Hello, my team and I were wondering if we should interact with caps in the following two ways, but don’t know which one we should use. We would greatly appreciate if the community would help us with this decision and help list some pros and cons.
Option 1:
1 V5 motor for a low cap flipper
1 V5 motor for taking down high caps from poles
Pros are that it is quick and Cons are that it can’t get high caps
Option 2:
1 V5 motor for a lift to put caps on poles
1 V5 motor for a cap flipping intake
Pros are that it can get high caps but Cons are that it is very slow
Are you able to have a lift that can put caps on poles? If so, then I think option 2 would provide the most benefit especially because it’s all combined to one simple subsystem instead of 2 subsystems.
This falls into the debate of “Are High Caps Worth It?” There is an entire thread devoted to this with a lot of controversy. It just depends on your strategy, and it’s hard to decide without knowing what the rest of your robot looks like.
If you have enough space for a lift that you can confidently use, do it. In the case that you have to descore, your lift can do it. In terms of the first option and having a dedicated motor to flip caps, it’s more efficient to use your intake roller to flip caps. In the case that caps are forced in a corner, you can use the descore to push caps out and then flip. We have used this tactic before and it works well enough to be usable in a competition.
Something that people dont talk about as much as it should be, doing low caps only gives you 4 possible more points (putting caps on poles from the floor is only 1 pt) and doing high caps only gives you 2 more points (again, caps on the floor to the high poles is only 1 pt per cap). If you are designing a cap manipulator I would recommend only doing low caps because having an entire lift that is tall enough to do high caps for only 2 more points is ridiculous. You can get a much smaller footprint lift do score low poles and it will most likely take less motors. Equally viable is just having a descorer like most teams already have begun to use.
That belief is exactly why doing higher poles is powerful. So many people build for the lower poles that if you put a cap on the higher poles few would actually have a mechanism that can touch those caps.
In addition, high poles are much easier to score on because they are more visible, since it is right in front of you. Low poles get worse without elevation too. Most of the effective non linear lifts I’ve seen go for high post first because it’s where they will likely not be pushed, and it takes much less effort to line up to. (Also I have no idea why but some fools make their descorers not able to hit high posts. Why you would not put 5 more minutes worth of effort into your descorer is beyond me).
That being said I do understand that if you intend to do balls as well making a lift 10 inches higher for these benefits is difficult and is likely not worth it.
Well said, especially because so few descorers can reach the high post either. If you have the space and the motors, a 1-2 motor cap mech that can score on the high post is pretty awesome. High caps make for a great autonomous on the back half of the field , and high scoring 2 caps just locks up 4 points early on in the match. In a game all about points going back and forth, securing some permanent points is a massive advantage.
My de-scorer can reach the highest post easily. I used a slightly modified chain bar to get the extra length and still have it pack up nicely. The only downside is that I can’t extend it hardly at all outside of the expansion zone, no that I would have any need to. I can find a video if anyone wants one, but it’s kind of dark.
I think for time purposes you should just focus on low caps and then have a de-scorer. Low caps on the ground takes seconds to flip 3 of them when it takes more time to get a cap on a post
it takes much longer when two of the three of those caps are 34 inches up. Plus, one massive advantage for robots that can place on posts is that the majority of them coould also flip another team’s post scored cap for a 4 point swing. I think that around world’s when most cap bots are at the level of tva connor’s robot, people could flip post caps just as fast as people can shoot a high flag for the same point swing. That’s why I personally, am focusing on post scored caps.
There seems to be a false idea here that having any sort of cap system besides a descoring arm hurts your ball system. This isn’t true. A 1 mtr lift with a passive flipper requires the same amount of motors as a descoring arm, and as long as you build it after your ball system is complete, won’t take up any of said system’s space. Furthermore, doing so improves your anti high cap game because it allows you to flip and replace rather than smack and just hope that it lands in the field on your color. That’s why I think 99% of the teams that make worlds will have a lift of some sort.
That said, I doubt a lot of teams will score high caps out of autonomous. It’s simply not worth it when you can only possess one cap at a time versus two balls at a time.