Is anyone planning to start matches without a ball inside of their robot and immediately grab one from the center instead?
The possible advantage to this might be that this alliance starts the match in control of one extra ball.
Also seems like a bit of a risk of incurring a G13 penalty. It’s an interesting strategy tradeoff to make though… how accurate can you be at grabbing a ball without incurring a penalty during auto?
Agree Jon. Other than the suggested vacuum Boulder catcher, I see little chance of legally getting a boulder. But hey, I’m always amazed with what teams come up with. Spill the beans, how will you do this legally?
I see no drawback or downside from starting with a boulder. Also, remember that there will always be a minimum of 6 boulders in play on the field.
When the game is played on the highest levels*, I think that this is going to something that alliances use if they think they can run the field end to end faster than their opponents. By getting balls out of the neutral zone quickly they force both alliances to go greater distances to get balls, which works to the faster alliance’s advantage.
As to not violating the rule against entering the airspace above the midline (G13), this is really not that hard given the size of the ball (boulder) and a reasonable roller style ball collector, given that you can be literally a fraction of an inch away from a ball.
As to time, 15 seconds is plenty of time to acquire a ball that you are almost touching cross a defense and then shoot. Not so with a 2 ball auton**, in which time will be anything but plentiful. For a single ball auton, it seems like the 2-3 seconds to get a ball will shouldn’t be too bad.
Dr. Joe J.
*Certainly Einstein but even before that at District Championships, at some of the stronger regionals, …
**For a two ball auton, I think teams will not dare picking up a ball from the midline AFTER crossing a defense twice so I suppose that such teams will probably put a ball in their robot, put it DOWN at the start of auton, then get a ball from the midline, cross a defense, shoot, traverse back to get the ball they put down, then cross the defense again and shoot. Tricky but a nice advantage if you can manage it.
You time risk a foul, and wind up with the same situation (a boulder in your possession) with a few seconds off the auto clock. Then, your big payoff is that at the end of auto, (assuming no one does a double boulder auto) there are only five boulders on the center line instead of six. Definite cost, moderate risk, negligible (and risky, could go negative) payoff.
But then, people littered last year before the coop bonus was scored, so some mental processes must find an advantage in this sort of stuff.
I think it’s a viable strategy, but keep in mind that it’s high-risk low-reward. You’re putting yourself in a position to give the enemy free points, performing an auto that will require some very precise motions and above-average complexity to get a score that you could put up in a much simpler manner.
I can see this only slightly benefiting teams at the highest of levels, but in general I don’t think this will matter until Champs elims/IRI. Starvation of BOULDERS with 18 game pieces is not something we’re currently worrying about. 18 BOULDERS means there should always be at least 1 BOULDER somewhere on the field to grab (most likely more than 1). If our robot can traverse defenses/get into our own secret passage as fast as we hope it should be little difference to us whether the next BOULDER we grab is from the center line or from our secret passage.
I like the next level thinking though!