1vs3 What would you do?

[Alex Cormier]

Please try to keep this thread on topic and not wander to the specifics.

Visiting the Greater Toronto Regional for my 4th consecutive year, i witnessed something for the first time ever in all of my years in first.

At the start of Semi 2-1, the blue alliance called a time out. After the time out was extinguished, there was only one team on the field. The red alliance was all ready before the timeout and had all three robots on the field. The ruling from the Head Referee was that the blue alliance could only play the match with the one robot.

So, I come to the community of vast knowledge, opinions, and excellent ideas.

1) What would you do if you were on the alliance with only 1 robot?
2) What would you do if you were on the alliance with all 3 robots?

[Travis Hoffman]

Funny but not appropriate - drive clockwise the entire match. Random pirouettes for effect.

Appropriate but not very entertaining - do what 1503 did - their best.

....and then win the next 2 matches with their alliance at full strength.

As for the full strength alliance - they were obligated to play just as passionately as they would have if they were facing 3 robots. Actually, one might think it's TOUGHER to perform when there's only one bot facing you, because everyone and their uncle EXPECTS you to win the match.

[Lil' Lavery]

1) Do whatever my bot does best, preferably score like a beast (especially in hyrbid). Pray for opposing penalties. Avoid penalties.
2)Play it conservatively, but play my game. Don't commit penalties. Win.

[65_Xero_Huskie]

1.) Show off the skills my robot has (Our would do our full auto, and lap like crazy :) )
2.) Not play defense on the 1 robot and try to score as much as possible as well

[smurfgirl]

1) Do whatever my bot does best, preferably score like a beast (especially in hyrbid). Pray for opposing penalties. Avoid penalties.
2)Play it conservatively, but play my game. Don't commit penalties. Win.

I'd do the same thing; there really isn't much else that you can do in that situation. If I were the single robot, I might show any cool tricks that I could do.

[vivek16]

I would do my best in both situations. It would be cruel and unGP to not give your best if you were the 3 team alliance.

If I was the 1 team alliance, I would pray for opposing penalties, avoid penalties and keep them from getting bonus points.

-Vivek

[Billfred]

In either situation:

Steal the show.

[Herodotus]

1.) Play to the very best of my ability. I think one good tactic would be to grab an alliance trackball, and hurdle like crazy, while randomly knocking around the opposite trackballs to just try to keep them bouncing around as much as possible.

2.) Play to the best of my ability. It is insulting to the other alliance to "take it easy." I know if I were on the handicapped alliance I would rather lose fighting then win through pity.

[lingomaniac88]

If you win a 1 vs. 3 match when you're on the "3" alliance, it's a hollow victory. If you win and you're the "1," it's living proof that God exists.

I wouldn't want to see the "3" alliance ganging up on the "1" in a mocking way. Cruel? Yes. GP? No.

[Uberbots]

If i were in the situation 1503 was in, i wouldn't move my robot at all. Id find an isolated corner and stay there- there are 2 possible matches after this one, so why risk breaking the robot?

[Vikesrock]

If there were any chance to coordinate, an immediate 4 robot e-stop would probably catapult to the top of the list of the most GP things FIRST has ever seen.

Besides that, I would go with what most of the others have said, both alliances have to stick with what they do best. Anything less is unfair to both the spectators and the teams.

[arhajder]

I hate this situation with a passion. Last year it happened to us so many times. Teams feel like there not going to playoffs and decide to quit. I think its Un-Gracious Professionalism on their part. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

[Liz Smith]

I hate this situation with a passion. Last year it happened to us so many times. Teams feel like there not going to playoffs and decide to quit. I think its Un-Gracious Professionalism on their part. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

I think the situation Alex is describing is a bit different than the one you're describing. None of the teams "quit" and ended up hurting their own alliance. In this case it was the elimination rounds and the referees only allowed one team to play on the blue alliance for that particular match. It was due to the rules about timeouts this year and teams being required to be on the field by the end of their timeout. The GP discussion comes in with whether the one team alliance and/or the 3 team alliance should play to their full potential in this particular situation.

[EricH]

Either side--full bore, take-no-prisoners, it-ain't-over-till-the-last-buzzer playing. Any year.

[Alex Cormier]

Alright, with a few ideas down already. I'll give out my thoughts.

