I recreated my robot over the last week or so to be sturdier and less jank, just because it was getting annoying to drive. Midway through making it, my team made a plow that we thought we’d put on the back of the robot. We ended up putting it on the front, along with a roller wheel. So right now, my robot is a 6 motor drive with a roller and a wedge, no intake or flywheel or anything. We are creating an endgame mech right now, which we plan to have 3-4 total launchers. We are definitely at a disadvantage compared to other robots, but this robot is many steps up from our other one, a 2 motor drive with an intake and the most jank roller mech youve ever seen, and we won a local with that robot. My question is how can I make this work? Obviously this robot has the advantage of driving well and being able to push well, while also being able to move rollers well, compared to the other robot, where it got pushed around a lot sideways (we used an all omni wheel drive), it was really slow because it was very top heavy, and we could only pick up and dispense 3 discs because it didnt have a flywheel. What should I make my strategy be to do what the robot is best at while also making up for its weaknesses? (lack of intake or launch mech)
another question i have is how can I get as many points as possible in auton with the setup I have? The question above is probably the one I want answered more because I can always just put out a crappy auton lol
If you are making a purely defensive robot, get lots of driver practice. In class scrims are a good way of doing this. For most of your match, you will want to be preventing other robots from shooting. This is fairly simple with a 6m drive, just keep pushing them around so they have a harder time intaking disks, and when they get ready to shoot, push them into the wall. if none of the robots in the match can shoot, score as many low goals as possible, only focus on rollers at the end of the match. If your teammate can shoot, make sure they are protected at all times so they can score as many high goals as possible.
For your auton strategy, make 3 autons
Auton 1: score 2 rollers
Auton 2: Score Left side roller, score disks in low goal
Auton 3: Score right side roller, score disks in low goal
Keep in mind that you cant use match loads during autonomous.
In the middle of the plow, cut some metal, replace it with a bit for an intake. Maybe add spacers and screws so that there is a wider intake mech to pick up discs with.
chain your roller mech to the intake, make them use the same motor. Use your remaining motor for a flywheel.
It will be hard for you to be a defensive bot at higher level competitions, most good teams have a 6 motor drive, wedge, and shooter capabilities. I would focus on making a simple catapult design, or something to score disks at the very least.
Stay in your opponents face, use leverage on the front or back of their robot a la pit maneuver. using your bot as a weapon will give good results with a good driver. bully whatever decides to come close to a high goal, far shots are very hard to hit in match.
also, focus on the far roller (the one you cant back up to), its much harder to get it so you will have a better chance of getting 2 rollers in 1 auton
It depends on the strength of your opponents. Most likely in qualification matches there will be one good offensive opponent that you should bully the entire length of the match. If you’re going up against two capable offensive opponents I’d recommend staying in the first tiles outside the low goal and blocking them when they try to shoot. This works especially well when defending catapults that have to go a little bit or all the way into the low goal to shoot. TLDR: block the entrances to the low goal and guard the tiles just outside the low goal.
You could lock your middle ominwheels to make yourself more defendable and not accidentally strafe or easily be pushed.
(not a strat or anything, just suggestion)
You can take a look at 8059B in SingVex for reference.
It was essential a defensive robot with roller-scoring ability.
It was far from perfect, but should be good enough for you to analyse and decide what else you should add on the robot and also what was not good, etc.
At Battle for Las Vegas I paired up with and went against a couple of mad defensive robots. Utilized correctly, defensive bots are very annoying and can prevent the opponent from scoring. Just go sit under the opponent’s high goal. If their scoring pocket is on both sides of the low goal openings, you can just shove them constantly to disrupt their shots. If they go to the other side, you can beat them there. They have to go all the way around the low goal bump, but you don’t. Don’t leave your low goal until expansion or if you want some rollers. Staying under their high goal decreases their ability to push you out of the way, especially with your 6m drive. People have done this to me and it destroys my scoring ability, especially since I have a cata and my scoring pocket is a bit inside the low goal.
I don’t see anything about it that would disqualify it, except maybe the string they use to stay attached to it, but that is an easy fix/adaptation for you. Remember, if the rulebook doesn’t specifically prohibit it, it’s legal.
I wouldn’t recommend doing what this team did. It doesn’t cover a lot of area and even if you don’t use a string launcher of any kind, there are multiple ways to distribute string around a field, which will get you more points for the same amount of effort in construction.
The main purpose of the scissor is not to cover the tiles (for points), but to prevent the opponents from reaching the 2 rollers.
This wallbot was far from the end product, eg. Add an 2 disc launcher for auton, endgame launcher, etc.
But the basic idea was there. And the OP question was how to make use of defensive robot - so the video was just an example for him to refer to. Not supposed to be some robot designs for the OP to copy.
At first glance, I thought it was illegal because the mechanism wasn’t attached to the robot. In reality, the video quality on YouTube made it look like there was no string attaching it. The compression algorithm blended the green pixels of the string with the gray tiles in many of the frames.
adding to the points you made, this lets me go to the rollers on that side. since they are at least somewhat protected, I can go over to the rollers on the other side while also getting more points for endgame. another thing I saw in the video was that they only used one string (as far as I could tell), so I could always just add more strings and potentially get more endgame points that way.
Again, this is just a backup plan if the string launchers dont work out for some reason. But itd be cool to see a team do this in conjunction with the strings
If you are really confident in your driver’s skill, you could try stopping them both since the both can only score in one goal. However, I wouldn’t recommend it bc you would be running yourself ragged trying to stop them both. If both of your opponents have outtake mechanisms, take one of them out of the equation - stop them from scoring - and help your teammate get you a win.
