Pool Noodles -- How Important?

My team has dismissed pool noodles to only being thrown by the human player. I was wondering if any teams out there were making them a major part of their strategy.

I know that our team is not but some others may be

While they might not be important in the early regionals or qualifications at most places. They will certainly come into play at the higher levels of play. Litter in the RC is worth up to 42 points that eventually can’t be ignored.

I’m wondering how much different teams will value the litter. At lower levels every point counts so not putting the litter into the landfill can be a decent hit. At higher levels if I throw a pool noodle out into a difficult to get spot how many teams will take the bait…

I plan on asking our alliance partners to not throw litter. It is way more important than I think you are assessing though. if any robot has a bucket the human player can easily place all 10 over the wall in that bucket and that alliance will automatically score 10 points if it ends the match in the landfill. This is an easy 10 points!

It’ll vary by match. If a team’s pickup mechanism breaks, or if there aren’t any totes left easily accessible due to an awesome alliance parter or some other reason, some robots will end up playing ‘pool noodle defense.’ This could lead to a way less exciting but still valuable version of TNA where both alliances agree to leave any litter that makes its way across the field where it is. This would be highly dependent on each alliance’s strategy and litter-throwing abilities, but it could get each alliance quite a few points if executed correctly.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the rules, but what is the downside to throwing noodles? Before the team update that added the alliance colors, I’d understand not throwing for fear of missing and giving the other alliance free points. But now if you hit your mark it’s 4 points, if you don’t its either 1 or 0.

I’m more concerned about litter in the field making it harder to move precarious stacks…

I totally agree. I’m really surprised that the scoring is four times as high for successfully “littering” as for “processing” litter.
Apart from considering a passive “funnel” to facilitate human loads of noodles into the RC, we haven’t spent any robot development time on the litter. Unless you are so incredibly fast that you run out of totes and RCs, I don’t see how it’s ever going to be worthwhile to pick up a small, odd-shaped piece and carry it way over to the landfill for the only 1-point score in the game.
On the other hand, any litter you still have left behind the alliance wall at two minutes into the match should be tossed onto the field – it might help, and can’t hurt.

I honestly have the exact opposite thought. Early matches will most likely be low scoring for the most part and I believe many matches at regionals will be decided because litter will be more than 50% of the points scored.

I am not sure why litter is confusing so many teams. Do you realize that even if you manage to land one of your pieces of litter fully over the opposing alliances land fill they just push it in during the remaining 20 seconds??

Put a bin on your robot just collect the easy 6 - 10 points for ending in the landfill.

Remember, winning matches doesn’t matter

The post you quoted was talking about the number of litter points, not winning matches. You can get quite a few points for litter.
Also, point denial is really good. Even in quals. If you can prove to the good teams that you have good point denial (cans), even with only decent scoring capabilities, then you have a good shot at getting picked even if you don’t score tons of points. Yes, getting the most points is good too, but realistically (at SVR, for example) we’re not going to beat the Poofs almost as a given (I think they’ve won SVR 15 out of 16 years or something). So playing for picks is a workable strategy.

That’s 20 seconds of them not scoring tote points. If a team has a 4 tote stack with 20 seconds to go, will they go for the litter or for two more totes? Either way you win as they use valuable time.

I haven’t tried throwing the noodles, but I tend to believe the people who say that it is difficult to make the distance. I think at early matches people are going to realize that in trying to throw them that they are making more obstacles for their own machines.
I think that the 6 points for one in a scored RC is going to be overlooked, as well. In early matches, everyone is going to be so focused on stacking totes that they will not notice that getting an RC with a noodle in it is worth more points to them.
Later on, since RCs are limited, making the most out of each one will be essential. That’s where the noodles come in.

Throwing the litter onto the other team’s side could be very useful in messing up the opposing alliances stacks. If you throw the litter far enough (which I believe is possible) to hit the first scoring platform and fall right next to the stacks they have made there is a chance that a robot on the opposing alliance would knock their stack over trying to pick up the litter. Especially considering they wouldn’t be able to see the litter well if it is on the other side of a stack on the scoring platform.

Litter in the RC or litter in the landfill? If litter in the landfill is more than 50% of the points scored in a match then these are going to be some low scoring matches! However littler in the RC, while worth much more, is also a lot harder to achieve, especially for an early match in the season.

