Minibot Strategy & Etiquette

[Rob]

Hello CD,

I'm coaching again this year for the first time in 10 years. One thing I noticed is that teams really want to use what they built when they play on the field. At our week 1 regional we had a slow, but reliable mini bot. We noticed that when strategizing before our matches we always had a big discussion about who would get to use the 2 mini bot towers at the end of the match.

I'm wondering what the proper etiquette is for determining who gets to deploy at the end of the match. Obviously teams want to show what they can do, but also need to balance this with doing the best thing in a match.

I know that we wil have a strong deployment & minibot combo in Saint Louis, but I don't want to take opportunities away from our partners when planning how we play matches.

When you are presented with 3 teams who want to deploy but only 2 towers to deploy on, how have you resloved it? I would love to hear your philospophies and stories related to this.

I am really looking forward to Championship this year. Can't wait to see you all in Saint Louis! Hopefully we will ge the chance to use our mini bot revision 2!

Rob

[Billfred]

We haven't run into this issue--our deployment system didn't exist at Peachtree and had issues at Palmetto--but my method for handling this is simple:

Step 1: Pick the team with the worse success record.
Step 2: Center on the same tower as them before the endgame.
Step 3: If they encounter an issue, you're right there to deploy yours.

Done.

[cziggy343]

One potential strategy could be to keep back the best tube scorer to continue scoring on the tubes while the other two go to score the minibots.

[Norman J]

I would say let the two fastest minibots go up if that's what you think gives you the best chance to take the match. When you're on the field competing, you play to win.

That said, I realize it would be difficult for a team who wasn't able to showcase their capabilities because of their alliance partners. However, if your minibot is reliable, chances are you will have other matches in which you are the stronger minibot and the best strategy is to have you take a pole. I know that our scouting at least distinguishes between "Did not attempt to deploy" and "Did not deploy because partners both had minibots". With 10 matches, you will get a chance to show what you can do, and any good teams will be watching.

[Rob]

It is really interesting. We last played in week 1 where we had a 5 second relaible mini bot. We will go to Saint Louis with a 1.1 second relaible mini bot. The issue is that no one has seen it!

I really want to both do the best for our alliance and do the best for my team. Maybe the key for us will be that some of our partners will be better at tube scoring than us. Maybe it will just make the most sense for them to keep scoring while we launch MB V2 up the pole.

Either way, we are very excited to play with the best teams in FIRST! Less than one week until we get to play with the awesome teams in Archimedes!

Rob

[The Lucas]

It also depends what you are facing. There are a few cases I would allow a slower mini to deploy over a faster one on my alliance.

1. If you know your opponents dont have minibots (unlikely at CMP) then I would have the best tube scorer (probably has a fast minibot) should continue scoring tubes and the other two put up minibots (possibly has a slower minibots).

2. If it is a blowout where minibots don't make the difference, send the slower minibots and possibly let opponent minbots (if any) win for better RS.

3. Opponents have supper fast minibots and it will be a race for 4th no matter which which of the 2 remaining minibots on your alliance that you send. If you don't have any minibots that are competitive with your opponents, it doesn't matter how fast each individual minibot is at all.

I know we have used #2 at Philly. We stayed out (fast and reliable minibot) so another team could successfully deploy the first time that match (they were pretty fast too :D ).

[ToddF]

All three robots go for the towers. At least one will get slowed down by a defender. The first two robots to the towers have priority. One of the towers will have a primary and a backup minibot. The primary bot launches their minibot and gets out of the way. If there is a problem with deployment, or if the tower doesn't trigger, the backup robot launches their minibot.

Though I expect the robots at the finals to be a class above those at the regionals, I'll bet there will still be plenty of deployment problems and non-triggering towers.

Hopefully, the backup robot doesn't damage the primary robot's minibot. But, hey, that's why we all have spare minibots, right? I'd say winning the match is worth damaging a minibot. And if your minibot works properly, it won't be at risk.

[Kevin Sevcik]

All three robots go for the towers. At least one will get slowed down by a defender. The first two robots to the towers have priority. One of the towers will have a primary and a backup minibot. The primary bot launches their minibot and gets out of the way. If there is a problem with deployment, or if the tower doesn't trigger, the backup robot launches their minibot.

Though I expect the robots at the finals to be a class above those at the regionals, I'll bet there will still be plenty of deployment problems and non-triggering towers.

Hopefully, the backup robot doesn't damage the primary robot's minibot. But, hey, that's why we all have spare minibots, right? I'd say winning the match is worth damaging a minibot. And if your minibot works properly, it won't be at risk.This can work for deployment systems that don't need alignment before deploying, but there's going to be a fair number of systems that align first, then fire the minibot at 10 seconds. I'm doubting there's many combinations where both systems can be aligned.

