Ok, so say I’m wrong and attaching was legal. And I actually competed this year, building a different robot than what I planned. It would have the same concept just designing was a little harder when things didnt works so nicely for “locking”. What this robot was going to do was lock onto the center portion where the gates rest using a piston and mechancial latch that would be insanely protected to it doesn’t even scratch the field.
After that An elastic elevator would go up, and an 8 foot telescoping arm would then deploy blocking all the goals on the opposing alliance side of the field, but not only that but raising their goals by 10 inches. Thus rendering the opposing alliance limited to ~14 points with a doubler in perfect circumstances.
What the design ended up being was everything had specific motors and the robot could transport 14 objects at once. It would move all the preloads in auton and then set up where the major defense started. However instead of “locking” it had two pnuematic arms that would swing 180 degrees and rest inside the goals using the field as a counter balance of the 8 foot 4 stage telescoping arm.
Either way the robot would have worked in theory but in application we were skeptical. But if you see where locking would have helped this robot then you see why I would be a little but bothered that other teams got away with forms of locking even if it couldbe undone. The system I had come up with was a much safer mechanism and wouldnt have damaged the field and was insanely controllable. Just a piston up and down.
Which is a fault of the inspectors then, as an inspector I know there is a question saying “there is nothing on your robot to intenionally damage the field” In which case if you were attaching to the field… They would have not passed in an inspection from me because of this:
And If I had competed against someone who had a mechanism who did this as a ref student or another inspector, I would have imediately called them in for reinspection. And keep in mind there were not really any robot changes to the College game, Its the same “plastic block custom electronics” jazz even if it was asking in a college forum it still applies in HS and MS.
I hope that my reasoning is logical and not insane.
You’re right that this is the best place to address these sorts of things, but it isn’t all that easy for an inspector to make calls about things like field damage because they never see the robot in action.
It’s not always obvious to an inspector what the intended purpose is of everything on the robot. If something looks like a field damage risk the inspector will probably ask you how you intend to use it. However, there will always be things they don’t notice and unfortunately there isn’t really anything stopping teams from withholding information or even outright lying.
So a robot that passes inspection is not always going to be a legal robot when used according to its intended strategy. Referees, alliance members and opponents still need to watch out for teams that might be breaking rules that should have disqualified them from passing inspection.
was the only purpose of smashing the wall to give room for the goal capper? or was it used to disrupt an opponent’s autonomous?
also, if i remember correctly, you guys used a nz robot in the middle of the season, why did you guys swap to a wall bot? how did you come up with this design? how long did it take you to build and program this robot?
From what I saw in my team’s matches against them, their extensions flipped out from the middle and pushed the majority of the game objects from the pyramid behind them. Basically, it gave them control of the objects without needing to drive around them
Well, from - YouTube you can see that 2W pushed more of the objects towards us (their opponents). Despite this, it was the CAP that gave them that essential advantage over most wallbots. I don’t doubt for one second that 2W earned the championship title over us, despite all that talk about legality. Really astounding feat of engineering and great insight into the game.
It seemed too powerful to be reliable, however it seemed like a good concept to pull all the objects themselves. I guess they couldn’t reduce the power without slowing down the goal cap.
Yes, I especially enjoyed watching the first World Finals match when 2W pushed their tipped opponent into the Isolation Zone. The goal hat was also fun to watch in action.
Did you really…? I thought it was kind of like watching a team do driver skills with no pressure to get any more than 20 point. The game was over before it even began, and the ending state of the robots (1 tipped over, 1 trapped, and 1 not moving) made me embarrassed compared to watching middle school, I believe this was one of the worst games of gateway ever to watch, not because the robots were not impressive (they defiantly were), but because the tactics were non-existent, and the ability of the robots to score was irrelevant.
The middle school finals were a bit boring to me. All four of the robots were peak efficiency NZ bots, and although they were all impressive machines, that match was just like many other matches. And if I remember correctly (the results won’t load on robotevents), there were 2 tied matches in the MS final round. The deciding match really could’ve gone either way, and I think it was determined by luck more than anything else. 2W removed luck as a factor in the HS final, which is the kind of thing I like to see.
That was quite an embarrassing match to play in, especially after we intentionally tipped our robot over.
For those of you wondering why we did that, it was because we assumed that if we stayed up, we would get pushed and trapped in with 10B in our isolation zone. We thought that by tipping our bot over, we would not be able to be pushed and our partner could outscore their partner. 2W was and had to be built so quickly that there wasn’t really any time for any practice (nor did we see any need because, knowing that we would be in different divisions, we would not have to play against each other unless in the highly unlikely event that we both make it to the finals). In the few times that we did drive our bots together, they would push our H-drive no matter the orientation or how much we tried to resist, because of their incredibly strong 5:1 drive ratio. When our mecanum wheels came and we installed them, they were too busy working to practice against our new wheels. Against normal robots, the wheels and a few programmed buttons that the driver could press to make the wheels spin weakly in a direction, thereby locking the wheels held them back, but in my mind, our modifications were still no match for 2W.
On the morning of the last day of competition, our team joked about what we would have to do if we had to play against 2W in the finals. We had seem some of their matches, and in all those matches, they trapped their opponents. We talked about removing our wheels, or covering our tower with anti-slip and tipping our bot over. Unfortunately, when it became clear that we would have to play against each other, we were stuck on what to do. Our strategy against wallbots was to just park in front of them and use our motor “brake,” but 2W not a normal wallbot. We noted that not all bots got trapped when playing against them, but we (wrongly) assumed that they had pneumatic brakes or some other feature. Unfortunately for us, they just pushed us aside before trapping our partner.
