What are you observing about the game based on week 0? Balancing seems fairly straightforward, which makes me happy.
30 Likes
I agree about balancing, when the charging stations work right. The team versions being used at the event here are getting pushed around the field a little bit!
3 Likes
Intaking cones from the floor can remove many seconds from your cycle time
33 Likes
Endgame balancing seems to be well in hand, as expected. What strikes me is:
- low auto scores. No one seems to be scoring more than one game piece in auto and very few scoring and then engaging.
- relatively low cycles. While this is to be expected in Week 0, the number of cycles even for good teams seems low.
- The relatively low importance of floor pickup relative to past years. With game pieces not being recycled, there just aren’t that many that are there to be picked up and that is only going to be more so as the season moves on and robots become more efficient.
11 Likes
The charge station is going to tip over so many teams this season, in such a bad spot too. Teams need to be really careful driving around it.
17 Likes
In the first couple weeks docking+engaging in auto and with 3 robots in endgame will be able to win most qualification matches.
13 Likes
I noticed a lot of teams were grabbing game pieces from the side versus the top which is interesting. I was also stunned by the lack of everybots. I don’t think I saw a single everybot at the official week 0, which is shocking given how competitive it is. The human loading station doesn’t seem to be as congested as I expected which is advantageous for teams without ground pickup. Triple Balance is definitely doable which is definitely reassuring.
5 Likes
Whoever gets through the middle 8 game pieces first will have a huge leg up. Being able to manipulate them after the other alliance runs over them to knock them over will be kind of important I think.
17 Likes
In early weeks, yes. I think this will not be major in later weeks, and once DCMP/CMP rolls around all middle game pieces will be cleared off the field after auto.
7 Likes
Not too surprised about everybot. The intake looks great, but the rest is not amazing. It’s a very tippy design even with 50lbs ballast at the bottom and could be a big problem. I think you’ll see the intake on a lot of teams.
5 Likes
Robots getting beached on the sides of the charging station are a feature, not a bug.
52 Likes
Driving over the charging station seems to be a key component to having fast cycles.
12 Likes
At Champs, not getting the Charge bonus in a quals match will be a deduction that can knock a team out of contention.
32 Likes
The wider the everybot/double roller intake the longer it takes to line up, wasting precious time. A lot of teams are throwing game pieces when turning. congestion when picking up and dropping off a game piece. I also foresee a lot of damaged intakes…a lot of them. Oh, also hand-offs from intake to end effector type robots have to stand still for what seems a long time to make the switch.
3 Likes
Even without coordinated scoring the Week 0 matches were closer to the theoretical max than in previous years. This implies that we may see max score matches by mid season.
7 Likes
There were a lot of cone robots and barely any links. Maybe a cube robot might be beneficial to finish those gaps 
.
5 Likes
A few jumbled thoughts:
Coordinating balance prior to the match is of the utmost importance. I saw many teams approach the charging stations from both sides, one robot gets on, one robot is blocked off, time expires.
The ability to pick up knocked over cones is very helpful. Both finalist alliances had a robot capable of this (4909 and 1768 iirc), and that alone was a pretty big factor in the earlier playoff matches.
1073 proved that suction works pretty well. Excited to see what they and other teams do with it.
Roller claws are effective, but I feel that ground intakes that handoff to a separate placing mechanism do a bit better, especially with tipped cones.
Defense around the loading zones, particularly forcing another robot to path along the wall of the field rather than diagonally across, is very effective in lengthening cycle times.
Lots of penalties on defending robots. Read the rules, understand when to make contact in which zones of the field.
6 Likes
Hopefully not… idk if First can do anything about it at this point. I’m unsure if there was a massive skill increase due to the large number of teams running swerve this year or if the game is naturally less complicated.
3 Likes
From our experience at week 0 today, with a little more experience and mechanism improvements, alliances will definitely be capable of max scores early this season.
4 Likes