There is literally nothing more fun than watching a webcast, and seeing a crazy robot design folding out and yelling at the screen “WHAT IS THAT?!?!”
Example: Giant Rectangle
(not that it’s viable for LRT, I’m just saying it’s a hilarious design)
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reminds me of this epic robot.
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Poll to see who likes this design and from what their POV is. If you aren’t attending worlds then your a spectator and if you are attending your a competitor.
- Design is fun (competitor)
- Design is not fun (competitor)
- Design is fun (Spectator)
- Design is not fun (spectator)
0 voters
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I am not going to worlds and how broken LRT is is half the reason why. It will be fun watching them break the game though.
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Yo James, is that a Hugger Robot?
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One of our teams considered building a new robot to do this. But it ended up being too difficult. Getting a robot to collect and carry all those balls of one color isn’t going to be easy. You would need to start off with a good fast robot with a good intake that can cycle. It would need to be able to separate the balls by color and leave behind the opposite color. Then it needs to get to the center, deploy and position all the balls. There might be some really good teams that can pull this off, but it’s a tall order.
Keep your old robot around you may need to go back to it.
Also, teams that cannot get the home row in auton will not rank high in qualifications. They need to have some type of auton or get lucky with good partners.
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Disagree completely; I think that’s awesome
How about instead of holding all the balls at once, toss them in one at a time?
Ah yes, the super stacker that Murdomeek teased heavily on the forum.
Don’t forget about itsJapanese counterpart, though:
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Oh dear, I believe I may be in that video.
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Those are good points, and I agree that it would be difficult to carry a cage to collect 12 balls and then deploy them all at once. Plus the risk of not having alliance partners compatible with your strategy…
So, the next logical step would be to deploy cage first and then use slightly modified snailbot to collect the balls and fill that cage along with the central goal.
I was wondering if any of the teams out there are developing designs that keep as much of the standard snailbot functionality, while adding ability to deploy cage(s) with the minimum dedicated (motor) resources.
For example, let say you build a standard snailbot using 7.5 motors and use remaining motor capacity to deploy two folded standalone 6-ball capacity cage modules. Then fill them with balls like you would do with the regular goals and gently forklift them into the final position next to the center goal where the balls are considered scored.
Depending on who you are playing with or against in qualifications, you may not even need to carry those cage modules into the game and could simply play a standard snailbot strategy.
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true, but if you can score 15 balls in the center and quadruple it, that will yield more net points for your alliance than playing the game like a normal hood would, regardless of partner. this is both because of the massive point total you get from even just 15 balls quadrupled, and the row blocking nature that denies your opponent half their rows.
the only compatibility your partner needs to have with your design is that they have to be touching the center goal at the end of the match. as long as they do that, playing this strategy solo is still better than playing like a good hoodbot solo.
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Even with a normal partner, you should be able to get to 18 and quadrupled.
Fair point, but what happens if, while your alliance maxes out the center goal, your opponents try to distribute their quadrupling effort over two or even three goals?
They could quadruple larger number of balls with less additional cage type structures and potentially capture some row bonus points.
Edit: never mind - I didn’t read LRT game manual in enough detail to know that only one goal can be doubled per team.
you can only quadruple one goal. it really doesn’t matter which goal they choose to quadruple, if they can only score at most 5 balls each (pretty reasonable for a standard hoodbot) there is no way for them to take the center goal. it’s safe to assume they’ll own all the other goals but the center, which only leaves them with 4 rows. which is enough to beat you if your partner does absolutely nothing but touch the center at the end of the match, but you’ll end up having less of a margin of loss than if you were a normal hood bot with a potato partner.
basically with any strategy, even this one, you rely on your partner to be able to win. If your partner does nothing there is no way to guarantee victory. absolutely nothing you can do. But, this strategy gives you more of a fighting chance during quals. which means in theory it should be able to rank higher than hoodbots, although that’s gonna come down to luck more than anything else.
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Here is another scenario. Please, tell me if my numbers make sense.
If your opponents take control and quadruple the central goal then they could score: 30 blue * 2 * 4 => 240 and 30 red * 1 => 15 for the total of 270.
Let say your alliance could score and quadruple 24 balls into a corner goal: 24 red * 2 * 4 => 192, remaining 6 red * 2 => 12, all 30 blue * 1 => 30, and take bonus for 4 rows * 13 => 52 for the total of 286 points.
That is going to be winning score unless your opponents could break two of your rows or if both of them could add a fifth stack of the 3 red balls to their central goal for the grand total of 288, which is actually impossible to beat - only to tie.
So the best (but maybe not the easiest) winning strategy is to have five * 3 ball stack capacity around the central goal.
The next best (and perhaps easier) strategy is to have a cage of three * 3 ball stacks for the corner goal and a fast tethered snailbot to maintain ownership of at least 3 rows around the field.
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so I’m guessing this scenario is with two alliances of these kinds of robots.
There aren’t actually 30 red balls available to the blue alliance here, since you only have 14 balls of the opposite color on the field per alliance.
so the real score here would be 268, assuming you own no rows and didn’t win autonomous.
again, the red alliance here only has access to 28 total blue balls, so the score here would be 284.
Still, you would be correct to assume this strategy would beat the center goal strategy. This is a way for a cage bot alliance to counter another cage bot alliance, but as far as the cage bot vs hood bot matchup goes, you’re better off sticking with the center goal strategy because if you go for a corner goal, you’re allowing your opponents to potentially take 5 rows, and you’d have trouble stopping them since you’ve just spent almost all your colored balls on the edge goals.
So basically, a cage bot alliance should always use the center goal overloading strategy against a hoodbot alliance because they will always win.
But when it comes down to cagebot vs cagebot, things get interesting.
And keep in mind, one thing a cagebot is not is versatile. It will be extremely difficult to design a cagebot that can perform both the center goal and corner goal strategies, so teams might end up having to chose which one.
on one hand, center goal strategy will make sure no hoodbots will beat you. (if you can ally with another center goal cagebot) But on the other hand, if it comes down to cagebot vs cagebot, the alliance that focuses on the corner goal and rows has the potential to win.
It will be very interesting if worlds finals does come down to this sort of matchup.
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This thread is getting interesting!
It has shifted to (the lost art of) meta-gaming… so impt for game strategy 
*getting my popcorn ready…
Edit: sigh… and i have been trying to convince my teams that centre goal is overrated…
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I think it will be who ever gets those sweet 6 autonomous points.