What have you learned from week 1 competitions?

Jammed twice at Hueneme including in Final 4.5.

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Happened twice at Northern Lights that I saw. Could have been more that I missed.

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can confirm that pushing a robot onto the charge station is doable. we lost connection to our robot while going over it and one of our alliance members (a mechanum drive too) managed to push us the rest of the way on.

Everybot intake is good, but the 111 intake is amazing especially with a few slight modifications.

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This reminds me, what percentage of different drivetrains have you seen at your week 1 events? Is it swerve dominated or are there still some tank drives going strong

There’s a whole thread about it. With data!

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/the-fall-of-the-house-of-tank-drive/

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this would look much better with googly eyes, just saying…
:eye: :lips: :eye:

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2020 pretty much every Week 3+ event was cancelled so…you’re predicting that the link ranking point will also be rare in Week 2 this year?

Not who you are replying to and we do not have the combined stats for week 1 but I think this RP is more similar to the 2019 rocket than the 2020 Energized or 2017 kPa rp.

At South Florida the link rp happened 4 times or 2.94% of the time.

This is pretty close to the Rocket RP from 2019 where in week 1 it was 2.04% of the time
By the end of the year this would be 6% for the entire season with Week 7 being 20.24%, and Champs being 16.1% and 22.51% respectfully

I imagine a lot of teams are going to adopt the California strat of using the hybrid nodes for quick link RP as the season goes on so it may be higher.

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All intakes look better with googly eyes!

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As someone who got to be on the field during almost every match (love some good volunteering)

  1. I’m begging you, communicate with your alliance partners and figuring out who is going where during matches. I saw far too many teams run into an alliance partner or cause some serious damage to them because they didn’t communicate that stuff beforehand

  2. Please pay attention to your surroundings. Tunnel vision on your robot is not helpful, and causes more damage and fouls then you think.

  3. No matter what you’re able to do, make sure you get to the community zone for the end game. It is definitely a make or break situation, and make sure you stay away from the charging station during that time if you don’t think you’ll be able to get on it!

  4. We had a lot of bots get disabled due to swinging outside of the field perimeter. Know what it looks like when you do that, know how to avoid it, and keep that in mind when you are on the field.

  5. Human players/drive team: put together some form of signaling when your team is in the loading zone!!! I saw some teams with a sign for what game pieces they wanted, or pool noodles, or even light strips on the bot. I saw so many people get frustrated with their teammates on the other side of the field for not understanding what they were trying to communicate. Hand signals and such can be an amazing thing to use.

  6. Traction is super important this year, but mobility is as well. While a mecanum drive bot will do great for movement on the field, it’ll get pushed around easily as well, and have a rough time getting onto the charge station. I saw a lot of teams lose traction due to their angle of approach, the angle of the charge station, and the type of wheels they were using.

I hope someone uses this info! Week ones are great for getting a general feel for things, and I hope to see more growth and changes to gameplay for this season!.

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It happened two or three times at the lake superior regional i can’t remember exactly how many times the charging station got stuck. Any idea on why it would happen. If it were to be stuck in a finals match your community would get much more congested as a lane to get in was then closed off.

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One minor pet peeve of mine when watching this game is teams not even bothering to park at the end of the match. Yeah, it’s only 2 points, but so far I’ve seen a tied match featuring a team perfectly able to park that just didn’t. I’ve even seen teams drive out of the Community at the end of the match for no apparent reason. If you’re already right there, just scoop up a couple free points.

More pressing is how massively you can screw over your alliance in Endgame by panicking or not keeping an eye on the clock.

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I learned that if you replace one side of a FIRST field with an AndyMark side border the resulting field is roughly 1.75" narrower overall, but no one will notice.

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For the question mark reaction, here’s Northern Lights field from last weekend.

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That might depend on which side you replace.

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Did the FTAs feel that this 1-3/4" error was just… not too far outside the 1/2" general tolerance allowed by the layout and making diagram (which is incorporated by reference into chapter 5 of the game manual) ?

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They may have just… not noticed. FIM Escanaba had loading zones that were nearly 6ft too small and no one noticed until after the event was over when watching match videos. It wouldn’t be the first time something got overlooked during setup.

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To spectators, it may seem easy. “Oh, just place the cube and cone”. But once you get into the nuts and bolts of the game especially after watching/playing in week 1, its actually very difficult, and their are a lot of nuances to be careful of. Partially design mods (ex. Having a high center of gravity) and some strategy (ex. Being an incredible middle row bot can put you at a high advantage). Another thing I have noticed from week 1-there are a LOT of elevators.

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You got to use those calibration/measurement periods, folks!

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