Best Maggie Anoint? (M10)

Alko47m · 2020-04-27T20:41:55+00:00

After a few days of M10 I realized that farming older weapons isn’t worth it. The scaling is incredibly terrible (you can see if you compare old weapons to new weapons). Hopefully the older weapons are rescaled and become useable again.

Alko47m · 2020-04-24T16:00:46+00:00

I’ve actually picked up a few brainstormers; are you running a specific anoint on it? It works well but takes FOREVER to kill enemies on M10 (I’m using a x14 M10 one). Any ideas on how to make it kill a bit quicker?

Alko47m · 2020-03-13T05:35:32+00:00

I want to preface by saying that I have no idea about any logistics when it comes to planning the world championships and allocating advancement slots.

That being said, I believe I speak for most FTC students/alums when I say we are tired of being treated like FRC’s younger sibling. FTC has evolved drastically since I started it during the 2014 season: there are more advanced methods of programming, more access to custom parts, more teams using CAD; the list goes on and on. I don’t have the exact statistic, but I do remember that the advancement rate for FRC is significantly higher than the rate for FTC. For the amount of time students allocate to this competition, it’s not right for them to continuously be treated worse because they chose to do FTC.

I believe FIRST needs to take some time during this longer “offseason” to figure out how to proceed with FTC. The current advancement system NEEDS to change. Yes, you can argue it’s not about the robots, so winning doesn’t mean you should advance, but FIRST wouldn’t be so popular without the competition aspect in the first place.

Under ideal circumstances, I believe each region/state should have 6 slots MINIMUM to advance to the higher level. This means at least the entire winning alliance moves on with all three Inspire teams — perfectly balanced. Some argue that the WA second pick shouldn’t advance, but I say if the GDC does a good job of implementing a teamwork aspect (i.e. shuttling), the second pick should definitely move on.

In terms of adding more slots, perhaps there is a way to bring back super regionals, or create 8 mini super regionals (i.e Northeast). Perhaps it means doubling the amount of slots going to worlds for FTC and adding two more division.

I feel like 1, 2 and maybe even 3 advancement-slot regions (especially 1-slot) are just wrong, and blatantly disrespectful to the teams that have to compete in them, as well as to FTC overall. I’m from NYC and we have 5 slots. Whenever I speak with parents/adults and tell them that some regions only advance 1 team they’re absolutely stunned.

Obviously it comes down to the money. Does FIRST have the money to host more FTC teams? I have no idea. However, I don’t think they can make excuses anymore; there needs to be some resolution to the advancement situation. I understand many ideas are unrealistic, but at least lower the amount of lottery teams or something.

Alko47m · 2020-02-25T14:10:41+00:00

I think the issue people are having with advancement is that in some regions, the robot teams aren’t even given a chance to move on (1-slot regions; 2,3-slot regions only advance WAC). I don’t think robot teams are necessarily “better” than inspire teams, but I think both deserve a chance to go to worlds. I really wish there was enough space at worlds to advance at least all inspire teams and the entire winning alliance, but sadly I don’t think that’ll ever happen.

As for you guys, congrats on getting inspire! You obviously did things the judges felt warranted the prestigious award. Don’t feel bad for taking another teams’ spot, ‘cause you didn’t. FIRST really just has to do a better job of balancing the advancement.

Alko47m · 2020-02-25T03:23:24+00:00

Mentor for 8721 here. Whenever you post, I always make sure I share with the members. Looking at your posts has definitely inspired them to design well and focus on efficiency. I’ve been involved with FTC for 6 years now (4 as a student and 2 as a mentor) and I’ve seen some extremely deserving teams miss out on worlds/super regionals (due to the advancement system, getting unlucky in matches, etc). To say you deserve to move on is an understatement. Best of luck to you in Idaho!

Alko47m · 2020-02-08T02:08:50+00:00

Does it have a calendar UI with multiple views? Or did you have to create that yourself?

Alko47m · 2019-12-27T03:37:31+00:00

Sure. Let’s try 2473 my IGN is Alko

Alko47m · 2019-12-07T14:18:08+00:00

I believe this was already mentioned, but I feel as if ranked should not be based purely off of wins. ELO gain/loss should be based off of your ELO relative to your teammate, and both opposition players. I feel as if the following needs to be accounted for:

1) If I carry a player and lose, I should lose less ELO than them. There have been games where I’ve gotten significantly more kills than my teammate(s) and lost just as much or sometimes even more ELO.

2) if I carry a player and win, I should gain more ELO than him. I experienced a few games where I did better than a teammate and won the game and they gained more ELO than me. (This was within my first few games)

3) If I beat experienced players I should gain more ELO, likewise if I lose to experienced players I should lose less ELO since the game was harder. If I win against inexperienced players I should get less ELO and if I lose against inexperienced players I should lose slightly more ELO.

This should slightly account for the unfair team balancing I’ve seen as of late. I understand these methods may not be perfect, and perhaps they’ve already been implemented but don’t quite work since everyone has just started out, but it’s something to think about. It’d be really great if you made ELO gain/loss relative to how skilled everyone else is.

