SingVex Tournament 2023

[meng]

Hi all,

SingVex Tournament 2023 was done and dusted on 5th June.
A bit late and delayed for a post on it - simply because all the mentors and teachers couldn’t wait to take a break from looking at robots.

Anyway, for those of you that are sharp, you would have notice that I have used “SingVex Tournament” instead of the usual “SingVex”.
SingVex = Singapore VEX Robotics Championship
But for the 5th June event, it was called Singapore VEX Robotics Tournament

This means SingVex is still open for another organisation that want to host it.

Back to the SingVex Tournament itself - I am pretty sure it must be the 1st tournament proper for this season. It was so early in the season that the rules are not finalised yet and even TM is not ready to support the scoring for the new season (which we overcame this issue by using last season’s scoring system for this season’s scoring, e.g. 1 triball in the goal = 1 disc in the high goal, etc).

And a reminder to all our “newbies readers” on SingVEX - it is not a worlds-qualifying event. No worlds spots were awarded.
The main objectives for SingVEX (Tournament) have always been an event for advance proof of concept of any designs or gameplays that the teams want to try, and of course, to kickstart the teams for the new season ahead.

Just that because school’s pride and bragging rights are involved, and Singapore teams are just too compettitive to want to just lie down and get rolled over. And hence, over the years, it has become a high competitive early season event.

Some facts regarding this year SingVEX Tournament:

1. 22 teams signed up for the event
2. The scoring was much more straighforward and time efficient than previous season - hence we were able to complete 6 qualifying matches for every team and still end the tournament by 3.30pm (with the 1st match starting slightly after 9am).
3. The award winners:
   Tournament Champions: 8076X and 8059A
   Tournament Finalists: 8059G and 8076F
   2nd Runner-ups: 8068E and 8059X
   Design Award: 8068E
   Judges Awards: 8059E, 35768A, 6546A

And now, the important part - observations from the tournament and also my personal views (which is not representative of any teams/organisations) regarding this season’s game:

1. In terms of designs, about two-third of the robots have some form of either catapult or puncher to shoot the triballs across. One wallbot. As for intakes, mostly either (side or top) rollers or claws.

2. For early season (and maybe up till mid season) games, it is actually not difficult to win a match - just a need an alliance that has a fast shooter and another robot that is fast or efficient in pushing the balls into the goal.
   Don’t think I see any double-zoning happening.
   In terms of gameplay or robot designs - this means for this season, it is possible to have robots that are specialised in their respective (either defensive or offensive) zones.

3. After a few games of watching robots shooting balls across, teams wisened up and started to play defence against the shooter robots - either by trying to push it or block the balls.
   So this will leads me to the next 2 points:
   a) When designing the shooter, teams will now need to decide on whether you want to shoot over the block (and this will mean the ball will be bouncing a lot when landed and not much chance of having the balls landing near the goal) or shoot low (which will have much higher chances of having the balls landing in front of the goal but easily blocked by opponents).
   b) Is it consider holding if for example, the red robot is shooting the match load at the corner and the blue robot move in front of the red robot to block the shooting? By definition, it looks like it fulfilled the definition of holding (especially if the blue robot is in contact or touching the red robot), but yet the red robot is not attempting to move any where else. During the 1st half of the tournament, there were quite a few calls of trapping/pinning when this happened. But it just doesn’t feel right that robots were not allowed to block or stop the opponents from shooting. We decided to only call for trapping only if the shooting robots were trying to move away from the corner.
   Not sure if this is the right call. But it is early season with the game rules still in a flux.

4. There were no robots that can hang by using the vertical pole (still too early in the season and too rush for the teams for 5th June). But there were quite a few robots that can do a simple hang by using the horizontal bar.
   But for those robots that attempted to hang, the success rate was less than 50%. It was not difficult to block the robot from hanging - you just need to park your robot either under the horizontal bar or whichever position that the opponent is going to hang.
   This leads me to another main observation for this season’s game - at least for early to mid season, I am not so sure if it matters to hang high up. I do think the robot need to be able to at least do a simple low hang, but not sure if it is worth to elevate all the way up (eg. G and above).
   Here’s my reasoning - It is extremely difficult to find enough space for both alliance robots to grab on the same vertical pole and elevate. Most likely it wlll be one robot making use of the vertical pole and another making use of the horizontal bar for elevation. But as mentioned, it is not difficult to move your robot to the position and block your opponents from even attempting to hang. So let’s assume that the opponent still manage to get one robot to elevate to a high tier (and get 20 points) and the 2nd opponent robot was blocked or stopped from attempting to hang, all I need is just to have one of my alliance robots to do a simple low hang and I will still get 15 points. So the difference is only 1 triball in the goal.
   But as mentioned - things might change at the end of season or during worlds when robots are able to do a high elevation and help to elevate their alliace up to J-tier.
   But at the moment (till at least mid season), this elevation is not exactly the endgame game-changer that we are looking for.
   Or maybe GDC might change the rule by adding an “out of bound” zone during the last 30 sec.

