Week 1 Action

FIRST General Forum
1

Week 1 matches officially start tomorrow! It’s the first time Logo Motion has been played for real, and teams attending later events will be anxiously watching to get a feel for how the game’s strategies unfold.

As you watch the events, either via webcast, or in person, take some notes on general flow of the game and effective strategies you see. Then post your notes here for some healthy discussion on the game. Some things you may wish to include or touch upon:

  1. What is most surprising about how early action is playing out? Will it last into the later weeks?

  2. After watching some matches, are you seriously reconsidering your strategy? Did you anticipate a lot more or a lot less scoring? (Granted as the weeks progress, robots get better and match score goes up.)

  3. Are you placing more emphasis on one element of the game now that you realize/understand it’s importance?

  4. What do you think of the overall flow of the matches? Is defense really that important or effective at slowing down scoring? Or do feeders make for a more fluid alliance?

  5. Now the game has been played. Where do you rank it against the previous games? Is it more exciting than you anticipated, or is it a let down to the hype?

Good luck this week to all teams competing!
-Jack

(Note, post may not appear immediately. So, if someone beats me to this, don’t kill me.)

2

After watching practice day at GSR I would like to stress the importance of the minibot and minibot deployment system. It seems like alot of teams (us included) put the minibot low down on the priority list. Today not many teams used the minibots.

We tryed to once and this happend, remember to secure your minibots!

3

Here at Traverse City I saw a bunch of teams with minibot deployment systems. Hope to see them work tomorrow.

4

Speaking of minibots, I noticed they were major game changers watching the NJ webcast. Not a lot of teams got them working, but quite a few matches were won because one team managed it.

I also wasn’t expecting so many tubes to be thrown out on the field. Major disadvantage to human load only robots.

5

1. What is most surprising about how early action is playing out? Will it last into the later weeks?

I’m not very surprised about anything. There are A LOT of tubes on the field. Perhaps more than I expected, but tubes on the field is definitely a replay of '07.

I guess I am a bit surprised by the lack of minibots. Perhaps people are saving them for the main show tomorrow.

2. After watching some matches, are you seriously reconsidering your strategy? Did you anticipate a lot more or a lot less scoring? (Granted as the weeks progress, robots get better and match score goes up.)

I found that three robots trying to hang tubes is a tight fit. It’s very important to communicate who’s going to hang where/what.

On that note, I noticed that a couple of teams where hanging tubes out of order. (Someone hung a triangle on the middle column). I don’t understand why a team would ever do this.

3. Are you placing more emphasis on one element of the game now that you realize/understand it’s importance?

I realize that hanging tube in an efficient manner is huge. Those points rack up fast.

4. What do you think of the overall flow of the matches? Is defense really that important or effective at slowing down scoring? Or do feeders make for a more fluid alliance?

It’s hard to tell how defense is going to play out. I’m sure we’ll see some amazing defense tomorrow.

5. Now the game has been played. Where do you rank it against the previous games? Is it more exciting than you anticipated, or is it a let down to the hype?

It’s hard to tell this early. So far, I’d say it’s up there with Rack n’ Roll. :]

  • Sunny
6

At the Alamo during practice, there were tubes all over the field.

7

And we still haven’t seen a qualifying match…

8

Where oh where are those minibots people were raving about being so awesome? “Our minibot is so fast you have to use relavistic motion equations to calculate its velocity”

I only came across a few that were reliable. Are teams holding out?

OR

The predictable overestimating/underestimating depending on how you look at it variable has sprung up again.
The act of deploying a thing that is realitively small onto a poll that is even smaller (diameter) from like 40 feet away not as easy as we thought.

Teams with reliable deployments this week. Reliable equal to say 80% or better regardless of climb time are going to find themselves in some fun spots come Sat afternoon.

9

The experienced veteran teams who have posted clips all have self-aligning mechanisms to help them align their minibots to the pole. Aiming from 40 ft away would indeed be tough.

What I haven’t seen or heard about yet, are the “other” ways of aligning the robots using software.:rolleyes:

10

One amazing thing I just saw:

148 scored two, yes, thats right, TWO ubertubes in auto. :eek:

I am scared.

