Per team, or per alliance? I predict that, in light of the No Robot Left Behind challenge that many teams are taking on, 20 will be a reasonably common hybrid score for an alliance. A non-trivial number of teams should be scoring 16 by themselves.
My prediction: The most commonly heard phrase in the stands at regionals, particularly in the early weeks, but persisting up until Einstein, is “Wow, there sure is a lot of defense in this game.”
replace the word defense with violence.
People who want defense will find ways to get defense into the game and desperation will led people to make unfortunate decisions.
1: A Hybrid score of 28 points or more will actually be fairly common. Most teams will be able to move forward 30 feet (12pts), one team will be able to remove a trackball (8pts), at least two teams will be able to move forward, turn left and move forward again (8pts). A good hybrid bot, at least one per regional, will be able to cross two finish lines, a lane marker and remove at least one trackball (24 points).
2: Trackball control will either win for offense if you can control your own trackball or win for defense if you can keep your opponents trackball away from them.
3: Being able to place two trackballs at the end will make or break most matches. If defense can keep the trackballs away or descore a placed trackball, the defense will win.
4: Chipping away two points at a time doing laps while occasionally bumping your opponents trackball in a clockwise direction and occasionally bumping yours over your finish line will be valuable.
I don’t believe so. Going straight for 50 feet is hard! It took us nearly 3 years to get it down (granted, we didn’t spend the whole time working on it). And the real problem won’t be that BLUEABOT1 isn’t able to do it on his own, it’ll be that BLUEABOT2 and BLUEABOT3 will be gunning for it at the same time, and someone will get clipped, then they’ll spin out, and trap the rest of their alliance behind them. Additionally, it will cost nearly all teams at least 5 seconds to stop, knock the ball down, and then start up again. Not to mention, it’s probably worth your time (if you hurdle) to have hold of that ball from the start of tele-op.
Why not just hurdle it and ensure you get the points? If you place, you get 12 points that can be taken away, if you hurdle, you get 8 guaranteed points. While this builds up over two trackballs, will you get 2 good hurdlers together in a seeding match? I’d bet maybe twice a regional. So I see hurdling as more valuable unless you absolutely need those 4 points, and can’t get them racing around the track in the time it takes you to position that ball.
My favorite thread every year!! My first time to actually post on it though.
– More then 50 points a match for an alliance will be a HIGH score, maybe one or two of these each regional.
– Most points scored in a match will be 75-80.
– 8 seeded team will beat a 1 seeded team through strategy
– If a robot can hurdle 3+ times in one match, they are amazing. Less then 5% of robots can do that consistently
– A robot will tip every other match
– Many teams wont beable to control their robots nad there will be a few cards
I completely agree. I also agree with Ed about robots getting hit while hurdling and destroyed. Defense will be almost non-existant in the first week. Plus whats up with the low, low match score predicitons?
At least once during the regular season, a robot will accidentally fire a trackball into the stands. The crowd will respond by using it as a beachball. The footage will appear in most highlight reels.
At least once during each regional, a robot will turn too early and recross its own finish line.
It is worth noting that this has happened every year since 2003.
Quite the contrary… defense will be most prevalent in the first week, as teams discover that their manipulators don’t work. This game will look a lot like 2005 in a lot of ways for many teams.
In 2002 there was this trackball sized ball being gleefully (and strangely competitively) bounced around the stands during the closing ceremonies. One of our mentors snagged it and tried to run away with it and she got jumped by three kids from another team who took it away from her.