If I was on the alliance with only one team, I agree with everyone here. Try my hardest, show off some tricks, and do not get one penalty. Just imagine if this team was a mid ranked team. They would have everyones attention on them, this is good for some teams and bad for others. Hopefully if my team ever have this situation we will not buckle under the pressure. If my team had won, just imagine what those top 8 teams would think? For this game, I would have kept one ball on top (unless the opposing alliance knocked it off), while the robot had a dream day and hurdled as much as possible.

Now, if I was part of the three team alliance, it would be totally different. My first thought was to keep both balls on top and do laps only. Another one would be act like it is an ordinary match and try your hardest and do not change the strategy that was brought to the table before the match. In this case, there was a little time to talk to the other alliance. With it being after a timeout called, I would have watched that clock and watch if the robots were making their way to the field. If the other two robots were not, I would go up to the single team and have a conversation and get their opinions on a few ideas.

[Dordai]

I think a coordinated e-stop between all 4 robots would be the most GP thing to do so that the teams could have a fair match with all 6 bots on the field. It would be cool too if all the drivers went clockwise the whole time and just showed off all the cool things that they could do. Either way it would be a memorable match.

[bduddy]

I think a coordinated e-stop between all 4 robots would be the most GP thing to do so that the teams could have a fair match with all 6 bots on the field. It would be cool too if all the drivers went clockwise the whole time and just showed off all the cool things that they could do. Either way it would be a memorable match.I respectfully disagree-one of the challenges in the game is building a reliable, resilient robot. Professionalism is just as important as graciousness, and it is wholly unprofessional, in my opinion, to not take advantage (in a legal way!) of your opponents failures. Of course you should offer to help them with their problems so you can decide the match on the field, but I think forfeiting goes way too far.

[Karthik]

I respectfully disagree-one of the challenges in the game is building a reliable, resilient robot. Professionalism is just as important as graciousness, and it is wholly unprofessional, in my opinion, to not take advantage (in a legal way!) of your opponents failures. Of course you should offer to help them with their problems so you can decide the match on the field, but I think forfeiting goes way too far.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about professionalism.

Just a comment specific to SF 2.1 GTR. In the situation at GTR, it wasn't a robot failure that kept 247 or 1507 off the field. The field crew and refs determined that they had taken to long to move their robot from queuing to the field (as per the timeout rules), and as such closed the gates. It was a strange situation to say the least. Anyone who was watching, must have seen the confusion on my face while I was introducing the teams and realizing that the match was missing two robots.

[Mr. Lim]

I was just as surprised, being a coach on the other side of the field that we were facing only 1 robot.

I can give a bit of commentary on how things unfolded on our side. For this match 1503 was awarded the "Play of the Day" award from our team, and deservedly so. Despite it being a loss for their alliance, at the conclusion of the match, there was a definite air that the alliance back at full strength would be able to do some serious damage, and they did end up winning the next 2 matches, eliminating us from the GTR.

1503 alone did amazingly well, and my guess is that they showed enough firepower to make the decision for 1507 to pin one of our trackballs for the entirety of the ensuing matches an easy one. 1507 was the most consistent hurdler at the GTR outside of 1114 and 2056. The strategy required scoring support from 1503 and 247, which both were able to provide nicely.

We did make an adjustment on our strategy against a solo 1503. Instead of knocking post-hurdled balls back clockwise as 2505 had been doing all of elims, 2505 focused on lapping instead. There were two pretty good reasons to do this, neither of which involved "going easy on a solo robot." With less hurdles coming over, there'd be less opportunities to knock them back clockwise. Was it worth dedicating 2505 entirely to this strategy? Idle time is wasted time, so probably not. Secondly, we'd broken our robot's "forks" in nearly every match at GTR. In the elims, massive traffic jams were the side-effect 2505's knock-back attempts, making the risk of us breaking even higher. We just wanted to make it out alive and well...

[Vikesrock]

I respectfully disagree-one of the challenges in the game is building a reliable, resilient robot. Professionalism is just as important as graciousness, and it is wholly unprofessional, in my opinion, to not take advantage (in a legal way!) of your opponents failures. Of course you should offer to help them with their problems so you can decide the match on the field, but I think forfeiting goes way too far.

While you were responding to Dordai, I was the first one to mention e-stopping in this thread so I felt I should reply to this and explain my position further. Based on what I read regarding the situation the other two robots were working (or at least well enough to go on the field). I suggested a coordinated, immediate e-stop of all 4 robots that would lead to a 24-24 tie (although a bit of a boring 2:15).

