I’m at a loss for our team should approach this season from a design simplicity perspective.
Our student leadership is good about not wanting to overextend, and last year we built a 3 DOF bot and would not want to do something more complex than that. Say that we think that we can build two of amp scoring, climbing, and shooting into the speaker and get good driver practice.
Skipping shooting was our initial thought, but it increasingly seems bad. Shooting one in auto (compared to amp) is a little less valuable than climbing, and I think we’d actually be capable of a two or three ring auto from a programming perspective. Also, an amp only bot may get in the top teams way more than help them.
Skipping amp also seems risky. It’s possible that a lot of robots will have subpar amp scoring, so maybe it will be considered a requirement to score in the amp to succeed. Also, I know shooters can be notoriously tricky to dial in.
Skipping endgame is usually something you don’t want to do, but maybe this is the year for it? Endgame is only worth ~2 game pieces this year, which is less previous years.
How should we (and similar teams) build to position ourselves to be picked as first or second pick this season? Should we try to do all three tasks but cut all other requirements? Should ditch everything and build a wall and play defense (we’re not doing that)?
I’ve seen it and some of the students want to build something similar. But, what I’m worried about is not so much the time spent building an amp scorer and shooter and climber, but the time spent perfecting all capabilities.
@AdamHeard talks about simplicity of strategy at the beginning of this presentation and I’m thinking along those lines.
My recommendation would be increasing the shooter up your priority list. Our expectation is that at regionals, most playoff alliances will be getting 3 amp periods per match, 4 if they’re elite. But, if you can’t maximize your score during those amp periods, the payoff per amp period drops off a lot - and good defense could prevent a critical 4th amp cycle if you rely on it. If your alliance outscores the other by 5 points per amp period because you scored 3 speaker shots as the 3rd robot, I expect that to be more valuable than MAYBE getting an extra amp period (3x20 points = 4x15 points, and 3x15 points > 4x10 points).
Most alliances will need 2 amp bots to comfortably hit those benchmarks. If you see your team as closer to a 1st pick than a 2nd pick you may need to think about the amp more, but I could absolutely see a well driven speaker only bot succeeding as a 2nd pick.
Thanks for the response. This is along the lines of what we realized in the days after kickoff. Do you think ferrying pieces to top bots during amplification will be a relevant strategy at regionals/districts this year? It’s possible that would be the way to crush the amplification period most effectively.
If you are an amp only bot, I think that would be valuable. If you go speaker only, best to just score it yourself. I wouldn’t expect you to be able to pass more than 1 extra note during each amp period this way, though.
Could be more defendable, though. I don’t know yet if this game will be more triple offense like last year, or if defense will come into play at least during the amp period to try and stop an extra score.
Maybe the biggest thing: no matter which route you go down, spend a lot of time making your intake process quick and reliable. You mentioned amp bots possibly getting in the way of the “top teams” - but the most likely place for that blockage to happen is at the source. Will be important to get in and out of there as quickly as possible.
A fast intake will also generally support whatever bot you build. Amp and speaker both seem pretty fast to score in once you’re aligned, the secret is in how fast you can get a note and get back there.
Not only just the amp period, but also auto which essentially is a free amp period with a bunch of rings in front of you. Amp only bots will not be able to score the 5 point shots in auto while any speaker bot with an intake can easily score at least two shots.
Even during the amp period, if you can cycle notes over and drop them on the ground, you’d still pair well with a robot that can ground-pickup and shoot into the speaker.
Furthermore, I’m expecting a glut of shooter robots, due to the kitbot design, the Ri3D designs, Rev’s design… etc. Bringing something unique to the table has its benefits.
Selfishly I’d also say “just focus on a simple, robust climb” - this will likely help you boost your alliance RP’s during quals… but will fall off in usefulness toward elims.
But as Karthik always says… in the land of fixed and (relatively) low resources - focusing on one thing and doing it extremely well is better than being so-so at everything.
The cool thing about the Quokkas bot is it’s guaranteed score the amp and climb, once you have those motors going. The shooting in the speaker would likely take some tuning, but you can do that as you go (if you don’t want to focus on the speaker just yet, you don’t have to tune it, and it would still allow amp scoring).
The conclusion that I had drawn was that lower resource teams would be speaker bots. I am basing this off the kit bot being a speaker shooter, which should lead some teams to copying, combined with the just general strategic strength of a speaker shooting bot. I think that due to this, elite bots this year will be bots that can shoot speaker, but will be keeping their amp stocked and then maximizing the amp time to shoot speaker.
If you’re considering two of the primary tasks, I’d recommend shooting speaker and climbing.
Here’s my thoughts there:
During quals, you’re going to be with a variety of robots with differing capabilities. If you’re a speaker bot, you’ll always be able to score those 2pts per. If you get paired with an amp bot, they can handle that task and your 2pts become 5pts. You work well together. If you get with other speaker bots, sure, you’re only getting those 2pts each. But, that’ll add up. If you focus the amp, you need a decent shooter to join you to make this worthwhile. Otherwise, you’re scoring 1pt/cycle the entire match.
