Destination: Deep Space thoughts

NOTE: This blog post was written by Andrew, a Pearadox mentor.

What a weekend! We had 4 teams attend kickoff with Pearadox at Turner High School for our annual Pear Up! event. We do this because we hope that we can share our experience with analyzing a game with teams that may have a lot of new team members or rookies, or are looking to strengthen the start to their season. We also had people from the IEEE Galveston bay Section Women in Engineering group, someone speak about the Rodeo Scholarship and the High School Aerospace Scholars, and someone talk about their day job of designing space suits!

Some initial thoughts after we spent all day Saturday reading the rules and discussing robot tasks and strategy, and much of Sunday doing the same + building field:

• Scores will be pretty low compared to past years (absolute max score is 154).
  • We estimate seeing playoff scores range roughly 55-85 at district events and 80-120 at the district championship. It'll be interesting to come back and see how far off we were!
• We think the way to win will be to have an alliance that can do as many Hatch Panels (HPLs) and Cargo ( C) as possible
  • There are 12 total bays available at the lowest level. With HPLs being worth 2 points and C worth 3, that's 60 points available by focusing at the lowest level.
• Beyond winning, to get the extra ranking point, teams have to either complete a Rocket or get 15 points in the Habitat Zone
  • To complete a rocket by yourself, you need to be able to do a total of 12 cycles (6 HPL and 6 C).
  • You can't get 15 points by yourself, but you can get 12 by getting to level 3 so that only 1 partner has to get on the ramp, and another could keep scoring
  • If you have 2 robots that can get to level 2, then with all 3 robots you can get the RP. This means that no one can keep scoring HPLS and C though.
• The new sandstorm mode is interesting
  • We think some teams will feel good about just slapping a camera on and thinking you can complete a task. Driving with only a First Person View will be hard! Do you have last years robot? Your driver could start practicing now!
  • Up to 5 HPLs could be scored during the sandstorm period
    • This is unlikely for most matches - getting two hatch panels requires you to do something like score a pre-loaded one in 3 seconds, then you have 6 seconds to go grab the next one from the loading station, and 6 seconds to go score it.
    • While there's no explicit auton "bonus" or "multiplier", every hatch panel scored essentially gives you 3 free points from the preloaded C
    • If you put NULL Hatch Panels on, you potentially limit your max score
      • This is especially true if you can only do the low level Hatches, or your alliance can only do low level HPLs and C
    • If you don't put NULL Hatch panel on, you potentially have between 3 and 8 Cargo rolling around your half of the field on the floor
    • We currently think it's more likely that teams opt to allow C to clutter the field vs limit the points available from HPLs, except in the cases where more of the alliance is better at C than HPLs. This may not be the best decision for teams to make however
      • Smart play actually requires you to estimate how many HPLs and C your alliance can score - you want to optimize to score cargo more than optimize to scote HPLs to get more points/cycle. Stated another way - unless all three teams can only do low level, and all three teams are confident they can combine for more than all 12 cargo and and 6 hatch panels by match end - NULL hatch panels may be the way to go. 
• We came up with a skill-tree for the robot on Saturday. I have expanded on it below. Where are you going to be spending your resources at? 

1. Kitbot: +6 points to drive off L2, +3 points to drive up L1
   
2. LLC: if all 6 NULL HPLs are populated, you can still score 6 C. If you or an alliance member can do LL HPLs on the rocket, an extra 4 C become score-able
3. HLC: if you or an alliance member can not score HPL high, you contribute nothing more than the LLC. If someone can, up to 8 more cargo bays become available to you
4. LLHPL: If no NULL HPLs are placed and you require the bumper recess, you can only score 8 HPLs. If you can do the rocket, an additional 4 HPLs are available to you. If you can score two hatch panels in sandstorm – you get 6 points for the Cargo
5. HLHPLs: If someone else is able to focus on LLHPLs, 8 additional HPLs are available for you to score
6. If you are a rampbot only – if you are unable to convince an alliance member that they can safely climb up your ramp you contribute nothing more than a kitbot. If you can only help 1 robot get to L3, you only add 9 points. If you can manage to help one team get to level 3 and one to level 2, you can add 12 points compared to all three being on the ramp
7. If you can only climb, you either add 3 points (level 2) or 9 points (level 3) compared to just getting to the ramp. You are more likely to get at least 1 ranking point, but if you only climb, you are depending on alliance members to win the match for you

It was also awesome to have alumni out. Some of our students are writing a blog about the actual kickoff event - but I just wanted to share how rewarding it is as a mentor to see our alumni come back for kickoff to help out. They cut a lot of lumber for us and gave us a huge leg up. Also using our new CNC router and track saw helped a ton too! We've already got a rocket and Levels 2 and 3 built!