I know, I know, I KNOW… Fuel gods now walk among us.
The 40kpa Club is real and its membership will grow as the season progresses.
I’ve done some analysis of the TBA data. 937 teams competed in Week3. Here is a list of the top 10 teams (i.e. the top 1%) in terms of average pressure during qualification matches (not that THEY scored the pressure points necessarily but the alliance they were on scored that much).
118 53kpa avg #1 seed @ txho => 0.90 avg Bonus RP per match
195 46kpa avg #1 seed @ nytr => 0.75 avg Bonus RP per match
1986 44kpa avg #2 seed @ mokc => 0.78 avg Bonus RP per match
4613 42kpa avg #1 seed @ ausp => 0.91 avg Bonus RP per match
1690 41kpa avg #1 seed @ isde4 => 0.80 avg Bonus RP per match
254 36kpa avg #1 seed @ casf => 0.40 avg Bonus RP per match
971 31kpa avg #2 seed @ casf => 0.40 avg Bonus RP per match
2648 31kpa avg #11 seed @ marea => 0.08 avg Bonus RP per match ???
125 31kpa avg #2 seed @ mabos => 0.42 avg Bonus RP per match
2481 27kpa avg #1 seed @ ilpe => 0.42 avg Bonus RP per match
With the exception of the 8th ranked team on that list, what do you notice? Rank #1 or #2.
Yeah. That trend it not going away.
It is clear (at least to me) from just one weekend that this year’s game is going to quickly sort itself into the haves and the have nots.
No team can get 4 rotors by themselves. 40kpa? It is hard but the best of the best can manage it all on their own. The best of those will score 40kpa and still run a gear or three, their route to a top seed is very clear indeed.
My question for the CD reader is to be realistic and think about how big The 40kpa Club going to get?
Will it stay at 1%? Can it get to 5%? That difference is the difference between 1 and 4 per division at Worlds.
I think 1 per division is a recipe for a boring Worlds and a lucky division that ends up with 2 (by random assignment of divisions) will probably have an easy time on Einstien.
Having 4 per division at Worlds is a totally different story. I think this will lead to a semblance of parity and things could get exciting with fuel taking a much higher position in the strategy of the game.
What do you think?
How big will the club get? Is my analysis spot on or rubbish?
I would expect that it settles around the 2-3% range. I don’t expect many of those top shooters to pick the next best shooter though. Building an alliance for 4 rotors and 40kpa will not be easy but will be the key to winning Einstein. As per usual the best 3rd robot (this year probably a diamond in the rough capable of ~5 gears) will likely win.
I’ve been pondering this as well. My guess is there will be no more than 30 to 40 robots in this 40 kPa solo class (the one percenters.)
There are many more good shooters out there that can score in auto and more than 20 kPa total (a.k.a. the tie-breakers.) I don’t think this will reach 5 percent of the robot population.
Top 5-8% of what? All robots in FRC? All robots at each championship? Robots at each championship with shooters on their robot?
I’m going to assume you don’t mean the first option as there’s no way 300 teams can hit 40 kPa in a match. I think the 2nd option isn’t very plausible. There’s no way there will be 40 robots in the world capable of it, IMO.
I’m with you Cory. I think we’ll be very hard pressed to get 2 per division at the Worlds (that’s 2-3%).
It is possible that 5-8% will BELIEVE they belong in the 40kpa Club (i.e. they came close once or twice and would have done it every time but for x, y, or z reason) but actual, no kidding, we just score 40kpa every match Club members?
I keep thinking 1 or 2 per division and that’s going to be hard to get to.
I don’t think that your #'s per division are entirely accurate. You’re applying the percentage to # of teams in a division. It should be applied roughly to # of teams in the World (assuming most or all of the 40 kPa solo teams qualify for Champs), then divided by # of divisions to get your # per division.
For example, if 1% of teams can get to this level:
~0.01*3500 = 35 total teams
35 teams / 12 divisions = ~3 per division
If 5% of teams get to this level:
~0.05*3500 = 175 total teams
175 teams / 12 divisions = ~15 per division
The first example is where we currently are based on this week as a sample, and the second seems REALLY ambitious. I bet we land somewhere in the middle, around the realm of 1.5-2%, so 4-6 teams per division that can get the kPa ranking point on their own (maybe only 1-2 @ near 100% though). I anticipate many others will be able to contribute 10-20 kPa on average as a tertiary scoring function for breaking rotor+climb ties.
