A question has been asked on the Q&A: "Locking" Balls in Corner Goals : Robot Events
Let’s wait and see what the GDC says.
The ball I measured was 6.1 on the seam and 6.25 across the dimples. I was using a tape measure designed for measuring circular objects, but it kept slipping around some. It was close enough to let me know the seam is slightly smaller than the dimples. It’s not laboratory grade, but close enough.
Someone needs to post the youtube link. I edited post #1 and put the link in there also.
I’m thinking about a snail bot with a flywheel bc the flywheel will make the balls go into the goals much faster. Mabey if the driver gets good enough he will be able to shoot them from a distance but for right now this game is all about speed.
Editing Q&As is currently broken, but I will add the link when it is fixed.
I have tried making some form of lever to dislodged a jammed ball to see if it is feasible for a robot to do so, and I conclude that while it might be possible, it is extremely unlikely.
the only places you can even stick the lever are some corners, and in order to dislodge the ball you would need to apply a ton of force sideways, which vex bots aren’t very good at. Also the amount of force it takes will bend almost every lever before the ball dislodges, and will definitely have the potential to damage the field elements.
Wholly heck. How hard it is to get out of the goal zone when it is trapped? Is it easily removable or for a small claw to grab it?
169*
You just can’t get a good grip on it from bottom, top, or sides. See my post above about pulling it with a string tied to a ball.
Smart! Tho I feel like it would take a lot of work. New game strategy!
How many additional balls can you score after one is locked in the corner? Looks like one more would be easy, and possibly two, but I don’t have the parts to test.
you can score two more on top of the locked one.
could a bot try to punch the ball into that position to secure the owned points?
(asking for a friend) wink wink
uh yeah, that’s the entire exploit. you get that goal how you want it, then jam the bottom ball in, ensuring that the goal won’t change.
You can get 2 on top and 1 more on the bottom level. 4 total.
I am pretty sure mine will not be a popular take on this issue of “ball lockout”.
But… why not just use this to your own advantage?
Since everyone can do it, then it is a fair game for all to decide if the team wants to exploit this to their advantage,
One of the principles of having a “sure-win” strategy is about denial.
Denial can be 2 ways - denial of goals/game elements for the opponents, and also denial or locking up your points that the opponents could not access.
And wallbot is the main manifestation of this denial strategy.
And if you do a thorough analysis of how Green Egg (44) played their games, it was always been a lot about denial as well.
Eg. Roundup.
That ladder in the middle of the field - the main intention of the ladder was for the robots to hang on to it and score points.
But teams exploited this to their advantage by dumping the mobile goals (with their colour tube scored on it) underneath the ladder.
Nobody asked GDC to patch up the ladder so that no one can dump the mobile goals in.
The point i want to make is - it may or may not be a design flaw. But it doesn’t matter. Just plan your game strategy and design your robots accordingly.
Thank you so much for this comparison. I really like the similarity here, and I wish I had this eloquence when I made a similar post earlier in this threaad.
I agree, another instance of this was my wall last year, no robot got past it when it was deployed and even in the r-16 I lost the opponents only scored one stack, the only reason I lost any match when the wall worked (the first comp and coulple matches at states there where some bugs) was because my alliance dropped their stacks lul. The towers being there where what made it impossible to remove the wall but I would not call it a design flaw, the main issue I see with this game though is the fact of how easy it is to preform this denial, if you have an auton that scores your home row and locks both your corners, and a 81K wall for the middle tower, all you need to do is own one of the opponents 2 corners and you win the match (given that you won auton), you also dont need any specialised mechanism to do this which I belive is why it’s a bad thing
Ermm… for Roundup, you just need a (strong) clawbot to dump the Mobile goals underneath the ladder.
I wouldn’t list clawbot as specialised mechanism.
Edit: as I mentioned earlier - the main point is to design your robot and plan your game strategy accordingly… eg. Since there is a possibility to have the ball stuck there, maybe a mechanism that will help to dislodge and descore the ball that is stuck there?
And the wallbot might be a potentially good strategy too,
Some of you are lamenting that lack of variety of designs and why always meta bot…
one of the main reasons is because most teams are just looking at playing the game in one way - by scoring. But there are many ways to play the game. And one way is to look for all these “loopholes “ and gaps and exploit it. And trust me, you will see more variety of robot designs because teams are playing the games in different ways.
while it is true that this may just become an aspect of the game that both alliances are going to want to take advantage of, I feel it goes against the back and forth nature, as well as ruining most of the tic tac toe element, which leaves the game less exciting and flawed imo.