For planning purposes, I would like a general consencus of what teams might be shooting for in terms of pointage.
Knowing the history of my team, might lean toward the the idea of using the corner goals as a way to score big. That would be my personal opinion, but shooting has it’s advantages.
Anyone else?
IMHO, both.
There are situations where both are highly applicable options, and there are situations where only one will be feasable/possible. Adaptability will be ESSENTIAL in this years game, and I think the winning alliances will have robots that can shoots outstandingly, but also be able to dump em off on the ground when needed.
Keep in mind there is a small ramp in front of the corner goals, so your gonna have to put a little bit of velocity into those balls, cant just nudge em in like some other years.
Ask again in a few weeks ( no one is going to tip thier hand this early)
I dont think many teams have even been dealt their hands Koko 
After week one they will.
Let the mind games begin!
So, Koko Ed, why wouldn’t an old experienced team like yours give strategy advice to new teams? I don’t get this hyper-competitive attitude in some areas. In the Pacific Northwest the teams share strategy, share code, and sometimes share mentors. Things like general strategy are relatively unimportant compared to other factors (like reliability, team organization, driver experience and reliability and reliability) that I cannot understand why you wouldn’t share.
I’ll tell you what we are thinking: you really need to shoot from any angle to the high goal. The camera might help fine-tune your aim, and not just in autonomous mode. You don’t need to be able to shoot goals from 12 feet out. You need to be able to score from on top of the platform. You need to be able to score on the low goal. You have to climb the platform. You don’t need to pick up balls off the floor. Agility will triumph over raw power this year. A working holonomic drive would be a big benefit this year, although we aren’t sure we have either the money or programming talent to pull it off. How about you?
Yeah, but you’re just plain nuts (if I put our brainstorming info up on CD I would be tortured and killed by the rest of the X-Cats and then booted off the team).
Hey, I didn’t put that up there. (Look at the postbit.)
:ahh: Such betrayal from your own coach!
for every game first has come out with, its always been possible to do a data driven analysis of the game
calculate all the scoring possibilites
see which scoring approach produce the highest scores
and determine mathematically which strategy is the ‘best’.
The thing is, each team has different skills and resources: some teams will not be able to fabricate a robot for the ‘best’ strategy
so there is no right answer to the question. Each team must analyse the game, and analyse their teams capabilites and skills, and determine the ‘best’ strategy for their team.
Its definently going to be about adaptability. Isn’t there something about, “If you win autonomous period, your goal light turns off”? That would make it very hard to shoot from any distance. Or maybe not, we’ll see the ballistics experts I feel.
The answer is obvious if you think for it. Remember that every time you score you are handing balls to the opposing alliance to do whatever they please. So if your only scoring 1 point per ball, they can at least match it.
That’s becuase it’s your opponent’s turn to score. Even if you did shoot balls through your hoop, they wouldn’t be scored.
Think about it… With all of the variables involved, aiming will be at best 60% accurate, only because there is no rifling, no substantial mass behind the projectile to keep it headed in the right direction, and no space allowances for long barrels. Plus we will be relying on a camera that very few of the teams actually made track the colors well enough spear a tetra with.Also, When you are spearing a tetra, there aren’t really any advanced math functions needed to calculate the trajectory of a spinning projectile, and one which most probaby will be shot from a base that is moving either towards or away from the goal(which only complicates the process more). With all of those inconsistencies having to do with the prospect of launching at the center goal, it might just be easier to play the game “soccer style” and have six weeks perfecting your strategy and training up drivers…
That said… we are probably going to try to figure out how to launch the projectile 
P.S. The ability to gather balls and “dump” them into floor goals 15 at a time, 100% of the time, might also outweigh the one at a time 50/50 method of shooting for the goal.
^yes, but it is much easier to be prohibited from scoring in a lower goal becaus in my opinion, it is easier to play defense on the goals than it is for the cnter elevated goal.
Hmmmm… sounds like these robots are going to need a computer onboard to be able to pull this off :^)
I dunno, I don’t think it’s betrayal. Like Ken said, most everyone will come to the same conclusion about what’s the ‘best’, but then reality sets in and they have to compromise based on their capabilities.
So, there’s no betrayal in stating what everyone knows or will eventually know. And, aren’t we all here to help one another succeed? In match play, YOUR ranking is based upon the LOSING alliance’s score (see 8.3.7), so “it is in
your best interest to support your opponents and win by helping each alliance score as many points as possible.”
As I see it, that means sharing strategy and even prototypes.
GP
Don
Keep in mind there is a small ramp in front of the corner goals, so your gonna have to put a little bit of velocity into those balls, cant just nudge em in like some other years.posted by Lil’ Lavery
I said in another forum but if you put any real force onto those balls before they are inside the goal then they will most likely hint the top edge of the goal and rebound. So a nudge would work much better.
OR…you could have a “draw bridge” that lowers to about …say… 5" about above ground level and have a hopper with a slanted bottom. the balls in the hopper would roll right in after clearing a 1" high incline. …or something like that…