2016 is, in my opinion, easily the best vault bot in MAR. During eliminations at MAR Champs, they consistently filled the vault, kept their switch, stole cubes that HP’s had dropped from the portals, and played the best defense I’ve ever seen against us. Anyone looking for an example of good defense and driving should watch MAR Champs Semi 1-1. 2016 traps both us, 1218, and 1391 everytime we went for a portal run, which killed our cycle times.
Anecdotally, that’s exaclty what happened to us. Even with world class switch/vault play we could not convince a top tier scale robot to go with us. It seems like the concept was too outside of the strategic norm. I still lose sleep thinking of what we could have done with a top seeded scale team picking our robot, with us playing the opposing switch and cube starvation defense.
Actually its pretty close with them and 7214 who is in Marana but basically Tucson
AZN:
1011 Vault Score 310
7214 Vault Score 305
COL:
1011 Vault Score 420
AZPX:
7214 Vault Score 460
As an unbiased observer I was going to say the same thing. 1011 has better autonomous routines and far switch capability but as a vault bot I think 7214 might have an edge.
If it was really their job, I bet 254 could beat anyone at the vault/switch game.
To further hype 2016, here is their 15-cube quals match.
Like Drake said, besides being so great at scoring cubes, they were critical to our MAR champs alliance in slowing down runs to the portal.
Even if it wasn’t their primary job…
When you have great drivers, things often work like that. I remember thinking you guys did really well considering the circumstances.
I personally think (thanks to our previous experience) that we (1648) have the best vaulting in Georgia when we decide to focus on it, but often the game takes us away from that area of the field. 6829 and 4941 more consistently do it and also do a great job.
I’ll go ahead and throw NY and my team’s hat in the ring and say that Team 5030 is definitely in the top 3 and maybe even the best pure vault/switch bots in NY.
I could be wrong and honestly, don’t remember any other NY team standing out for vault/switch. Although our first regional was rough we definitely made great improvements to the robot and it showed at the Buckeye regional. As for the idea that any good scale bot can be a good switch/vault bot I would have to disagree.
Just based on my experience its really only the best scale bots with great drive teams that can compete with a vault/switch specialist. I’m not gonna discredit the drive team of 1102, you guys did do a good job of being a vault bot in that match, but just remember that you were directly in front of the exchange. It is significantly harder to do that well from the other stations when you don’t have that experience.
I’d say that there is definitely a strong, positive correlation between vault scoring ability and scale scoring ability. Variables like intake ability, drive skill, build quality, etc. are areas where teams that build strong scale robots are likely to thrive. Those qualities also lend themselves to strong vault play.
In New York, the best vault play I’ve personally seen is from 340. (Not so) coincidentally, they are also one of the top, if not THE top, scale scoring robot(s) in the state. In one particular week 1 match, they were able to score 9 cubes in the vault, then still had time to score 6 cubes in other areas of the field between the switches and scale with the rest of the time in the match. The average team at our events this year scored less than 6 cubes per match total, and I’d imagine this was true for most regional and district events (i.e. your average regional match doesnt include 36 cubes scored by the 6 teams on the field).
Other teams put together notable performances at the vault, like 250 and 3044 to name a few. But nothing I’ve seen has measured up to GRRs play at the vault.
If it makes you feel any better, you guys were 2nd on our list behind breakaway if we weren’t picked by 2992. We thought we could at least make the finals with you guys, and looking back, it would have been highly feasible.
Id say 4272 or 3494 (if we are factoring end game ability) here in Cornland.
One robot that should definitely also be in that conversation is 6502, who thanks their incredibly versatile intake and 4 piston launcher, can fill a vault in 45 seconds flat. Combined with their 2 cube scale auto and equally impressive strength on the switch, their #5 ranking in district ranks is definitely well deserved.
2016 is also insanely good at the vault, their defense was crazy, no other robot in MAR played like that as well as them. They trapped teams on their side of the field incredibly. It’s hard to believe they fell all the way to the last pick of the 1st alliance.
5421 had the second-best vault score at NYNY after 354 by 5 points
So I did some calculating and found out our team is 2nd in FIM for Vault. Congrats 7225 for being number 1!
Thanks for the mention, Trevor. As they say, it’s an honor just to be nominated. 
It looks like their intake is almost exactly the same as 4087’s, which if I recall correctly was inspired by 3847’s build blogs. Good looking bot and I’m sure they’re right up there with the other two I mentioned.
Correct, we were VERY much inspired by the Spectrum build blog. While we tried a lot (~15) of intake iterations, we kept coming back to this concept.
Our intake uses similar geometry, but we operate it differently. We seem to have used intake actuation more so than others. Our preference is to acquire with the intake open (which can handle the long cube diagonal with a little bit of compression) and closing the intake when the cube is contained. Short-sided cubes can be acquired in this manner as well. This actuation was all manual, based on direct or camera visual feedback. Perhaps we will automate it moving forward.
We liked the idea of being able to drop cubes rather than shoot them for a bit more precision in switch placement, and to avoid costly overshooting. In competition, our drivers used both functions, depending on the switch fill.
As for Indiana District I would like to nominate 3487. They competed at Plainfield with 500 vault points for qualifications. They are very consistent and fast when filling the vault. They had the vault full most of the time in under a minute. They then competed at Tippecanoe where they again got 500 vault points. They averaged 8.3 cubes a match at both Plainfield and Tippecanoe.
Overall they are a very fast and consistent bot and probably one of the best vault bots in Indiana.