5. I do see the usefulness and possibility of having a wallbot doing well for this season. And the 5.5W motor ruling - it will become very useful and opens up a lot more robot designs.

Overall, I do think it will be an interesting season. It will be fun.

And lastly, I would want to end off by thanking team 35768 for hosting and team 77789 for sponsoring the trophies and pizza lunch for all of us.

PS: 8059 will be doing a robots reveal soon…

[Mentor_355U]

@meng

We decided to only call for trapping only if the shooting robots were trying to move away from the corner.

For what it’s worth, I agree with this interpretation based on the current rules

Do you have a livestream or YouTube of any of the matches?

[9MotorGang]

Do you have any videos from the tournament you could share?

[lemivex]

@meng

For early season (and maybe up till mid season) games, it is actually not difficult to win a match - just a need an alliance that has a fast shooter and another robot that is fast or efficient in pushing the balls into the goal.

@9MotorGang

Do you have any videos from the tournament you could share?

Here’s a video from SingVEX (Tournament). This was before the call for trapping only if the shooting robots were trying to move away from the corner.

Also, in my opinion, a fast shooter can be a double-edged sword as evident in the video shown because without a good “pushbot” to leverage on the triballs, the opposite alliance can simply push the triballs over to the opposite offensive zone. (Kinda like Spin Up where the low goal discs can be used by the opposite alliance to score on their high goal) But then again, a faster shooter wins around 80-90% of the match.

[LiveLaughVex]

Hello! 8068Es driver and robot designer over here. I would like to share my own two cents on double zoning during the SingVex tournament.
In my opinion, double zoning was pretty influential in the later matches(especially semifinals between 8068E and 8059X against 8059A and 8076X). In SingVex, most of the teams were using robots which were too large to go under the net to descore. Thus, the main risk of double zoning, which is your goal no longer being protected, was not really present in id say around 60% of the matches. Thus, double zoning became a pretty prevalent strategy, where one robot(blue alliance) would play defence on the shooter robot(red alliance), and the other robot would push the triballs into the goal zone. This would prevent the other alliance(red) from being able to effectively score, as under defence, it is pretty difficult to consistently matchload, especially for the lower arc shooters such as punchers.

This strategy only really took place once there was an obvious difference in the number of triballs on one side of the field, so there would actually be triballs for the alliance to push into the 5 point goal. Furthermore, it also cut off the supply of matchloads for the opposing alliance(as the shooter is under heavy defence).

To illustrate my point on double zoning, here is a video of the semifinals between 8068E and 8059X(red alliance) against 8076X and 8059A(blue alliance)
Final score: 70 points(red)to 90 points(blue)

VIDEO-2023-06-16-09-49-16.mp4

Google Drive file.

As for high climb, my teams logic was: they can’t high climb if they can’t touch the bar. Under the rules if i remember correctly, the robot is only protected from defensive play(i.e pinning and the like) once they have made contact with the elevation bar. Thus, we just parked ourselves underneath the elevation bar to prevent other robots from climbing, and it was a pretty effective strategy.

Thats all from me, thanks for taking the time to read this post!

[meng]

@LiveLaughVex

Thus, double zoning became a pretty prevalent strategy, where one robot(blue alliance) would play defence on the shooter robot(red alliance), and the other robot would push the triballs into the goal zone. This would prevent the other alliance(red) from being able to effectively score, as under defence, it is pretty difficult to consistently matchload, especially for the lower arc shooters such as punchers.

This strategy only really took place once there was an obvious difference in the number of triballs on one side of the field, so there would actually be triballs for the alliance to push into the 5 point goal.

Double-zoning is only worthwhile (for the offensive alliance) if most of the triballs are over at the offensive zone.
So this will only happen if the shooter robot has a much faster rate of shooting than the opponents.

But that’s when a wallbot becomes useful - to stay at the defensive zone and block the offensive double-zoning.

Not saying double-zoning is totally useless. It still can be useful at certain circumstances (eg. taking the opponents by surprise by overloading them, etc).
Definitely one of the possible gameplays, but I would’t call it influential though (i.e. game-changing).

