Godly

We moved to the arena early in the morning, the alarm clock sounding long before 6am. The goal was clear, to get the robot in the best possible shape for the first match, as this is the one that can bring the necessary points for a respectable position. At the end of today, all the results of the qualifying round of the championship finals will be known, and for us it's a now or never situation. We are all aware that this is the first time we have built such an excellent robot, from design to code, and there is no guarantee that such an honor will be repeated more often in the years to come. 

Our diligence and early rising paid off in the first game. The other teams saw our extremely successful 117-point game and decided to repeat the tactic. We took an easy lead after our beautiful automatic phase with the iconic four wickets scored in a cooker hood-like fashion, but it was an uphill struggle to maintain it. For we were up against the best team of the entire qualification so far, and they were grinding their teeth to not only add another win to their collection, but also to break the all-time record of 135 points. So the other robots of our alliance ran in front of the game element dispenser and started throwing them nimbly across the playing area to our robot, which was placed next to a mailbox resembling a gate and one by one started putting the game elements inside. When enough elements had been accumulated, a moment of increased points was activated, where we receive the same number of points for each game element scored as in the initial automatic phase. In this short period of time, we were always able to rebuild our lead over our opponent and move higher and higher in terms of total points. After a few repetitions of this cycle it was time to climb. All the robots climbed at once and it was clear to us competitors that we had achieved an admirable result. After review by the judges, the scoreboard read 150-130. Not only did the opponent come damn close to breaking the previous overall points record, we still won and set a new record at that, a full fifteen points higher. The exuberant celebrations right on the field of play would have been forgiven by even the strictest of onlookers, as we dethroned the leader, and in spectacular style. Our robot Honza scored a full 73 points from this alone, a feat worthy of framing and posting in the workshop upon our return. 

Suddenly everyone knows. We're the ones who gave the 150. We ended the morning with a close loss, but we tuned back into the winning streak in the afternoon, including another 100+ point performance. Unfortunately, the robot was feeling it in its bones and a few things broke on it during the competition. All eight batteries we had with us were drained down to the bare minimum, and we "shredded" the motor and a few bolts to go with it. But that's a small price to pay for those representative performances, and there were some. When we let the performance on the playing field speak for itself, we didn't regret it. Throughout the day, we had members of various teams gathering around our "pit" - the backstage area - with questions or just wanting to chat. We brought our popularity from Minneapolis to the finals, and even some spectators showed their support by chanting the acronym R.U.R. with us before our games. Our undoubtedly well-deserved satisfaction was immortalized right on the robot, which was signed by team members and ceremoniously rechristened Premysl Otakar the Second, King of Iron and Gold. We ended the day in 43rd place out of nearly 80 teams. This is not a bad result at all in the surroundings of the regional champions and we proved that we did not come to put the national flag displayed in the pit to shame.

We may have played our last game of the tournament. Qualification is over and 43rd place is too deep for teams to consider us as possible partners for the knockout stage. But tonight we received new information from the "scouts" who watched all the games and wrote up every point of the tournament. From their final stats, we learned that we had the eighth best automatic phase and the sixteenth best point total of the robots present. If any of the selecting teams had seen these stats, they probably would have at least considered including our robot in their alliance in the spider. We can only pray and hope that tomorrow's draft teams bring us at least one more game before we say goodbye to the 2024 season for the last time.