At the MN regional our alliance advanced through the quarterfinals through a match where one opposing robot e-stopped after their drive broke down in hybrid. I felt terrible taking a win this way. Being on the "winning" side in this situation is not a whole lot better than being on the losing side.

An immediate e-stop of all 4 robots in an elim match would give the other two robots a chance to get on the field for the next match (or call in a backup bot if one was still broken) so that the match could be played out, fair and square, with six working robots.

I would never look down on someone who would make a different choice here. As you said, building a reliable robot is part of the competition, and I don't think anyone could be faulted if, presented with the proposal of the e-stop, they chose to play out the match instead.

[artdutra04]

Off the field, helping the other teams should be encouraged. But on the field, this is a competition, especially in the elimination rounds. The point of a competition is to win.

Regardless of which alliance I would be on, I would want to give it my all. I would rather go out in a blaze of glory as the one robot against three, than suffer through mediocrity because the other alliance went "soft" against us.

It's a form of respect. You don't go purposely go soft on your opponents in other sports (this action would be very disrespectful there!) on the field, so it's no different for our [robot] sport.

The better alliance will win, and the losing alliance should just get the "we'll get 'em next time!" mentality as they head back to their shop to brainstorm and make their next competition/robot even better.

(I've never really liked the "We're all winners!" attitude; it runs counter-intuitive to the desire for self-improvement, to want to work even harder to beat everyone else next time. The losing alliance should know they lost, admit it, and use the desire to win to push themselves even further. Although if they changed "winners" to "more experienced and smarter", then I'd have no problems with the phrase.)

[Aren_Hill]

Well being the #1 seeded alliance captain at colorado our first pick 1592 (bionic tigers), Had the bot's RC die in the first match so they swapped it out as fast as they could. Regardless we still won the first match. Then during the swap of cables in the rc swap, their arm ceased functioning, in the second quarter final match we chose to sit them out so they could get fully functional for semi's and final's. So our alliance chose to go 2v3 without using backup bot or timeout. we won 68 to 8

[minirose224]

At the MN regional our alliance advanced through the quarterfinals through a match where one opposing robot e-stopped after their drive broke down in hybrid. I felt terrible taking a win this way. Being on the "winning" side in this situation is not a whole lot better than being on the losing side.

Being on the drive team of team 1816, we had no choice but to e-stop due to a still unknown problem in our wiring. It is unfortunate that we had to go out this way. But regarding the question of the thread, I was wondering if in this situation it would have been legal for the alliance of 3 to use their timeout in order to give the alliance of 1 more time to get back to full strength.

[EricH]

But regarding the question of the thread, I was wondering if in this situation it would have been legal for the alliance of 3 to use their timeout in order to give the alliance of 1 more time to get back to full strength.It would have been a cascading timeout, if I understand the situation correctly. Those are explicitly prohibited.

[jayjaywalker3]

I would definitely suggest my team's drivers to try to convince our alliance mates to try to do something so that other 2 teams would get a chance to come back. This is mainly because i know how it feels to have an alliance shorthanded by an entire robot for the entire match because this happened to my team in the second match of our semifinals. Our robot did not move for the entire match and our alliance only lost by 20 points to the winner of the tournament and some of the highest scorers in the country and our robot was a hurdler too.

[NoahTheBoa]

Either side--full bore, take-no-prisoners, it-ain't-over-till-the-last-buzzer playing. Any year.
Agreed 100% You should always play to your full potential, you never know what can happen.

[Gboehm]

If I were the one robot... I'd say bring it!

[Un Luchador]

I've seen similar situations occur, where two robots break down and it turns out to be 1 vs 3. The whole gracious professionalism ambient maintains that both alliances should try their hardest, whether or not the other is incapable of playing should not keep the opposing alliance from going forward and trying their best.
For our team, if there was any way we could help the opposing alliance by let's say tipping the robot back into position, our pilots would do so.
1) What would you do if you were on the alliance with only 1 robot?
We would get our Coach to try and see if there was anything our pilot could do in order to get the other two robots moving, but keep our robot scoring as much as possible.
2) What would you do if you were on the alliance with all 3 robots?
Try just as hard, except stay away from defensive tactics (knocking their balls down, slowing their robot by moving in front, etc.)

[GaryVoshol]

The short-handed alliance does their best. It gives the team a chance to show their stuff.

The full-strength alliance plays their game. The only concession they make is that since it is probably not necessary, they may be less aggressive. No need to take a chance on hurting your own robot, or even worse the sole survivor on the other team.

Which is precisely what Alliances 1 and 7 did at GLR when ThunderChickens couldn't move in F1 and F3 at GLR. (Although it was 2v3, not 1v3)

[Stephmthompson]

I was just as surprised, being a coach on the other side of the field that we were facing only 1 robot.

1503 alone did amazingly well, and my guess is that they showed enough firepower to make the decision for 1507 to pin one of our trackballs for the entirety of the ensuing matches an easy one. 1507 was the most consistent hurdler at the GTR outside of 1114 and 2056. The strategy required scoring support from 1503 and 247, which both were able to provide nicely.

We did make an adjustment on our strategy against a solo 1503. Instead of knocking post-hurdled balls back clockwise as 2505 had been doing all of elims, 2505 focused on lapping instead. There were two pretty good reasons to do this, neither of which involved "going easy on a solo robot."


As a coach, I think the most difficult matches are the ones that just don't go quite as expected. It is a team's ability to react to different situations well that strengthens their experiences and allows for future sucesses. I saw this as just another opportunity to practice creative thinking and working against the odds. I know my drivers went into this match with a "let's show them what we can do" attitude. We'll always be able to remember the successes of this match in anything else we do.

Thank you to Team 188, 1310 and 2505. If I had been in your shoes, I would have done the same thing and I didn't expect any less of your alliance.

Priority #1 is to secure the win - this is a competition. The next priority for me would have been to execute and practice a strategy that would be used against the full-strength alliance - making sure all our members knew their roles and be able to work out any bugs & co-ordination - how great to be able to get the 3 robots out there and look for any weaknesses in the agreed to plan? And by running this at slightly reduced force, you can also minimize risk for your team going into match 2.

Thank you to team 1507 for selecting us and for soliciting our input. To team 247 for being such excellent partners, both on and off the field. I believe we were a formidible alliance and my only regret is that we didn't get the chance to show off our strategy at full strength.

Of course, congratulations to team 1114, team 2056 and team 2166. Our team has had great experiences with all 3 teams over the past few years. It has always been a pleasure seeing what new ways NiagaraFIRST.org challenges the world of robotics. You'll represent Canada well in Atlanta, and I look forward to being around to experience more of your successes.

Congratulations as well to Team 1547 - your Chairman's Award was well deserved.

Lastly, thank you to the organizers and fans of the GTR. It was a well run event and we look forward to it next year.

[Liz Smith]

For the 1 team alliance, I think they should definitely play to the best of their ability.

If a robot can't make it to the field due to a mechanical failure then I think both alliances should play their hardest.

If the reasoning behind the 1 vs. 3 was that the teams were just late to the field after their timeout rather than being broken and unable to come out, I think the circumstances are different. As the 3-team alliance, I'd be more inclined to discuss, with the other alliance, the possibility of creating a 0-0 tie situation in order to have a more evenly matched elimination round. To me, it would be less satisfying to win the 2/3 when one of the alliances lost a match with only one robot on the field.

[Rick TYler]

For our team, if there was any way we could help the opposing alliance by let's say tipping the robot back into position, our pilots would do so.

I've seen this several times -- once a driver nearly broke their own arm trying to right an opponent. GP at its finest.

A related anecdote from FTC, where the matches are two on two. An alliance had a disqualified robot, so the other robot was going to play 1 on 2. The single robot then got hung up in an almost impossible way on a game piece during autonomous, which meant that the entire teleop period was going to be two on none. I believe the two-working-robot alliance were all rookies. For the first part of the match the two bots worked on scoring while quite a few people were yelling "knock them off," and the poor stranded robot tried to break free. Eventually, one of the 2-robot alliance nudged the single robot off the game piece and the crowd cheered for them. I think the drivers learned something about what GP means in FIRST. It was a great little moment (even if the single robot was my son's team...).

[ajisjesus]

Please try to keep this thread on topic and not wander to the specifics.

1) What would you do if you were on the alliance with only 1 robot?
2) What would you do if you were on the alliance with all 3 robots?

1) Do the best that i could do for my alliance and hope that my alliance could get fixed in time for another match

2) hit the kill button and sit there the whole match... its not fair to steal the show or fight with unfavorable odds.. not to mention that it shows some serious gp to possibly lose a match because the other alliance is pretty much handicapped

[daf]

In either situation... use the EMP. Definately.