I just got out of the Colorado regionals, about an hour ago.
Our team did not do all that well (mostly because we were often paired with alliances that had problems), but we had a good time nonetheless!
For those of you watching the stream, I was the guy in the pink dragon helmet, with the pink team (Very happy that the emcee wore my custom-made helmet for five of our matches or so). In spite of our not advancing to the final eight alliances, we had a lot of fun cheering on the other teams. (Especially 4488, who made it to the finals and who had roughly five people on their cheering squad. We increased that number by roughly a factor of six, counting the other teams we recruited.)
It’s been an incredible year. We’ve witnessed some serious problems that teams recovered from beautifully (one of our good friends’ teams had a motor literally catch on fire as they were attempting a Cooperatition stack, but they soon bounced back). We’ve had some exciting moments (the now-immortal 1339-1619 tug-of-war.) And of course, we had plenty of fun.
We are in our last week in the New England District, a somewhat controlled population.
I have always enjoyed watching the game evolve over the season as strategies are developed and understanding is achieved.
We used to put the Robot in a crate and could only improve it on Thursdays and tweak it during Friday and Saturday competitions.
With the introduction of a withholding allowance and district Robot Access Period: 5.6 “Robot Access Period” I think there are substantial improvements. You can build mechanisms within your withholding allowance and beta test them if you have a second prototype Robot.
Not exactly empirical, but
Week One: Waterbury Top: 66 #8 seed: 51 Median: 43 Bottom: 28 (and they were on the winning alliance!) Granite State Top: 90 #8 seed: 46 Median: 42 Bottom: 25
Week Five:
**Northeastern **Top: 148 #8 seed: 95 Median: 78 Bottom: 50 (and they were on the winning alliance!) Hartford (through 57/80 matches) Top: 127 #8 seed: 95 Median: 83 Bottom: 63
There a still weak matches, but, as usual, the game is becoming more interesting.
Somewhat, both 359 and 610 went for the two middle RC’s, and became entangled. 359 got a bit of damage and E-stopped, and 610 kept going, got the totes and got unstuck, but must of damaged 359, and was presented a red card after the match. Was interesting to watch.
So much to tell on what happened later. 610 was great! It was a battle everyone wanted to see.
They were so awesome to be a part of our regional and everyone else from out of State.