THOR West

Competition Off-Season Events
#1

Thread created to discuss this weekends NC off season event: Thor West

Quick takeaways from this event, Blue Alliance is only showing 20 teams ATM, with 3 of those teams being a second robot from another team. Considering another 4 signups are very unlikely in 5 days, this is probably going to be the final number, which begs the question, how are playoffs going to be run? I know that SCRIW runs 4 alliances of 4, which i really enjoy, but we dont really have any more info on it right now.
Current team list from TBA
1225 The Gorillas
1293 Pandamaniacs
1533 Triple Strange
1746 OTTO
3196 Team Spork
3506 YETI Robotics
4290 Bots on Wheels
4935 T-Rex
5679 Girls on FIre
5724 Spartan Robotics
5727 REaCH Omegabytes
5854 GLITCH
6340 The Marist Manatees
6729 RobCoBots
6888 Burke County Breakouts (BC Breakouts)
6932 S.M.A.R.T (Smoky Mountain Academic Robotics Team)
7462 Incandescent Mice
9985 Unknown
9990 Unknown
9995 T-Rex B

Wmri
#2

Similarly in the dark here (but thank you for the kind words regarding SCRIW :slight_smile: ).

I haven’t been to any iteration of THOR since 2015, and I’m really excited to compete at this one. My mom’s side of the family is rooted in nearby Edneyville, so it’s a two-for-one trip. And with us fielding the best 1293 robot ever (which has had a thorough refreshing over the last month), I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to keep pace with the district teams.

Some prescouting based on 2019 final district rankings:

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#3

Pre-scouting? Really?

We are looking forward to seeing a number of teams that we have never met in competition before. And we are hoping to have a let some new people drive and have a bunch of fun.

1533 has ditched the “pushing power cube ™” and the beach chair that adorned our bot at THOR East. We’ll see how the latest incarnation of 1533 does this weekend.

#4

It’s no panacea, and certainly not a replacement for scouting, but we didn’t want to come in completely unaware of who was showing up.

We’ll have a lot of people in new positions too, since we lost our operator and we’re thinner on people due to band season. We’re thankful that we have T-Rex and OTTO joining us on scouting this weekend, which means about 1/5 of the field will be looking at the same spreadsheet. This oughta be fun!

#5

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That chair lives in my head.

5 Likes
#6

o h n o

#7

I certainly did a bit of a double-take when the dual THOR setup was announced, because I wondered if THOR West would have enough teams willing to go for a one day event. The far eastern/far western split seemed odd, since the weight of teams in NC is in the Triangle. I don’t mean that to disparage teams elsewhere (especially since some are among the best in the state and, indeed, the world) but the concentration of numbers just seemed not to match the locations. THOR East still had a full roster, since that’s where most Triangle teams chose to go (being an hour or more closer to us) but skip THOR West even though it offered another opportunity to get new recruits to an off-season event at a better time than THOR East. I don’t know what the answer to that is, since there certainly seems to be enough interest overall that two THORs may be a good idea, but perhaps we need to find a way to not spread them out so much so that they will both attract a full roster of teams.

By the way and only slightly off-topic, I was looking at the numbers for the 2020 events based on current registrations and it looks like we’ll just barely have enough slots for everyone to make two District events, even with the new event at ECU. FirstNC is growing fast and we may need to add another event for 2021 to keep up with the growth.

New Local Kickoff in SC
#8

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8 Likes
#9

Happy to get a chance to play with 1746 again! They were a great alliance captain in 2015. Losing by one point after a replay was a tough break for our alliance.

1 Like
#10

With THOR starting tomorrow morning it looks like 20 teams is all we are gonna get, will be interesting to see how playoffs end up.

#11

Knowing what I do about FMS, four alliances is a given (the only way to do something besides 4 or 8 is to jury-rig test matches).

The only question is whether those alliances will have three teams or four. If it’s four, even if all the B-teams vanish someone will still be left at the punch bowl when it’s time for the dance. If it’s three, it’s going to be more of a fight for those spots. I’m hoping they’ll go for the former.

I’ve arrived in Hendersonville already with my girlfriend, and we’ve got the scouting operation ready for action. Now we just need the rest of the team, who will be rolling out of Columbia at 0530 tomorrow morning. Can’t wait to see everyone!

#12

What an awesome event! We at 1746 really enjoyed the full event from start to finish and want to give a huge thanks to the organizers, the volunteers, and the other teams for putting on such a great event. We don’t get to play with North Carolina teams all that often and it was nice to see a familiar face or two and meet some new friends as well.

A huge thanks to 3196 and 6894 for being great alliance partners. We really enjoyed playing with both of you and are thrilled to have come away as event winners with you. Thanks as well to 1293 for organizing the collaborative scouting effort.

I realized shortly after the news broke about Woodie’s death, that I was happy to be surrounded by a group of the FIRST family in that moment. I’ve been a FIRST participant for over half of my life and I owe an unfathomable amount of thanks to this program and its founders. So once again, I want to thank the THOR event coordinators for hosting an event that celebrates so many of the important ideals that Woodie encouraged us to pursue.

3 Likes
#13

Oh, and one more thing. Does anyone know who might have the event data from the FMS? It would great to get that uploaded to The Blue Alliance. I notice it’s also missing from THOR East if that information can be obtained as well.

4 Likes
#14

It was great seeing you guys there. My first time ever playing with y’all and really enjoyed it.
Echoing the same request for TBA data, idek who has that info besides FIRST NC

1 Like
#15

Hoo, what a day. 1293 was getting absolutely murdered by its schedule, but we had a thrilling day that hooked our newbies!

Playoff alliances, for posterity:

1: 3196/1746/6894
2: 9997/3506/5679
3: 6340/1225/7463
4: 4935/1293/6932
5: 9999/5724/6888
6: 4290/5854/6729
7: 9998/1533/5727
No declines with 21 teams, obviously.

9997 was 5724’s B-team, 9998 was 4935’s, 9999 was 5727’s.

Quarters:
1 had a bye
2 d. 7
6 d. 3
4 d. 5

Semis:
1 d. 4
6 d. 2

Finals:
1 d. 6

Thank you to 4935 and 1746 for scouting with us. We’re pretty sure 4935 picking us was the only time someone jumped out of the ranking order, and we think it worked out nicely. (First semifinal match was agonizingly close, just three points short, though they had our number for the second one.)

I’m also glad we got to work with 6932, as we found some ways to improve their battery handling. Any time we can stop a team before it starts costing them badly, it’s a good day at the office.

Now to get ready to host SCRIW in two weeks!

edit: Got the other semi wrong, I was distracted

3 Likes
#16

The numbers don’t lie, and we needed a great cargo bot. Really enjoyed playing in playoffs with y’all. Some great driving y’all have

#17

Ben’s driving has been a marvel this year. We stepped up this year with 6 Mini CIMs and a more aggressive gearing, and he rarely put a wheel wrong. Kawa’e, our arm operator on Saturday, is brand new to us and only really drove the robot for the first time this past Tuesday. We also subbed in Kesha, who was our arm operator in 2019 before she did that pesky graduation thing, as drive coach for several matches.

Stay tuned for the highlight reel of our tab shenanigans, both going up and coming down. :wink:

1 Like
#18

Billfred, I think 6 d. 2 in semis and the final was 1 d. 6.

It was cool to see 1293 sitting on top of L3 Hab several times during the day. Definitely made the event fun!

1 Like
#19

I can confirm 1 d. 6 because 6729 played some killer defense on us in both finals matches.

Regardless, 1746 had loads of fun at THOR West with all of the participating teams!

#20

Fixed :slight_smile: