The most recent competition we went to was a major victory for Gael Force. All 5 of the attending GFR teams made it to the eliminations! A team was in 1st seed while B team was in 7th seed during the qualifiers, showing major improvement. The entire club did extraordinarily well, despite some of the setbacks we encountered. The competition was quite thrilling and lead to an outcome that was unpredicted bu very satisfying.
Due to an issue at the comp, A team was forced to compete in the semifinals without their alliance, and they were able to secure a victory, regardless. The driver practice that Kaushik, A team’s captain, underwent showed very strongly here. Despite the pressure of a 2 vs. 1 match, he was able to keep a level head and made sure that he was logical in his strategy. This practice, paired with his alliance’s (E team’s) training, lead to the A and E alliance securing the Tournament Champions award. This award served as E team’s ticket to States and left many happy.
In addition to the Tournament Champions, Gael Force secured two other awards. C team received the Design Award, likely due to their excellent notebook that has only appeared to grow stronger as time passed. Their robot performed rather well at the competition, too, and the A and E alliance was only barely able to defeat the Z and C alliance. (It was quite the match to watch.) E team was also named Robot Skills Champions. They secured 1st by a margin of just two points, probably due to Nitin’s excellent Driver Skills run. He had gained 64 points in the run, despite the fact he had no warm-up and was forced to run all 3 Skills runs consecutively.
Vanden was proved to be one of the more successful competitions for Gael Force in general. Here, we saw all Gael Force teams make elimination rounds, two Gael Force teams, 5327Z and 5327V, winning tournament champion, qualifying 5327Z for the states competition. Even more impressive was 5327V’s ability to complete a robot skills score total of 130, placing them at number 1 in the state and number 9 in the world at the time of its completion.
By this competition, most teams have built a fine-tuned robot that was capable of reliable stacking as well as scoring on various towers. This made Vanden an especially difficult competition as numerous other Gael Force competitors came as well. Luckily, at this competition, there was always a Gael Force team holding one of the top 3 seeds of the competition, allowing for strategic team-picking for the elimination rounds.
One of the highlights of this competition was the finals match, where 5327Z was allianced with 5327V. However, during the match, 5327Z’s autonomous program somehow broke the drivers program causing the driver, Derek, to have a difficult time driving and scoring during the round. Luckily, their alliance, 5327V, was capable of stacking and towering while 5327Z defended goalzones. In the end, the Gael Force alliance won by a small margin of one (39-38). In the end, 5327V was awarded with three prizes, Robot Skills Champion, Think Award, and Tournament Champion, 5327Z earned Tournament Champion, and 5327C won the Innovates Award.
Bellarmine was a massive competition. Easily the largest one we’ve encountered, yet. Gael Force gained a lot at the comp. Overall, we didn’t perform too well, but, we were able to learn a lot from it. Our relatively poor performance showed us that we were not as good as we’d been at DV, the competition was getting better. We also tested out some new designs at the comp and got to see some really nice robots in action, as well.
Firstly, about our disappointing performance, it was only logical that we would end up this way. After doing great at DV, we got a little overconfident and definetly paid the price here. In addition, a lot of our teams were actually trying different designs at the time. We had recently rebuilt parts of the bot or the entire bot for this competition. The hardware had worked in testing, but the amount of stress placed upon it at this comp proved to be too much for it to handle.
Some people might call this a failure, but Gael Force will always have a positive mindsight. Despite our relatively lackluster performance, we learned more at this competition than we’ve learned the entire season. Seeing a number of different, unique robots showed us that the competition had diversity in robot design, although it was a little hard to see. Small changes in hardware choice, as well as the strategies employed by the teams, were what really caused robots to perform so drastically different. We also saw that our bots had weaknesses in core elements of the design that we had not anticipated. Exposure to these unexpected weaknesses would cause a massive change in bot design for many in GFR. Bellarmine was a harsh learning experience, but a valuable one.
Dougherty Valley High School was the first competition where all six Gael Force Robotics teams came as a whole. Here, many teams utilized early season strategies as most teams other than 5327E and 5327V have not attended any other competition as of yet.
In this competition, most of the Gael Force teams used all-around robots that were capable of scoring in nearly all towers and also had the ability to collect cubes, however, most teams were incapable of stacking larger than six cubes. The qualification rounds went well, even though it was the first time competing for most teams, and all teams made the round of 16.
Unfortunately, none of the teams managed to become the tournament champion, however, 5327V managed to make the finals and also win the Design Award, qualifying them for states. This award is given to those with a high quality design process and notebook. Also, 5327B won the Judges Award, however, did not qualify for states. Nevertheless, the competition taught every team that although towering was important, having high stacks was far more principal, as towering is pointless if there are few cubes in the goal zone. From here, many teams began to rebuild. In the end, the Dougherty Valley Competition was a good learning experience for all.
This Summer was a pretty big time for all of our teams. We’ve been busy at work trying to think ahead to what strategies and designs would be ideal for this competition. There’s more than a few designs at play and a lot of different variables to consider, so here’s a quick rundown.
This game is going to be a lot different from previous ones. It’s extremely likely that high scores will become a regular part of this competition. This means a lot for strategizing as fast-paced games are drastically different from back-and-forth style games. In order to accommodate for this, we need to understand that we must score as many points as we can in as short a period as possible. In order to do this, we must balance effectiveness and speed to a perfect ratio.
Another major question on the minds of many is the importance of towers. It is still unknown whether or not the tower multipliers will become a heavy game element in the future. They might, as they serve as a way to quickly boost scores, but incorporating a lift onto the robot (when most of the other game functions don’t require a lift) might also be a waste of weight. It will be unknown whether or not a lift to score towers will actually be a useful tool to have, yet.
Lastly, the way that people play is going to be a big factor in this competition. The game has a lot of room for both aggressive and defensive styles of play. Should bots be made flexible to be able to manage any type of play, or should they be specialized? How diverse will bot designs and strategies be? What teams will dominate the tournament? All these questions will be answered once the season begins.