11

I definitely dropped my jaw when I saw that.
How do you plan for such an event?

12

For someone who saw that better than I did on the webcast:
It appeared that the 148 bot was still in contact with the tube when auton ended. Therefore, it would not have counted. Being that i did not see the final score, did it count? If so, why?

13

Technically, it can still count.

14

How?
Definition of hanging: HANGING – a GAME PIECE is HANGING when it is fully supported by a PEG through its center hole and released by the POSSESSING ROBOT. If a GAME PIECE on the floor is preventing a GAME PIECE that has been hung on a bottom PEG from becoming fully supported (that is, if the floor GAME PIECE was not there, the hung GAME PIECE would be scored) then that GAME PIECE will still be counted as scored.

Fully supported suggests that none of the weight my rest on the robot, only on the peg. So, even though the robot could have pulled away and it would have stayed the same (which 148 did), I am inclined to think that the tube is still partially supported by the robot.
If you were to draw a force vector diagram I know the robot would be exerting a force on the game piece.

15

But if that force vector from the robot is directed straight down, and there is no force vector upwards, then the game piece is fully supported by the peg. No problems there, but the robot might not have fully released the game piece.

Also, the “game piece prevention” exception to the “fully supported” may also be being applied to the robot grippers.

16

Hmm…or cameras?:wink:

17

Penalty’s will be a definite score changer. I saw some penalties going as high as 7 or 8 per match. :eek:

18

I watched the Alamo webcast all day. 148 did it twice. The first time they did it, it was completely successful. (as in they backed away and it hung freely) The second time they were still in contact with the tube but they were not applying any kind of force to the tube so in a sense, it was hanging on the peg and they were just touching it. I do believe they counted it as a hang but some that was there in person should clarify this.

19

1. What is most surprising about how early action is playing out? Will it last into the later weeks?

There are tubes everywhere, most predictions thought that the ground would be bare.

2. After watching some matches, are you seriously reconsidering your strategy? Did you anticipate a lot more or a lot less scoring? (Granted as the weeks progress, robots get better and match score goes up.)

I wish we would’ve put more emphasis on the Minibot and it’s deployment.

There’s nothing worse than scoring 6 tubes and then seeing an alliance offset those tubes with JUST a minibot.

I think as minibots and deployment become more consistent in the later events, overall scores and tube placement will be up.

3. Are you placing more emphasis on one element of the game now that you realize/understand it’s importance?

Minibots.

If you can place a logo and win the minibot race, you’re pretty much golden at the regional level.

4. What do you think of the overall flow of the matches? Is defense really that important or effective at slowing down scoring? Or do feeders make for a more fluid alliance?

The overall match flow is MESSY, but there is room for improvement.

Defense is powerful, when played correctly - don’t under estimate it.

Feeders are good, but we haven’t seen the NEED for one yet.

**5. Now the game has been played. Where do you rank it against the previous games? Is it more exciting than you anticipated, or is it a let down to the hype?
**
It’s exciting, but there’s something missing. Perhaps it’ll get better in eliminations.

20

  1. I definitely expected there to be less tubes on the ground. I thought that there would be some ubertubes left over on the ground, and possibly some from accidentally dropping the tubes, but I never thought that people woulf be throwing.

  2. I’m not rethinking strategy much. We have a solid tube hanger, even if it can’t floor load, and out deployer has worked great in testing. We assumed that minibots would be game-changers, and so far it looks like that was a reasonable assumption.

  3. We’re still focusing on improving our minibot in between now and Thursday.

  4. Watching a few matches, I’ve noticed that the midfield is a tight fit, especially with the poles. Smart defense there could help hugely.

  5. This year hasn’t been the most exciting I’ve seen. I’ve only seen 1 minibot race, and hanging tubes just isn’t as exciting as, say, kicking a ball 50 feet into the goal, or making a shower of orbit balls. I saw one match at New Jersey where the final score was 1-0, with no penalties, ubertubes, or attempted deployments.