I was thinking about strategy, and this seems pretty reasonable to me:
a very efficient dumper, who tosses all orange balls and as many green balls as possible over the side, which should be possible considering 120’s are possible for robot skills in the 60 second time frame.
an accurate, twin-belt or claw bot that can place green balls into the triangular goals on the opposite sides.
You clear the entire field of orange balls and green balls are permanently stuck on the opponent’s side. If the opponents catch on, and they’re hogging the balls until the end, then you just block.
That could be a really boring match if both teams do that…
I definitely think that that is a viable strategy, assuming that you can successfully block against the huge dumping robots toward the end of the match.
Two large capacity bots that can hold at most 8-9 footballs each (maybe less for a quote "ideal for sure win needed score assuming your opponent scores everything against you ie white balls and triangle goals) that are very difficult to block whether by means of speed, height, or other factors - and having them dump at the very last second of the match
Well, take a second to think about it. Out of the thousands of bots that have already played, only a handful can score in the triangles, and even then, throughout competition, it’s been proved that owning the triangles does not promise you the match.
And finally, when you play powerhouse bots like 254 or one of the 1235s, it’s hard to keep up with the rain that they generally put over the wall. IMO, the ONLY way to counter those bots is with two, semi-fast, extremely large capacity buckets, hence, two large capacity, semi-fast buckets are my ideal alliance.
An ideal alliance is a team that can cover your robot’s weaknesses, since not all robots are perfect, there are always something that the robot can’t do or don’t do well at, so it is vital that you find somebody that can cover up your robot’s weaknesses.
Eg, 1 offensive robot with 1 defensive robot, with the offensive robot picking up orange balls rapidly, meanwhile the defensive robot is blocking the other team’s offensive robot. I’ve seen these two type of robots worked very well together before.
Yet, if you’re up against two dumpers with 7+ balls in each basket, as long as you block the one with more balls inside, you’re fine right? Even if you dont have any green balls in the goals, this will keep the majority on their side if you toss all of the ones that come to your side out of the field.
And just a thought that amused me, if you had a nice large mouth for your bucket that was fairly low you could “mirror” your opponents’ robots (e.g. the 254’s or any dumper) and catch all of the balls they dump over. No collection device needed.
And then you just dump right back over when they leave the wall. Seems like it’d be quite frustrating. And you wouldn’t need to worry about speed either, because you’re only moving around after you’ve re-dumped, so you’ll be an empty basket with 4 wheels.
hence why you dump at the very last second of the match to give your opponents little recovery time. And so far there are very few robots capable of doing that without getting blocked.
2c from our school had the right idea but due to technical problems they were unable to make their robot function. (they were going to make a dumper that dumped from maybe 36+/- inches in the air with about 7 or more footballs - a most terrifying thought if there were two of those robots that “worked”)
I still think a team of robots like 254A and 254Z would be unbeatable. They effectively clear most of the footballs during the 20 second autonomous, then spend the 2:00 minute tele-op period blocking. The match is over in the 1st 20 seconds.
Exactly! A catapult robot is the ultimate offensive type of robot a team should aim for in Clean Sweep, that’s if you know how to build it and make it work efficiently during the competition.
This is what makes Clean Sweep one of the all-time great robot games. I’ve been to two tournaments and watched dozens of videos on YouTube and Vimeo and I still can’t figure out the one best strategy or design approach. I don’t think there is one, and I am really looking forward to Worlds.
Oh, I should’ve known. Scissor lifts just strike me as unsteady. I’m imagining a scissor lift gone wrong, and the entire 3ft toppling over. I hope I’ll see the results at Redmond February.
When I first saw the twin catapults on youtube I was thinking something like a cannon? Not sure, but basically a huge tube/bucket with a powered and tensioned platform at the end that can be released. That’d be dramatic, but I’m not sure how feasible and effective such a cannon would be.
