has over tank for intaking when the game pieces are scattered like this is hard to understate. I think I would take a non-turreted swerve over a turreted tank, assuming both are single intake. It’s a little less clear with a dual intake, but I think I’d still want the swerve.
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Depends on whether the driver can utilize the swerve properly for me.
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this this this a thousand times this
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I’ve been thinking of ways to minimize the practice time required to adequately rotate while driving via some unconventional (but intuitive!) control schemes. We settled on something our freshman driver really took too, I’ll report back in a few weeks.
My post was in part under my assumption that we could train a driver to utilize swerve properly in a relatively minimal amount of time as it appears we did this season (just a couple hours, really - and that’s including the time spent with just the frame). I realize that this is certainly not true for every team.
I mean, with the popping of the bag, there’s really no reason to not maximize drive time.
Let’s say you’re in the regional system and play 10 quals + make it to finals for 16 total matches played. Official time on the field is 36 minutes, actual stick time 32 minutes.
Drive the wheels off of the robot for practice, replace them for comp, drive the wheels off again.
As a team running swerve and no turret, I disagree.
Moving while shooting is strong, however, its extremely hard to implement. Only the top level teams can successfully pull of shooting while moving, and even then most top level teams don’t. Without being able to shoot on the move, the advantages of turret are minimal, being resistant to defense on the side wall is nice but during times of no or light defense, there is little advantage.
With a swerve, the maneuverability advantage is one of the strongest advantages you can get this year. It allows intaking cargo to be much faster though more efficient routes, which a turret bot can’t do. Swerves can fare much better under defense than 6wd turret does, being able to outswerve defenders makes it much harder to block access to cargo, and it also helps with shooting under defense as the maneuverability allows you to either get to the launch pad or create a ~1s gap between you and the defender to pop the shots off before the defenders can ram you.
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Yes
While this is great in concept, our robot was fully assembled for the first time two days ago.
Edit: But for further clarification: taking that fragment out of context is silly. I’m not trying to reduce the amount of time my team practices, but the time required to hit a certain milestone.