My team is looking into cycle times and how long we think we can take to still be a good robot, but I’m wondering what everyone else has to say?
1 Like
My predictions:
Regionals:
Cycle Time: 30 - 40 seconds (to drive from the community, grab a piece, drive back, and place the piece)
Scored Game Pieces per match: around 15 (total, per alliance)
Championship:
Cycle Time: 20 - 30 seconds
Score Game Pieces per match: 25 to 27 (thanks to @Strategic for pointing out my error!)
These are only based on the limited information I have from my team’s robot and the few other team’s robot’s that I’ve seen.
5 Likes
I have some other ideas about cycle times, etc. that I’ll share below, but just want to point out that there will never be 30 game pieces (or 29 or 28) scored in a match, since the maximum number possible is 27, as there are only 27 positions to score in on an alliance’s grid. Game pieces scored in one position and moved to another still only count in the last position, so we really shouldn’t count that.
2 Likes
Right, I couldn’t remember exactly what the max pieces were, but I think during Championships for this game, we are going to see a lot of completely filled alliance grids.
2 Likes
I think we’re going to see wide variability in cycle times, not just as the season progresses (which is normal, as teams improve their driving and other actions from experience) but also from the abilities of teams to automate actions during teleop. Those teams that are using high-end visual recognition and have highly efficient mechanisms will likely be able to get cycle times way down relatively early in the season, somewhere in the 15-20 second range even against mid-field defense and in the 10-15 second range without it. It’s likely that we’ll see a fair number of these teams,maybe 10% at most district and regional events, higher at DCMPs and Worlds, given the availability of new hardware and knowledge to make this happen. From there, we’ll likely see a fairly large middle rank of teams in the broad 40-20 second range (starting slower and improving as the season goes on) that don’t have the capabilities to automate as much of the pickup and placement processes. And, of course, there will be the rookie and other low-resource teams that will have slower cycle times (or none) due to inexperience with complex systems and programming. What that translates to is a wide range of possible scores in terms of game pieces per match. For many district and regional qualifiers, we might well see matches with 20 or more pieces scored, but will also see them with a mere handful. At the higher levels of play (playoffs, DCMPs, Worlds) we’re all too likely to see a full 27 pieces scored in a lot of matches. I do think this will be a year with the maximum score being reached plenty of times.
2 Likes
I want this to happen so bad, but I feel like people were saying the same thing in 2019, and we never saw a perfect game.
Mind you there were (8 + 6 + 6)*2 = 40 scoring locations, some being conditional, and overall being a lot more awkward than the standard pick-and-place we have this year, so now that I think of it it’s definitely a lot more possible.
1 Like
On the other hand, scoring a game piece this year requires full-field cycles, instead of the 1/3 field cycles in 2019. I anticipate roughly the same percentage-fill of scoring locations this year as in 2019. Filling or nearly filling the grids will be possible, but nowhere near the norm, even at championships.
1 Like
Didn’t think of that at all, great point.
Being allowed to control multiple pieces at once within the loading zone or community definitely opens up a little bit of creativity, but is conditional enough that it isn’t really a big deal.
I think in general teams are way too optimistic about both their own cycling abilities and the average team’s by extension - at least the “low goal” is quite a bit easier than say 2022’s where it wasn’t too uncommon to see a team having a rough 0-cycle match.
1 Like
Related, linking this in: