With all these prototype videos I’ve seen, there are some impressive ranges going on. Will teams start to “camp” the loading zone and just shoot full court? Is this even a plausible idea?
i definately think it’s plausable… but i do worry about tall opposing robots just parking in front of you and blocking shots… not to mention pyramids could be in the way.
Basic calculations show that an 84" robot could block fairly effectively even from several feet away from the feeding zone, even if you are shooting from the maximum height of 60". However, it is difficult to speculate how many robots will actually deploy to 84" while playing defense.
People thought of doing that last year with the basketballs and outside of midcourt shots I can’t recall any teams firing from the other side of the field. Better to move in for a closer more accurate shot than waste it blindly shooting from a greater distance.
People think this every year, and every year they fail to show up. I have yet to see any full court shooters that I would call successful. Remember, even the 971’s and 548’s of FRC have had huge successes with machines that require shots from under (or usually under) the goals. It’s often beter to get up close and personal with the goals in return for a higher percentage.
I will give you a cookie if you can show me an actual FRC team that fields a full court shooter with a percentage higher than 30%.
Frisbees are a different animal than any previous gamepiece - but full-court is still full-court.
If anyone makes a robot that parks in the feeder station and fires off 45 rounds at high accuracy while overcoming the tough angle, pyramids, and potential defense, it will be a sight to behold.
I am sure that at least one team will try this and have reasonable success…until the frisbeeswarp. We all know that this will happen, but no one seems to consider it as a factor.
After some time playing with the simulator, I’ve concluded that the ideal alliance this year is a dedicated climber and two shooters, one of which can feed directly from the station and the other with great floor pickup.
For the first part of the match, the station feeder just shoots disks downfield. If some of those happen to score, great, but more important is reducing the number of trips to the feeder station to retrieve disks. Last year, good inbounders were able to keep their robots supplied with basketballs, but this year a robot will have to provide that function, at least until the inbounders can throw disks to their robots.
From the simulator, we learned that the real bottleneck to scoring is disk supply. Good scoring robots quickly exhaust the available disks on the floor. Driving to the drivers station to get more is a real time killer, especially if slowed down by any halfhearted attempts at defense.
Think about the problem this way: After teleop, a single robot has 6 disks easily reachable on the floor available for scoring. If limited to getting disks from the feeder station, and generously assuming 5 trips to refill, that is 20 disks more. Any defense that slows down round trips from the feeder station could easily reduce the number of trips to 2 or 3.
For every disk available for scoring, you pay a price for that disk measured in seconds to retrieve it. The highest price you can pay is driving back and forth to get them, and the other alliance can drive the price higher by playing defense. The lowest price you can pay is parking at the feeder station and shooting them downfield. There is an optimum number of disks the inbounding robot would want to shoot downfield. Too many and they will lay on the field un-scored at the end of the match. Too few and the scoring robot(s) will run out and have to go hunting for more.
Was the limited supply of disks (45 per alliance station) ever a factor? I know the simulator may be an overestimate for a typical team’s ability but I’m curious if the disk supply matters even for an elite level group.
I’ll just leave this here.
This year the game piece supply is comparatively larger. Each alliance is given 51 probably unshared discs (assuming discs are not stolen off the ground) Last year there was 18 shared balls for both aliances. At least until MSC I will find it hard to believe on average each robot on an alliance can score 17 discs and deplete the supply.
You will only be at 60" when down field. 84" in your autozone. Compare those heights to the bottoms of the two far-wall holes.
My Autozone is your feeder zone… I will be 84" in my autozone… just to protect you from making shots from there. You will probably still feed your zone by missing me, but you are not scoring from the feed zone. If you try to score from there, the Frisbee at best in my autozone, and worst ends up in my low score bin. . . think about it.
There is danger in attempting to block the feeder slots, if you get too close, the robot at the feeder can rack up penalties against you.
A good allied defender bot can also mitigate blocking if it’s key to the teams strategy. It’s not difficult to park in front of your ally against the wall.
I would not be surprised if we see some teams making full court shots with some degree of success. Even 50% accuracy is deadly if you’ve got an allied bot that can pickup the other half.
Seems a lot more doable for mediocre teams than last year, and I kinda have a reckless prediction that many teams out there would give up on trying to make an extraordinarily good climbing mechanism, at least in my regional…so a great shooter would be the next great thing to put some effort into for those teams.
Took some time in Sketchup to draw out the field. Added in a few boxes to represent robots of varying heights and used the walkthrough features. The pyramid is only in the way of the left (2 pointer) goal. You’ve got pretty good line of sight from loading station to the center goal.
Still have to contend with blocking robots but with your wheel in the safe zone, that, warping disks, off side shots and building a shooter than can launch them. Other than that, easy peasy.
Have you actually warped your disks to an extent that seriously affects your shooting? How?
I doubt an Average robot will be able to at all. I would guess, however, that probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the fields at MSC and MARs champs will be able to do that relatively undefended.
However, a heavily defended robot this year will have trouble traversing the field while keeping away from the pyramid and the other team. In past years with relatively open fields, it still takes 30-40 seconds to traverse the field again a well-playing defender.
Could you share this Sketchup file?
I thought about this until I fooled around with the frisbees. They’re made from a different plastic than an “ultimate” frisbee and are much more rigid. When flexed, they quickly return to their original shape. I doubt we’ll see many problems with warped discs at competition.