We may or may not outfit our robot with a way to move unprocessed litter to the landfill… We may or may not outfit our robot with a way to carry litter from the human player zone to the landfill… I suspect, however, that we will have access to enough gray totes that we will be able to score a lot more points putting totes on the scoring platform than we could ever score hauling litter to the landfill…

Once the robot is complete constructed, we’ll be practicing quite a bit and timing various ideas and routines to see if it is worth our time to shove a pool noodle into each recycling bin as we create our stacks… We’ll see what the stop watch says… I’m not sure how keen I am on even having humans throw the noodles… Those things can disrupt a robot as its working in the landfill (assuming a good throw!) or attempting to make stacks. I could see a poorly thrown noodle or two significantly hurting an alliance’s scoring potential… It just doesn’t seem to be worth the risk as an attempt to score one point.

Of course, if we find nice, firm noodles that will fly quite well, being able to land them on the other side of the field makes a whole lot of sense…

In a nutshell, if we do anything special for the noodles, it will be a low priority, only created if we are so fortunate to already have a robot that does everything else we want well.

It is possible this becomes more of a psychological tactic. It gives the teams on the other side of the field (not really your opponents) one more thing to think about doing.

We are also trying to evaluate litter. Each team has only 10 noodles so it isn’t like the multitude of Frisbees.

A human player has to throw from the station which means it has to go up and over the wall. Then the noodle has to sail far enough to make it at least to their own landfill. If the noodle comes short of that then it ends up in the -4 area of their own playing surface. (If this includes being over the line of the landfill and own playing surface, the risk is even worse).

So the human player can score in the order of distance.

-4 for their own side
1 for their own side
1 for the opponents side
-4 for the opponents side

With odds like these, I am not sure we will even throw noodles and would probably try to dissuade our alliance from doing so.

Find my errors, or refute this.

I think many people in this thread are having trouble realizing the implications of the fact that W/L doesn’t matter, only your average score does.

If you throw 10 noodles over every match, you have a (slim) chance to increase your average by 40 points. To be realistic, lets say you average half that over you 10 matches, so 20 points up. Even if you average only 1 over the step per match, thats 4 points increase to your QA.

If one match, you throw all 10 over and your opponents get all 10 in the landfill, the max their average score could be effected is ~1 point (10 points, 10 matches). If the match scheduling system is working correctly, you shouldn’t play against the same team twice, so you can’t effect their alliance average by a significant amount.

So your average goes up 20 points (or even just 4), your opponents that match maybe 1. Still in your favor.

I think most people think the pool noodles are harder to throw than they really are. Me and another teammate did an unscientific test throwing noodles down a hallway (~8-10 feet wide, so more difficult conditions than the field) during the first week of the build season. What we found is that with minimal practice (under 30 minutes), we were able to throw the pool noodle far enough to score the +4 points ~30-50% of the time. A majority of our “failures” came from the noodle curving and hitting the wall on either side, so I would image that you percentage on the field may be higher than that by a small margin. We also ensured that it simulated throwing the noodles over the wall by throwing them overhand, since such a motion releases the noodle at higher than six feet for both of us.

Just remember that the noodle only has to be partially partially past the opposing alliance’s landfill to score points. It scores points for your alliance if it is not entirely contained within their landfill, so you can have 3/4 of the pool noodle still in their landfill and it will still count as unprocessed litter. This shortens the required throw distance by ~4 feet. It might also give the litter a higher chance to actually score points for you if it’s not entirely out of their landfill zone, since the opposing alliance may think that it has already been pushed into the landfill zone when it really is still unprocessed litter.

During elimination matches I could see pool noodles potentially making it more difficult to pick up totes from the landfill (depending on the robot) if the noodles were lying on top of the totes. It appears as though the lifter designs which stack their current stack on top of another tote before lifting the new bottom of the stack (see the Ri3D designs, such as Betelgeuse, for an example) would need to “sweep” off the noodle before they could make a taller stack. It could slow down the opposing alliance’s stacks. If you were the only team that threw extra pool noodles, and the other teams kept them strictly for their containers, your average match score could be slightly higher by comparison since their stacks took longer to accumulate (and you might have scored points with the noodles as well).

Each alliance, especially in elimination rounds, will have to carefully weigh the possible outcomes and take into account their robots’ capabilities when deciding what to do with their pool noodles. You will always have at least three “discretionary” pool noodles to use (for throwing, scoring in the landfill, or ignoring completely) even if you are able to score a noodle in every bin available to you during a match.