FIRST Robotics Competition Championship – Day 2 (Thursday)
The first day of Qualification matches were challenging for the Byting Irish, but we will bounce back well and do our best at the World Championship on Friday. Team 7660 ended Thursday with two wins and three losses. All match videos can be seen on thebluealliance.com
Let’s briefly analyze all five games!
Qualification Match #4 (https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2024cur_qm4)
Our team’s defensive strategy could not keep up with the strong opposing alliance, composed of three robots whose collective performance in the autonomous part of the game (the first fifteen seconds) gave a definitive lead for the entire match that was made stronger by the quick cycle times of the opposing alliance’s robots. For reference, one opposing team this match was Team 3847 Spectrum, who have a fairly consistent six-note autonomous, which is very strong and competitive.
Qualification Match #13 (https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2024cur_qm13)
Despite a weaker autonomous, the Red Alliance with Team 7660 won with stronger teleoperated and endgame sections. Defense proved to be more valuable in this match than others, which shows that not every match is consistant in playstyle and thus game strategy must be reevaluated for every match we play.
Qualification Match #36 (https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2024cur_qm36)
Our opponents once again had a stronger collective autonomous (it is Worlds after all). Despite that, our team played very heavy defense for some time, trying to disrupt the opponent’s cycling of game pieces. Because of the strain of the defense on the drive train motors on the robot, the main circuit breaker tripped since it has a thermal threshold. This has been a reoccurring problem for the team that is simply the result of running many motors on one robot (Team 67 HOT team was struggling with the same issue at States which is why we were able to eliminate them). Our robot remained powered off in the middle of the field until the end of the match 🙁
Qualification Match #45 (https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2024cur_qm45)
A near-even autonomous left the teleoperated section of the game to decide who would win, and with our defense, we were able to prevent some of the opposing alliance’s points from being scored, giving us a 16-point lead in teleop. A good endgame allowed a satisfying victory, although the robot accidentally got stuck in the stage by one of the climb arms for the last 30 seconds of the game, but the point different was too high to risk losing regardless.
Qualification Match #56 (https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2024cur_qm56)
A well-played defense by our team as well as strong offense from our alliance members gave us the win for this match. However, since the field had a technical error with one of the amps, the match was immediately replayed, giving no time for maintenance or repairs. In this replay, a crucial CanBUS wire came unplugged, causing our robot to not be able to do anything, which lost us a lead and eventually lost us the match.
Obviously, the results from the first five Qualification matches were not ideal, but that is to be expected with any competition, not even considering that we are competing at the highest level of FIRST Robotics right now, a great privilege in its own right. Continue to keep the team in your prayers and support as we continue Qualification matches until Friday evening and hopefully make it into Playoffs on Saturday.
God bless,
The Captains of 7660