Our team competed at East Bay Regional, a week six comp with 12 pre-qualified teams, including 254 Cheesy Poofs, 1678 Citrus Circuits, 5940 BREAD, 581 Blazing Bulldogs, 114 Eaglestrike, and more. In the days before, the team worked hard to maximize every ounce of ability our robot offered.
After swapping the intake and several other hardware revisions, our software team was hard at work perfecting distance shooting. The Monday before competition, our robot, Vivace, shot consistently from the podium, scoring fifty times in a row. We then tuned our auto routines, focusing on our 5-piece and 3-piece routines. After running through them consistently, the team packed up and was ready to go.
During Friday’s practice sessions, we achieved many successful runs of our 5-piece, and used the 3-piece consistently-save for a mishap with placement. We maximized the potential of our drivetrain by increasing the current draw, which dramatically increased our speed. Shooting from distance worked well. Although one of the intake rollers broke, and a polycarb side piece cracked on the shooter, our pit crew swapped them out efficiently. By the end of the day, we were ready for qualification matches.
On Saturday, we truly saw our hard work paying off, doing extremely well in qualifications. The only major issues we encountered were with the autonomous routines. The 5-piece routine was consistently late on shooting, and the 3-piece routine would hit the stage. After trying many possibilities to discover the issue, we called over four amazing teams, including 254 Cheesy Poofs and 841 BioMechs, who experienced similar issues. They provided great insight into the issue, and we felt confident going into Sunday that we would identify and remedy it.
On Sunday, we discovered that disabling Vision for the first 8 seconds fixed the routines. The 5-piece began running consistently, and we managed to climb up to 8th place during qualifications, with our driver’s great cycle times and a working autonomous routine. During alliance selection, we became 5th alliance captain, and invited 841, BioMechs, and 6418, Missfits, as our alliance partners. The playoff matches were exciting, where we nearly beat alliance one, consisting of 254 and 1678, staying ahead for most of the match by utilizing a sabotage path to interfere with their routine. Our last match, against alliance 4 in the lower bracket, was a near victory for the second time but unfortunately our Regional journey, and this journey of a season, ended there.
EBR was an exciting competition for us, as competitive as a World Championship division, where we faced top-ranked teams. Although we were nearly two matches away from Houston, our team is proud of our season’s accomplishments and are looking forward to seeing how we will develop in the following year.
