We just had the first live event in the New Hampshire/Vermont region since our state championship on February 15th 2020. The MCC Robotics VRC Kickoff was held at Manchester Community College in Manchester New Hampshire on October 30, 2021.
First impressions are - this is going to be a great game to watch! It is very exciting and has a lot of interaction between the robots. However, experienced competitors are far and few between. After the drivers meeting when the head referee finished going over the game, none of the competitors went to get their robots. The head referee had to tell them - “you need to go get your robots and if you are in match one or two put them on the field.” Then there were at least two rounds of matches for each competitor coming to the field before the hook-up to the field control system began to flow seamlessly. You expect some of this at the first competition of the season, but as event partner Dan Larochelle said, “This is a total reboot of the VEX Robotics Competition”.
As a beginning of the season’s strategy, the top teams focused exclusively on the Mobile Goals. Robots which could handle two goals at a time and robots with conveyor systems picking up rings off the floor and feeding them onto a mobile goal they had picked up are very effective. The conveyor belt robots seemed to have an additional advantage because they could clear out rings in front of them as they crossed the field making it easier for them to travel.
My surprise came with how effective a robot with a simple arm was - as long as it was stable enough to lift the goal up onto the platform. As an entry robot, the Moby Hero robot did all right. However, I saw a simple BaseBot push around goals almost as effectively.
As the season progresses, my hope is that the top teams will show some of the rookie teams that with just a couple of blocks in VEXcode V5, they can score a ring in a goal during autonomous. I did not see an extra win point awarded during any of the qualification matches.
I can’t wait to see how the game play evolves. My biggest question is, did the Game Design Committee make the high branches on the center goal too challenging or as the season progresses will teams start reaching up there to score. My thought is, having 40 or 50 points scored on the high branches could really make a difference! But there again, I certainly have been wrong before at this point in the season!
Here is a video of the final match and some pictures.
