I’m wondering what the capacity for early season and late season will be. No doubt that traybots will likely have a bit more than snailbots, but whether they will be efficient by late season is questionable. What do you think the capacity for early season and late season will be?
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If ideal means perfect, then I would say six balls. We have seen five from snails so far, so if somebody is able to increase that to six while still having an effective robot, then that would be as far as it could be pushed I think. Capacity isn’t super important, if it was I think there are some modifications which could be made to get higher amounts out of snails, but I don’t think many teams will focus on that. For trays the ideal might also be about six balls, I don’t think it would be super beneficial to try and lift like nine balls or something because the robot would start getting pretty large and unbalanced.
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I agree, the weight of 9 balls would add up on traybots. 5 is great for being in early season but I would also like to see 6. From our experience so far getting 5 to cycle through quickly took a lot of tuning, so I couldn’t imagine how 6 would go.
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You guys have a snailbot built already? Do you believe 5 is definitely pushing it?
Yes, hopefully it won’t see many changes at all unless something totally OP happens late season. The tuning and pre-planning to not have friction was a bit of a pain. To be honest 3-4 is actually really good, but having extra in case you need to rush to another goal is helpful.
I am having a hard time figuring out exactly what would come about to change the snailbot design in such a way that it would become far better than it currently is. It can cycle quickly, dump the opponent’s balls, descore everything, and that is all the goals I would want from one. A capacity of 6 is really one of the few improvements but not really necessary. We might just see lots of speed related modifications.
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I don’t think there will be any game changing changes other than drive base speeds possibly. There aren’t many weaknesses to them other than just getting the robot right. Trapdoor is a pretty good mechanism, but unless its automated it won’t be that useful imo. The only use it has to us as of now is a way to hoard until we try out vision sensors which I’ve heard are iffy.
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I agree. I think it will probably be a distraction or slow down most drivers unless you are extremely practiced if it isn’t somehow automated. I’m thinking the color sensor which is releasing around September (Q3 2020, I think that means Sept.) will be a good investment for teams looking to make reliable trapdoors.
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I entirely forgot about the color sensor
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I disagree. I think in most cases if you have more than 2-3 balls in capacity (excluding hoarding), you’re probably wasting time and falling behind. If you let your opponent establish a lead on owning goals, it could be extremely hard to come back. Getting ahead early and staying ahead will likely be crucial to winning this game.
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Fair point, I see it being adequate early season, but if people already have 5 in a snail many others may too.
Getting 5 in a snail isn’t too hard if you have flip out intakes. The question is whether or not it’s worth specifically designing your bot around the capacity and making it more complex for only that reason. I personally don’t see value in having that capacity; I think it’s more worth it to build your bot based on the other priorities you decide upon as a team and use whatever capacity that gives you.
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We tried to design an all round efficiency in every aspect of the game, I will have to see how having both capacity and efficiency looks at comps when it comes time for it.
I think that this season will progress similarly to last one.
early season you have 2 viable robots, (trays, lifts), (hoods, lifts).
by mid season it’s whittled down to really just one main design (trays, hoods)
and by late season all the mediocre robots are the same, and all the best robots will have special gadgets and little things to make it better, like we saw with traybots last year.
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You were one of the first to come up with a CAD of a hoodbot correct? I am excited to see what you with it this season.
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Hoodbots have the advantage of rearranging balls in the goal. Increasing capacity above 3 would remove that ability
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first one to reveal a cad of a hoodbot. But like the hoodbot is such a simple concept many people thought of it the instant they saw the game reveal, it’s kind of silly to give anybody credit for it.
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And that is exactly what I’m saying. I think the ideal capacity may be six because that is what is achievable (maybe) without drastic changes and overcomplication of an otherwise simple design. Also, I think even six might have to be something that is specifically sought out as a design spec, so a lot of teams might not care about having six and just have 4 or 5.
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Problem is I can’t for the life of me figure out what would make the hoodbot better in a significant way besides what we’ve all been talking about already. It seems to be a pretty simple setup. Everything is achievable with the designs we’ve already seen, and besides pure speed there is nothing to be demanded from the design that isn’t already possible. I have a really hard time thinking there isn’t a “special gadget”, but I’m kind of accepting it at this point. Very small changes is all I would expect.
there’s always a way to make a design better, someone just needs to think of it. It’s impossible that we have discovered the absolute perfect robot for change up this early in the season.
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