In elims, you’re likely to be paired with a bot that can handle both amp and speaker. In that instance, unless you’re an amazing amp bot, odds are the speaker will bring more value to the equation. As you have someone else handling the amp, you’re set. If you’re in position to be a captain, you’ll be able to grab a bot that takes care of the amp for you and mitigates your risk.
For the climb, you’re right that it isn’t a ton of points on its own. 3pts vs 2 isn’t a ton. The keys here are looking at the potential for RP. If you can’t climb, you need both of your partners to be able to climb and get HARMONY/TRAP to get that RP. You cannot contribute. When you’re looking at competitive alliances, points are points. A quick climb and the potential for that HARMONY round out to 5pts (an amplified cycle).
Overall, you make yourself more competitive during quals and more attractive to others for elims. The RP becomes less important in elims. But, unless you’re cycling twice in the time you’d take to climb, your climb is going to be more efficient points wise. (Yes, when there’s AMPLIFY active it makes more sense to grab that 5 vs the 3. But unless you expect that to be the case in over half your matches, you’d still lean towards that climb)
I don’t know your exact resources and what your students a capable of.
I believe a solid teammate for 2 strong teams would be able to load the amp super fast and maybe bring an extra NOTE to one of their teammates for them shooting into the SPEAKER.
Plus the ability to clim on the edge of the chain for end game.
Intake can be a tricky part but you could design a robot able to get NOTES from the source.
Basically you go back and forth between AMP and SOURCE all the time as fast a possible (better work on driver skills!) and sometimes you drop a piece on the floor for your teammates if they need one.
In 2022 we made a basic climber, the “extension of the climber was a simple gas strut pushing an arm up and we pulled on a paracord using a car window motor (2 because of weight) because they automatically lock when power is shutdown.
My robotics team similarly has low resources, students, and knowledge. This year we are focussing on a simple and robust design that will perform in 2 ways.
Earn Ranking Points
Perform Well in Playoffs
From a RP perspective, winning matches is important. However, I generally focus on earning the other two RPs. I think a robot that consistently earns the Melody and Ensemble RPs will likely win a good number of matches.
For the Melody RP, Coopertition is important to lower the threshold from 18 → 15. For this RP, it doesn’t matter if your robot scores into the AMP or the SPEAKER. Fast Cycles Are Critical!
For the Ensemble RP, the ability to climb is almost vital. It is additionally helpful to your alliance if you can climb with a teammate.
During Playoffs, a combination of scoring in the AMP and the Speaker will be critical. (I anticipate most robots to score in the Speaker, but could be completely wrong.)
My team decided that we need to score about 8 cycles in the AMP and climb the Chain every match. If we had to give up on something, we chose to give up shooting into the SPEAKER. This strategy is very reliant on alliance partners, but I think our robot will make a very significant contribution especially when paired with SPEAKER shooting robots.
I’d also suggest focusing on amp. If ur able to make a significant contribution to amplifying ur speaker, that will be a good pitch for alliance selection. Also, having some form of climber will allow you to also contribute to that rp
Don’t skip the ability to climb, but leave the trap for last. You want to score in at least one goal, but I think it doesn’t matter which one. Both are necessary for an alliance, though personally, I think amp will be underrated. A bulletproof floor pickup is going to be the difference maker between robots, though, so start there. If you can do that first, then you can work out what goal will be easiest to build toward.
I think your goal should be to prioritize the speaker over the amp purely for autonomous reasons. The 5 points is very big for teams, and with a floor pickup, tuning a two piece will make you a great team to get picked. There’s a lot of good resources for creating a climber for the chain (people have posted them here). While the amp is a good thing to go for, it might come with added complexity which will make both the speaker and amp cycles slow. A combination of the kitbot, ri3d, and everybot (most likely) will be doable in a reasonable amount of time where you can get driver’s just practicing.
Also note that during alliance selections, teams who have a good amp bot will need good shooters to maximize the points.
Check out the cranberry alarm’s ri3d robot. Tank drive, shoots into speaker, easy handoff mechanism, I think it’s doable. If you want to climb for the endgame, and can afford it, buy 2 climber in a box kits : 0
If you want to go for amp cycler, go for it, not many teams will be and you’d be unique during alliance picks. But make sure you do it very reliably if you want to become a first/second pick! You’d just need to modify the shooter on the ri3d bot , but their intake and handoff are still pretty nice.
Like @Miraj said speaker is better than amp for purely auto reasons, but amp bots are also valuable during teleop.
Also, for this year, my gut feeling is that getting something robust built quickly to tune and do lots of drive practice with might be your best bet. This way, you can be a reliable bot in whatever you choose to do- amp or speaker cycler.
I second this. I honestly think the Cranberry Alarm RI3D robot could win a district/regional. It’s simple and efficient. They have a video of it doing 11 cycles, although 9 of them were half court travels. It would make a great robot to be picked (I could even see it being a 7-8th seed and picking too).