[meng]

Here’s some recordings - SingVEX Tournament 2023 - match recordings for sharing - Blank Robotics

We didn’t setup any livestreaming for this event.
It is a low-cost event that was made possible with the community coming together to get the event up.

[keinag]

Hey, I watched some videos from the tournament and had a question about how you guys went about watching for the one-triball-only rule (SG7). I noticed that some robots pushed triballs into the goal by backing themselves into it. Is this allowed because the surface that the triballs are being pushed by, is flat and not curved?

[meng]

@keinag

Is this allowed because the surface that the triballs are being pushed by, is flat and not curved?

Yup - because it is flat or straight edge.
The definition of possession is about the ability to control the balls, especially when the robot is turning, etc.

For this flat or straight edge, there is no real control of the balls (ie. the triballs still bounced in different directions even when pushed).

So possession of more than 1 triball is not allowed, but robot plowing through is allowed,

[Doubble]

@lemivex

Here’s a video from SingVEX (Tournament). This was before the call for trapping only if the shooting robots were trying to move away from the corner.

I wonder if you can also get the blue robot in trouble for SG6.

Excessive, unnecessary, or unsafe actions while introducing a Match Load may be considered a Violation of and/or at the head Referee’s discretion.

There are some instances( around 0:50) where the blue robot( the blocker) rushes at the red robot(the one loading) when red is loading. I feel like those interactions were unsafe. It is only a matter of time before someone’s hand is in the robot when another robot rams it. Also, it raises the question, “which team is being unsafe?”. Is it red for loading when another robot is ramming it, or is it blue for ramming when red is loading? I think a rule protecting loading robots is needed. Something similar to the protections in place when the robots are climbing. Another option is using the Q&A to say those protections exist under SG6 already.

[meng]

@Doubble
Apart from looking at robot designs, that’s another reason why super-duper early Singvex is of such high interest - we practically help GDC to test out the game rules.

As mentioned in my OP, it is so early in the season that even the rules are not finalised yet. So you are right, now is good time to put your questions into the official q&a.

My personal take is this - this is not the 1st game that we have match load, and we have never see this as a safety issue.

[9MotorGang]

@Doubble

Also, it raises the question, “which team is being unsafe?”. Is it red for loading when another robot is ramming it, or is it blue for ramming when red is loading?

I would rule that blue would be violating the rules here. The red robot is playing offensively while the blue robot is playing defensively.

[Harik_Sodhi]

I had a look at some of the games (take the 4th one for example) and the rule SG3 wasnt really used. Triballs regularly ended on the goal and were not retrieved. Am I missing something?

[meng]

Think most likely 2 reasons:

1. it was very early of the season, teams were still slowly figuring out the gameplay. Many teams were caught by surprise that quite a number of balls ended up on the goal and they had no idea how to deal with it.

2. many teams were struggling with shooting off those existing match load (it was not easy when there was an opponent disrupting the shooting). Hence there was not much opportunity to retrieve the balls to use as matchload.

[antopod85]

Hi,
May I know how you could have signed up? My school club had 0 clue on the existence of the event until we saw instagram posts of it. Our Teacher in charge also did not know of the existence of the event. Is there something we are missing lol?

[meng]

Hi…

Can I know which school are you from?
I will get the event partners to link up with your school.

The early June event was actually very very early for most schools. Hence there wasn’t a proper email invite to schools.

Heads up for you - there is currently one event on 24 Jul (under World Skills ASEAN) at Suntec and most likely another on 5 Sept.

[antopod85]

I am from NUS High (8062) thanks alot, sorry for all the trouble

[meng]

@antopod85

sorry for all the trouble

No trouble at all. It is always the more the merrier.

Actually we did asked the EP to approach NUSH. Think it is either the EP or your teacher that felt that it was too early in the season.

But anyway, let’s start aming for the Sept event

[meng]

@meng

let’s start aming for the Sept event

@antopod85 - It is confirmed - 8059 will be hosting the September event - Singapore VRC Championship. It will be free to register (currently now hunting for sponsor for pizza lunch )
We should be seeing some new schools/teams joining us for the event as well. So let’s make a big bash in welcoming the newbies joining us

Please mark it into your calendar - 5th September 2023.
We will be forwarding the registration link to your teacher some time next week.

[ED246810]

Hey, I used to compete in VEX Robotics and I have a passion for photography. I was wondering if I am able to help out as a photographer. I don’t mind letting teams, organiser to use the photos taken.

Do let me know.

Thanks !