Hi, I’m the lead scout for my team, and there’s a thing that both makes me curious and annoyed.
This years game isn’t so about competition and blocking the other alliance… So why haven’t we seen more robots? The few we have seen are pretty much the same basic design, obviously with some specializations and variations that I really congratulate those teams for doing, but I really expected seeing more robots by now.
Thoughts?
It’s still a competition to score the most points. If your team has different methods/mechanisms that you think will make you the top scorer, then you don’t want people to copy that design and make the competition into purely execution of game strategy.
FRC top 25 premiere night is probably holding quite a few back.
We simply ask that you try, when you can, to limit the exposure of your robot prior to release night.
Was a good show last year and I expect it to be even better this year.
You will probably see a lot more robots after the 17th.
We tried to keep our build as transparent as possible this year. We even posted a video which you could literally use as a template for your entire robot, if you paused in the right places. 
At the risk of over-posting this, here it is.
Given, our robot follows a very conventional design, and it’s pretty low-budget. If our team had ambitions that were a bit more unique, though, we would be happy to show them off too.
It’s not really in any team’s best interest to keep a design away from others. If they do so, they may inspire a slew of copiers (but probably not); or they may gain valuable insight from teams with more experience, so that they can find out what works and what doesn’t as soon as possible. Maybe the top 25 teams should try to keep their designs secret. But there are over 1,800 other teams active right now, and every single one of them could likely benefit from another team’s advice.
Just my $0.02.
Many people say this every year, and are proven wrong, but here goes: I think a lot of robots this year, with the exception of the very best, will be variations on the same basic design. Most robots will probably be some sort of forklift, and it’ll be the little things that differentiate the ‘meh’ teams from the great teams. As a result, a lot of teams probably want to keep their ‘special sauce’ a secret until after Bag Day.
There’s a good chance that I’ll be proven wrong in a week and a half, but that’s my theory at the moment.
Here is why: if robot A can outscore robot B. Robot A will (barring malfunction) ALWAYS win. There is nothing robot B can do (out strategize) to win.
As such, if team B knows what team A’s robot does, they take that design, improve it, and become robot A in the first scenario.
I agree with this. I know our team has ‘tried’ (cough cough coach needs to stop posting on FB) to keep our designs close to the vest so that we can make the cut for FRCTOP25.
I think there’s a VERY good chance that you will be proven RIGHT. I see this every year.
It’s not easy to build a robot. Often, multiple teams will come out with similar designs. What differentiates them is something small. Might be a wheel choice, or maybe more driver practice, or some minor mechanism that actually serves a critical function.
And if you can keep that “secret sauce” under wraps until unleashing it at your first event, you can surprise everybody and force them to try to copy it to keep up.
Aside from the “secret sauce” argument, I think that there’s a much stronger force keeping designs under wrap: habit. Quite simply, teams are almost all used to keeping their designs under wrap. Almost all of the reasons for this haven’t vanished with this game.
On the field, you are not directly competing against 3 other teams. However with the way the ranking system is set up, each time you play a match you are indirectly playing against the high scores of every single robot at the competition. I would argue that this makes this year even more competitive than previous years, and anything that a team has that could set them apart from the rest is likely going to be held in high secrecy, because this year each point you make that the other teams don’t make matters.
I’m sure that the most unique robots will be using good can grabbers, and as a result I don’t think it’s necessary for many teams to release pics and videos this year. Forklifts will be 90% of robots anyway.
Exactly the reason why I think this game is much more competitive. If a robot has a mechanism or strategy that can score a huge amount of points, that matters in each and every match. In matches where there’s a clear winner, the pressure to make the best of the best is not as high, but in the qualifications for this game, you literally have to be the best of the best.
This is what a lot of people are missing. reducing your opponent’s score puts one more robot below you in average score, this effectively bumps you up by one spot in the rankings (in both quals and elims). You don’t have to be 1 of the 4 best alliances to make it through quarterfinals, you only have to be better than 4 other alliances. Same goes for semifinals, if you reduce your opponent’s score, you effectively only have to outscore one other alliance to make the finals; and in finals your opponent’s score directly affects your ability to win.
This is the case in almost every competitive sport, you don’t have to be the best at anything, you just have to be better than whoever you’re playing. This has been a lot more straightforward in past years, but it’s still very much the case this year, you’re just playing 8, and 4 team free-for-alls instead of 2 team free-for-alls (aka a 1v1).
For us, the issue is much more simple - we’re all working so hard on the robot that nobody has had time to make any video or announcement yet.
On the topic of how some teams end up doing better than others, I’d like to add my own view:
Of course, I could be wrong.
You are far from wrong. You’re actually right on point. Scouting and driver practice is key to winning, or at least going far in competition. A team can have an average robot and think they may not be competitive enough, but if you know how to beat the opposing alliance with a strategy (scouting) and if your drivers can execute that strategy (practice) they can more likely win a match. The only reason I would see losing such a match is if the opposing alliance is better practiced and has collected and interpreted better scouting data.
…do you know what this year’s game is?
Knowing how to beat the opposing alliance means nothing this year.
Winning matches means nothing this year.
Only your average score (throughout the seeding matches) is important.
In 2008, we modified a method we’d seen online to become very adept at knocking down balls off the overpass.
In 2009, we modified a method we’d seen online to drive our turret.
In 2010, we borrowed some aspects of a lift design to speed up our lift system.
In 2011, a couple tweaks on our minibot came directly from watching how another team’s worked.
In 2012, we developed a stinger based on a 4 bar we saw another team use.
In 2013, a design posted online confirmed our design direction and gave us confidence that outside-the-box idea would work.
In 2014, we gained an idea watching another team’s sensor system and improved our autonomous with it.
Every year, I can truthfully say that our competitiveness has been improved by watching other teams and utilizing some aspect of their robot that was easily adapted to our robot. Competitive benchmarking is a key in the professional world, and in FIRST as well. In the end FIRST IS still a competition or we wouldn’t keep score and declare winners.
We don’t share because we choose not to. That’s our philosophy. You may decide to share your ideas and designs and I commend you for it, but we choose not to. Don’t be annoyed and criticize us for that decision.
I think the privacy this year is due to the lack of variation between many of the robots shown so far. I know super teams are going to do something totally out of the box and crazy so they arent going to give their golden idea out on the internet deffensive game or not.