I haven't coached this year (yet), but the alliance needs to be clear on whether it wants to win, or to show off for individual teams. Ultimately, you can't force a team to do anything, so everyone needs to be working towards the same goal. Once everyone's on the same page, then you can decide what combination of minibots reaches that goal.

So I'm basically with Lucas, with the addition that the alliance needs to agree on which of those options it wants to pursue.

[jamie_1930]

When I was deciding this with our alliances before matches 90 percent of the time it came down to who had the most reliable mini-bot. If there is tie breaker that needs to be made it would come down to speed, but that never happened to me. However for the other 10 percent I had a soft spot for teams trying to prove themselves and I would sometimes take out our minibot so that someone else could show theirs off, be careful with this though because you should only do this when you are certain you'll win a match. I hope this helps a little, just remember that more often than not reliability is what matters. Just because a team says their bot can make it up in .001 seconds doesn't mean it will make it up.

[BrendanB]

We had a few matches with such a predicament. In two of those our opponents were really tough so we knew we had to get 1-2 so I went by who had the fastest inlcluding deployment as well as going by how many times it has gone up or failed. We then would tell the third robot to stay on guard as a backup deploy which was needed a few times with minibots coming loose or robots dying. In situations where we seemed to have an easier win if everything went well I would keep the strongest tube man on the rack for the entire game while the other two were on the poles. I used this also when times were really close and reliability was close too.

It is tedious in some cases but it requires a lot of patience and respect for your partners when figuring out who gets the towers.

[avanboekel]

One potential strategy could be to keep back the best tube scorer to continue scoring on the tubes while the other two go to score the minibots.

I like this strategy. I saw a lot of alliances abandoning a possible completed logo for the minibot race.

[jvriezen]

I'm surprised no one has suggested this scenario:

Your opponent's minibot(s) are faster than yours (or closely matched). Then it might be wise to have your third bot trying to defend the opponent's minibot deployment. This can be done not only by bumping prior to 10 seconds (even if they are at the tower) but also by obscuring their driver's view of the tower so that they may not be able to visually align, or see the tower base lights (if that's is their human based triggering signal.

This will be more useful if it is a high tube scoring game and there aren't many tube points left to be had. MB defense causing 1st and 2nd place winners to be reversed results in a net gain of 20 points. Even if you only fluster the opponent drivers or bot for a fraction of a second, it may be enough to swing 20 points.

[Brandon Holley]

This issue became more prominent as the season went on and minibots became faster and more reliable.

The answer for me and my team was based on scouting. You must understand the capabilities of your partners just as well, if not better than your opponents. Understanding how consistent your entire alliance is will help you greatly to formulate a plan. If you anticipate a close match with good minibots on both sides, you must send your fastest and most reliable. Teams competing at championships must also understand that all teams are there to compete.

It's certainly a very tough discussion to have, particularly for a team just getting their system up and running and trying to show it off to scouts. Hopefully everyone can keep a cool head and realize that part of the competition is making concessions, yet understanding it's still a competition and teams are trying to win!

-Brando

[Ankit S.]

Then it might be wise to have your third bot trying to defend the opponent's minibot deployment. This can be done not only by bumping prior to 10 seconds (even if they are at the tower) but also by obscuring their driver's view of the tower so that they may not be able to visually align, or see the tower base lights (if that's is their human based triggering signal.


As well as that, get in their way if they are not at their tower yet, just getting between them and the tower once is enough to miss the deployment time or allow alliance partners to deploy. It also works with any robot, as you don't need a defensive drive train to get in someones way, although it helps.

[Bjenks548]

It all depends on what your opponents have for minibots. If they have (a) none (b) slower then all 3 (c) close to the top 2 or (d) way faster then all 3
What I would do?
(a/b) two most reliable. If all are extremely reliable leave the best tube scorer off the poles
(c) Gotta send the two fastest, if there is a question of reliability send the 3rd one in as a back up in case one fails
(d) Again send the two fastest, but this time use the third to try to stop their fastest.
Just what I can think of off the top of my head, none of it is full proof but nothing in robotics ever is.

[Wayne TenBrink]

The amount of time required to align with the tower is also a factor. For an alliance with three comparable deploy/climb times, the one with the fastest alignment should be backup. If your backup can't get from where it is and deploy in about 5 seconds, you really don't have a backup.

Also, how much faith do you have in your alliance partners' self-reported minibot times? Personally, I think ours is alright, but I don't have high confidence in the accuracy of our hand-held stopwatch data. We hope to visit 2081's tower so we can report something a bit more objective.

[SamMullen]

Whenever this problem came up in Portland, we just went with whichever two robots had the most reliable deployment mechanisms, regardless of who had faster minibots, because we figured that making sure a minibot scored any points at all was the most important thing.