The worst part is, after coming back, I wasn’t there but one morning when the media came in and some members of our Worlds teams were there with the bots, my teammates claimed that they managed to resist 2W’s pushing by sitting perpendicular to them and using the brake, and also managed to beat their cap.
I guess I could give an answer but I don’t know if I’m right. Looking a video clip that I happen to have recorded (uploaded here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6B0Ad8bytI&feature=youtu.be), I think they wanted to steal most of the objects and put them on their side.
are you serious?
as vex raptors already said, 4 “peak efficiency NZ bots” with no strategy except to “score score score”, is ofc fun to see the beast inside each machine, but is also the SAME beast in every other NZ machine out there
if you like to see games that depend on “luck” to win, might as well flip a coin…
this was the reason we went a different route and came up with the super stacker
and im sure its the same reason 2W made their wall bot
ofc, a “wallbot” isnt as interesting to watch, but hey, the strategy won them the World Champs
The claim that your team made about sitting perpindicular to 2w to stop them and beating the cap might not have been true for you but was done in the quarter finals match against 2W
I’m still puzzled and shocked every time I remember that you guys were picked in the second round of alliance selection. After playing alongside a robot at the CSUN tournament, I knew for a fact that every playoff alliance that seriously intended to win would need a top-tier wallbot, and I was and am still thoroughly surprised that you guy were the only wallbot to make it to the world finals stage.
This robot was absolutely invaluable in our effort to defeat the most intimidating wallbots I had ever seen, Metaljackets and WASABI (Props to both of these teams by the way for EXCELLENT series). The 30" goal cap was genius, and our alliance’s success is owed in no small part to that piece of Lexan’s enormous effect on the meta-game.
You guys should really upload a video to show how long it takes to set up that robot. When they told us we were blue and not red, and you had to re-set up your robot, I honestly wasn’t sure if we would be ready in time!
I’m glad you guys pulled through, and I’m glad our scouts told us about this amazing robot that was buried in the rankings. Good job, congratulations, and thank you once again for helping us make it all the way through.
[INDENT][/INDENT]You guys played that match correctly. The only real counter to that robot was to be disciplined and do everything possibly to remain in contact with your starting tile. Otherwise either us or 2900 would double our isolation 30, negate a small goal, and you would have no doubler, leaving you absolutely no chance of winning except sneaking by. Considering no robot ever successfully snuck by 2W, Karthik was right in praising you guys when he commented on that match.
[INDENT][/INDENT] The problem was, very simply, that 2W built a BEHEMOTH, and their 5:1 torque, combined with the fact that their robot was so heavy it had to be carried by a dolly, pretty much made them the ultimate pushing machine. The only team that I saw successfully hold their own against them was WASABI’s Honey-Badger wallbot, and even then it was only a stalemate, and the thirty inch cap gave our alliance the edge.
Props to you guys for an excellent match.
[INDENT][/INDENT][INDENT][/INDENT]You’re getting a lot of flak for this opinion, but I won’t fully disagree with you.
Gateway was, from the beginning, designed to be a game about offense and scoring. That’s why the autonomous bonus was removed and replaced with a scoring-first bonus, and why descoring was removed. Efficiency robots were the “correct” answer to vex’s challenge.
[INDENT][/INDENT] That middle school match, in my humble opinion, wasn’t just about luck: when there are that many ties, it becomes a matter of which robot is more sturdy, and capable of running more consecutive matches. Those matches weren’t devoid of strategy, but the lack of wallbots made the game what the designed probably wanted in the first place: an opportunity for the best team to score the most points, and essentially the opposite of Round-Up’s descore/defend/hoard gameplay. Those were amazing matches.
[INDENT][/INDENT][INDENT][/INDENT]I can’t really comment on how it felt to spectate on the high school matches, because I was busy participating in them, but having watched and participated in some wallbot v. non-wallbot matches, I’d say that these games bring out the best teamwork and best strategy I’ve ever seen. Strategies that would never be considered, like running an autonmous designed to cross the field as quickly as possible, or placing your robot directly in the path of a springloaded wall, risking destroying it in order to force a DQ, or tipping over your robot are all strategies I’ve seeen used. Wallbots aren’t going to force high scoring matches, but they will always create exciting new approaches to the game.
[INDENT][INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]That being said, I don’t think a wallbot v. two efficiency bots is a fair fight, and I felt loooonnnggg before worlds that the winning alliance WOULD have a wallbot, because 1 wallbot and 1 efficiency bot was just the most effective game to play.
Edit: Sorry for monopolizing the forum, I just had a lot to say XD
By the way, our match against you guys and the super stacker was the most demanding match I have ever participated in. We seriously spent the entire first day preparing for it by scouting and making a new anti-wallbot autonomous.
Yeah, unfortunately that match didn’t go nearly as it had been planned. Obviously, we had expected total domination (wallbot + stacker) but once you guys got past us, there wasn’t a whole lot we could really do. At that time, we only had one autonomous, before elims, we made up another three or four to try to prevent that from happening
My scouts watched about 3 of your matches to see how we could counter you, and we realized that getting past was our only hope. You guys had us SCARED. Honestly, when I rewatch the video of that match, you guys WERE able to eventually push us out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQW7sqsNHo0&feature=plcp), but we had wasted enough of Murdomeek’s time to prevent him from fully executing that scoring maneuver.
