@Andy_Baker After a long brainstorming discussion on how to repurpose our 2017 game elements, we made a significant breakthrough. We are happy to join the competitive elite that can use fuel effectively. Sadly we are only 7 years too late.
In other news:
All of us on M’Aiken Magic wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a magical holiday season. Make sure to rest and recover before the “organized” chaos breaks loose on January 4th!
From Week 1 Winning Strategies thread
I decided to make my answer its own thing rather than hijack that thread.
Here is how I come to believe that Hanging Robots and Hanging Gears is the key to success for 90-95% of teams this season.
I made some assumptions about robot performance.
Basically I estimated the shape of the curve for robots that can hang gears (what percentage can hang how many gears) then posited that other tasks (like hanging a gear in auto on the easy peg and on the harder …
Watching the week 0 events on livestream today, It looks like the balls are mostly being ignored or play no role even in elimination matches. Many elimination matches have a final score that has pressure scores of 9 to 10 or even 0 to 0. Hanging and gears seem to be the only way points are scored.
Personally, I think the fuel will not start to matter until week 4. Even then, a great gear robot with a climber will still out score most average fuel robots. It won’t be until the district champions…
It just occurred to me: There will be a lot of fuel on the field.
Once the hoppers are dumped, 560 Fuel:
100 Fuel (50 on each side) waiting to be dumped through the loader
300 fuel (50 per bot) moving around the field, or being dumped/shot into the Boiler. Note: Once a bot dumps its load into the boiler, by the time it picks up more fuel, the Boiler will have processed dumped fuel. So you are not likely to have fuel in the bot and boiler at the same time.
That leaves 160 fuel rolling around …
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Love it!
Your effort is truly magical! We currently have 16,965 fuel balls in stock. I wonder how big a tree that will make.
Andy B.
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kingc95
December 11, 2024, 2:06pm
3
“The Rockefeller Tree Lighting, sponsored by Andymark”… think of the publicity!
This year’s doesn’t have any ornaments, just 50,000 lights and the star… It needs some ornaments
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And if one light goes out, they all go out!
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jedgar6
December 11, 2024, 2:35pm
5
Total number of balls: 16,206
This is if you stacked them like a pyramid with a square base. It’d be 36 x 36 balls wide. So about 10 feet tall.
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Zatack7
December 11, 2024, 2:55pm
6
According to this site , a tetrahedron made from fuel with a side length of 99 fuel balls would be 33’ 9" tall.
jedgar6
December 11, 2024, 3:06pm
7
166,650 balls seems a bit high.
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So - we did something similar. But if you get those little electrical candles they have at weddings, you can stuff them inside the fuel so that they glow. It looks really cool.
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That is really cool, I love it!
All I want for Christmas is a Blue Banner… 