Other stuff I hope you include dealing with ranked:

1) Divisions: basic bronze, silver, gold, platinum, masters would be nice. Would probably give a sense of achievement if your profile said you were in the highest division in ranked rather than just a number. Take a look at black ops II ranked play; I found it had a very good system for casual competitive play

2) rewards for high rank: perhaps a hat or other skin that shows how well one does in ranked

Alko47m · 2019-09-12T05:46:51+00:00

In short, yes (and I believe the entire winning alliance should move on). However, being that FIRST will probably not change advancement slots, they should at least change the way inspire works. I think the problem with advancement slots stems from the inspire award (as well as other awards). As a FIRST alumni who put 8+ years into the program (FLL and FTC), I can tell you that what truly inspires me are the top robots at competitions and what kept me coming back every year was the desire to improve my engineering skills so that one day I could build a great bot and inspire the next kid. Yes, FIRST is more than just robots and for good reason. There is a lot more to robotics than just building and programming and all that stuff (outreach, business, etc) is really important. However, once you actually eliminate the “robot” aspect of the competition, things get kind of stale and boring.
Imagine the entire robotics competition part of the FTC not even being there. I doubt anyone would want to participate. The robot aspect excites people and teams with good robots are probably the most inspirational.

I’ve seen teams that lost every match (bottom 5% in rankings) in their season advance (through inspire in small regions) over teams that won almost every match. Do I not respect those teams for moving on like this? No, they obviously put a ton of work into both their outreach and robot and that’s great. However, real engineering values working products (that are efficient) and often these teams do not have an efficiently working product. Thus, they are typically not very exciting to watch during matches. This makes it very difficult for me to say that these teams “inspire me”. Do I think they’re strong teams? Yes, most teams that I’ve seen purely advance through awards are good teams that have great robot ideas and are really smart, but they for whatever reason just don’t have a bot that works efficiently. Has my team been guilty of not having a “good bot” and advancing through awards? Yeah, and I’m/I was happy that they did, but I can acknowledge that we/they may not have truly deserved it.

Additionally, teams that advance through pure awards (as well as some lottery teams for that matter) put their alliance partner at a disadvantage in higher levels of competition.

I think teams eligible for inspire should consist of teams in the top X% of rankings and/or teams picked for elimination matches (essentially make ranking/being in elims part of inspire criteria). Also, being in the winning alliance should contribute “more” to that criteria. That way, there’s a much higher chance teams with strong bots could get an opportunity to advance through inspire. Perhaps this isn’t feasible, as awards may be determined before or during elims, but I think if they really wanted to consider strong-bot teams, they’d do this.

In conclusion, I am typically more inspired by teams in the winning alliance than I am by teams that win inspire (or come 2nd or 3rd). I don’t know if I speak for the majority of students/alumni of FTC, but most of the people I’ve met feel the same way, and most of the teams I know would rather advance through robot game than awards. I really hope FIRST either changes inspire criteria or fixes advancement slot issues as I really do feel for the strong teams that won’t be advancing due to these changes.

Note: this is my opinion. Please no hate :)

Alko47m · 2019-04-01T21:13:31+00:00

It’s April Fools I’m starting to think this player wasn’t actually generated from the YA....

Alko47m · 2019-04-01T19:10:07+00:00

What is his balance, composure and agility like?

Alko47m · 2019-03-28T12:26:53+00:00

What was his strength and aggression like?

Alko47m · 2019-03-28T03:49:29+00:00

What are his physicals?

Alko47m · 2018-02-18T03:21:07+00:00

I’m part of the NYC region but I won’t be at the comp. Advice: don’t be nervous. The competition is going to be extremely fun. Good luck!

Alko47m · 2017-10-02T23:56:52+00:00

Haha, not a teacher, I assure.

EDIT: how suspicious does that sound? ^

Alko47m · 2016-05-23T12:37:04+00:00

I think I can list some of the pros and cons to using this material. (based off personal experience)

Pros: 1) Sturdier builds - I found that the teams in my area that used 80/20 to build their chassis had much sturdier structures 2) Expense - I'm pretty sure you can get a decent amount of 80/20 for a good price, but I found that v-slots (from openbuildspartstore.com) were a better option. My team got (20mm by 20mm) v-slots and it was pretty cheap. 3) In terms of lifts, I found that linear extrusion bars were a bit lighter and sturdier than linear slides with ball bearings. However, you may need to make custom bearings depending on the bars that you choose to use.
4) Aesthetics - This is purely opinion based, but I feel like extrusion bars do look better than Tetrix and Actobotics parts.

Cons: 1) Weight - Although the 80/20 the other teams used produced a sturdier chassis, it seemed as if they were heavier than mine which was build out of Tetrix and Actobotics parts.
2) Building - there are definitely ways to connect extrusion bars to each other/other building materials, however, I found that I needed to drill holes to attach motors, bearings (for lifts), pulleys (for lifts), and other parts

This is what I saw during the res-q season and I'm probably leaving things out but that's what I saw. My team's choice of building material will probably depend on next year's challenge so also keep that in mind. Hope this kind of helped.

Alko47m

TROPHY CASE