After giving it much thought I’ve come to the conclusion this whole game is about lane control. Honestly, I think the tunnels will end up being near to impossible to use for many teams, so being able to go over the bumps will be big. Instead of looking at this game as a soccer match i think it’ll be better to see it as a foosball match, everyone stays in their own lane and does there part for the team. this year’s robots will basically break down into 3 main categories. Either ur a close lane, middle lane or far lane robot.
A good close lane robot should be able to have good ball movement, speedy but strong to handle the defense and a soft touch kick.
A good mid lane robot should have good ball movement to get the balls to the first lane robot or to have a strong mid range kick w/ help from the camera. the middle robot needs to be an ALL-STAR because the too will have to play defense to fight for control of the middle zone by controlling what and who gets passed through the tunnels.
The far lane robot will have to be a good old defensive robot. they any to stop any close range scoring by standing right i front of the goal and not giving it up after it moves up the balls to the first or middle lane. they would have to move the first 3 balls from the far lane in auto mode or the other team will come and take them when transmit mode starts.
this game is all about team work and BALL MOVEMENT!!! u cant hog all of the balls and think ur gonna be able to score them all.
I like this idea because if you think of the game with the mind set as you play foosball than you would soccer, you stop worrying about being able to have pinpoint accuracy when kicking the ball and instead just move it up the line till you reach the goal and then score. This will probably prove very effective because the communication and coordination involved in passing the ball, like some people are talking about doing, is unrealistic especially when robots will be designed differently and having the robot trap a ball will be hard.
Sounds great if you can figure out how to arrange to have one of each type in all your alliances during the Qualifying matches. :ahh:
You might want to avoid specializing too much, so that you can have both a good robot and a good seeding score and/or win/loss record at the end of the quals (I haven’t digested all of this new seeding stuff yet).
I’ve always wondered if FIRST tests the games out with their own prototype bots. And just a side thought if they do have people that test the games out, they should have student vs FIRST games or something like that. Hehe.
The kickoff video showed some of the many prototypes that FIRST staff built as part of the game design process. So yes, they do test many of the game tasks before we see the game. In fact, it is safe to assume that they have already done what they are asking you to do as part of the game challenge.
I know that for 2006 the FIRST engineering staff had to demonstrate the ability to fire a full load of balls into the target, autonomously.
In the late 90s I know they had some schools play it. One of my college classmates was on a pre-season team in high school. I don’t know if they still do this, but I’m pretty sure they used to.
Sorry for being disagreeable, but you are describing novice foosball strategy as foosball strategy… In serious foosball, the five-man line often sends it back to the two man line because of the pin-point accuracy of the two man line. In serious foosball, all lines have pinpoint accuracy.
It doesn’t get interesting until the other team recognizes that the most dangerous time might be when the two man line has a ball.
Just imagine a match where the midfielders intentionally send it back to the goalie because of the long range dead-eye capability of the goalie.
A cross-field bank shot from the goalie would certainly be memorable.
Or a robot that can catch a blistering fast pass and score…
I agree that, for many or most alliances, a basic strategy is will be equivalent to novice foosball.
What do you think will be the Breakaway equivalent of wildy spinning foosball men that novice foosball players seem to think as their best strategy?
(Moving forward and back without paying attention to where the balls are?).
I suspect others may want to develop strategies for pinpoint accurate bots that will be more sophisticated than just push it forward and then have you or your teammate go chase it down- especially if they appreciate serious foosball.
I have to wonder which parts of foosball are more strongly integrated though, as well as the score difference of epic teams who can manage to score from midfield. It seems as though playing the game as foosball is best, but expecting the rather slim scoring of soccer.
However, I will say that the rails make me very happy to say that yes, we are playing the most complicated foosball table ever created.