Throw into this mix the nature of qualifications, and that shooter will be very rare in Houston, which has more Regional feeder competitions. There will be some EI and RCA winners who could be in the pool of potential shooters. But I can’t imagine a rookie being in that pool. I’m on a rookie team this year and we rejected shooting in about 5 minutes and rejected fuel all together within one day.
The problem is that the game rules and robot rules actively disincentivize a low goal dump style robot. If you have the technical chops to build the pickup and the hopper, you’re likely just going to go to the shooter too. If you don’t have that capacity, you’ll just defer to gears.
The more interesting question from my perspective is: how many large footprint robots with large hoppers will be retrofitted with low goal dumping mechanisms by Champs? That seems the more plausible route to many fuel handling teams rather than those teams iterating on shooters.
Although the majority of these robots seeded high, several of them were defeated by alliances that pulled off 4 rotors. I expect that more than one “solo 40 kPa club” team will be upset by a non-40 kPa alliance in Championship eliminations (especially if some of the starting gears are removed).
Close to achieving this in their next event: 27, 1323, 1619, 3132
Note: 40 kPa was reached by the blue alliance in KC qual 66. To me it looks like this was a joint effort between 1775 and 1984, with 1775 contributing the majority of the fuel, but the match video doesn’t show everything so I’m not sure. Anyone who was there care to explain?
I tried to make the list as comprehensive as possible, but with any manual search there is a chance of error. Let me know if the list needs any corrections or updates!
Anyway, it looks like right now Houston’s fuel game is weaker than St. Louis’s, but at both Championships we will most likely have more than one major fuel scorer per division.
GKC match 66 was a joint effort to get to 40kPa. We, 1775, put up most of the fuel but the contribution by 1984 was significant. In another match, 1775 also put up 38kPa by ourselves. In that match I think we missed all of our auto shots to the high goal so the 38 was all teleop. I’m working on memory here, a review of video might shed a little more light.
We only load from the top and in a later match we could do nothing with fuel because the opposing alliance dumped all of the hoppers right away. I think top loading only teams will be challenged to do well at high levels unless they can get very close to 40kPa in autonomous.
There’s the “solo 40kPa club”…and then there’s the even more exclusive club that can do it all in auto.
Even if they weren’t into gears, I would think that a robot that can hit 40kPa in auto could be a defensive teleop thorn in the side of an opposing alliance that needs 4 rotors to win.
It says to me that the world’s best fuelbots are having a field day in ranking points because their gearbot counterparts can’t consistently get to 4 rotors. Nonetheless, some impressive gearbots such as 5687 and 3528 have been able to seed above the top fuelbots at their event.
District Championships will be interesting. I expect 4 rotors to happen all the dang time at these events, since 4 gears/match will be completely within reason for the top 25-40% of teams in an area. There may be significantly more 4 rotor qual matches at DCMPs than at the CMPs themselves, since the spread of teams at CMPs is usually greater than DCMPs. The GDC taking away some of our prepopulated gears (:() would throw a wrench into these predictions though. Also in the wrench throwing category would be teams who can get 40 kPa and then help get to 4 rotors. There’s a real chance of this happening at Israel’s DCMP with 1574 or 1690.
Fuel is a huge part of this game and will be a differentiator in playoffs. Every alliance at a DCMP will need fuel capability. But I don’t think those coveted top seeds at events have been permanently handed over to the Solo 40 kPa Club. Unless they can pull their weight in gears too.
Life in the “have-not-quites” is rough. I have to say though, the 40kpa is a really fun goal to strive for. We’ll have another shot at the Solo 40kpa club at the PNW Auburn District once we get our routine down and speed everything up.
Just Week 3. Every final rank data set from Week 3 scraped from the TBA website. My only caveat is that qualification matches that ended in ties might be off in some corner cases (it is an Excel thing – I could have fixed it but honestly, how many ties were there? There are only so many hours in a day).
