Week 2 Strategies
 

What are some strategies we've seen effective in week 2 that we missed in week 1?

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Well, triple balancing was a fair bit more common.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

I'd have to agree. Used twice in Portland QF1 to win the match and advance to the semis.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

One that I hope never happens again, which is sabotaging the co-op bridge. Either you participate or you leave it alone.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

We just scored as much as we could in quals and then balanced 1 or 2, whatever was need for the win. At some point, we gave up on coopertition and focused on being a desirable 1st round pick. In eliminations we sent 1 bot to play defense as safely as possible and then balance at the end. We first hit defense in the finals which was pretty effective against our fender bots. We played some 1 on 1 with them so our teammates could score. When it came to balancing, a bot parked near the bridge was really close to preventing us from balancing, but I'm not sure where the line between clean defense and a massive technical foul is. If nothing else, it can induce a panic attack into a drive team when they see no way onto the bridge and 2 bots balancing their bridge.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

By the 8 seed alliance too.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

It just took them to the finals. Stay tuned...

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

That's a really fast triple balance.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

And tied the finals at one match apiece...

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

If you're not already watching: http://www.oregonfirst.org/go/streaming-video/

Match 3 is about to start.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

And that's 6 triple balances, 6 match wins, 1 regional win in Portland for the #8 alliance.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

In a major upset, the number 8 seed plowed through Oregon eliminations by relying almost entirely on the triple balance. Congrats to those 956, 3711, and 360!

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

I have a huge feeling that the teams that thought the three robot balance wont be to much of a factor would have a hard time if they couldn't do it because as shown in oregon shooting hybrid and then triple balancing could win the match, also in the waterford district they shot hybrid shot some teleoperated points and got on the bridge within the last 30 secounds to a final score of 103, Triple balancing is going to be huge for all the rest of the events

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Triple Balancing is HUGE. I think a major factor at alliance selection is going to be triple balancing.

We (68, 226, and 1) scraped off a victory at Waterford in QF 3 Match 2 because team 1's robot died on the other side of the field, keeping the other team (3098, 573, and 3601) from balancing any robots on their bridge.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

While triple balancing is undoubtedly an incredible point getting maneuver, don't over estimate it. In Oregon, 360, 3711, and 956 won partially because 1983 and 2046 missed some of their shots. If they had made just nine more points- only 3 shots- they would have won. Triple balancing is obviously a necessity, but devoting as much time as 3711's team did is probably a bad idea. A last minute rush to triple balance, while riskier, is probably the best strategy.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

We did actually get blocked from our bridge at Gull Lake in our final match. We didn't notice until too late but managed to win with balls. Alliances will have to have a human player or coach to watch out for this block. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZazWS2kl3Ho#t=116s

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

The Coopertition bridge, now more than ever, rewards teams that know how to play the game, leaving in the dust teams who disregard it. However, it rewards teams with mediocre robots that know how to play the game and can take advantage of it. If you take it every match, you can seed quite high and be guaranteed a pick. It also lowers the seeds of good teams that miss it a time or two, making eliminations incredibly exciting to watch because finally, the blue alliance can win. We beat the 3rd alliance at FLR as the 6th, and it was without doubt due to the seeding system. I will write more in depth about impressions for Week 2 Regional tomorrow, when I have more than 12 hours of sleep in the past three days.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Perhaps the best demonstration of this would be at the Chesapeake Regional.

The red alliance won only three times at Chesapeake- the first seed won its first pairing, then lost to the fifth seed, the 7th seed beat the 6th seed, (7th was red because it was the survivor of the 2v7 match, while 6th won the 3v6 match), and the fifth seed finally won overall.

To phrase that in a slightly more readable manner, the blue alliance won slightly more than half the games, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it was because of the new seeding system. Several teams on the top 4 seeded alliances had significantly higher standings because of CP, and were actually weaker than many others in terms of strength.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

From TBA, it looks like the red alliance won/advanced 4 times.
Also, I would say that in some events it was the case that the blue alliances won (Chesapeake, Oregon, WPI) but for other events it seems like the top seeds are winning as normal. Kettering, Hatboro-Horsham, Chestnut Hill, and especially Waterford (All red alliances won/advanced) are examples of this.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

To be fair, they got two robots at the bridge, they just never balanced.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

You might have mistaken how each one of the red alliances won at least one match in the quarter finals, but there were very definitely only three red alliance advances.

In response to your second point, yes, red alliances can still win. In the two regional events that I watched bad scouting and good strategy played as much a role as anything else. But three regional events with major upsets says to me that there is a little more unpredictability in who wins a regional.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Yeah, a team seeded low in the top 8 can, with good scouting and strategy, go on to do very well this year. The game puts more emphasis on overarching strategy than any other I have seen.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Not to correct my esteemed alumni Sam, but considering out of those three matches one of our partners was totally inactive for 1 1/2 of them ( including the first two hybrid periods) and only partial active for 1/2 of the second which means thier contribution to shooting points is unknown, however, they could shoot. also we had the highest score of the event with 72. So we didn't completely rely on triple balancing, but the alliance was built with triple balancing in mind. ( those 3711 folks are pretty smart)
In response to the treads original question. Everyone should be balancing the coopertition bridge. The fluctuations in rankings when only some alliances do it is a bit disconcerting.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Is the ref calling a penalty toward the end of that match?

If so, what for? I didn't see anything illegal by the blue bot...

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Another thing that i didn't like was that penalties were not which was not anounced which makes it hard to weed out the bad drivers in terms of scouting.

another thing that i herd teams were trying was to get teams to throw the matches or told them to not balence the co-op bridge with them when they were aganist the higher seeded teams.
which was not GP.

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

Ultimately there were no penalties called in that match so the ref might have been confused. IIRC

Re: Week 2 Strategies
 

I wasn't going to comment on this... then I thought about it. I see a couple of problems with this statement, particularly the last line.

The first problem I have is that GP doesn't necessarily apply to strategy. Not balancing the coopertition bridge is a potentially viable strategy; throwing a match can be a viable strategy, in the right circumstances. Note that we're not talking match strategy here, but competition strategy.

However, trying to convince another team to do what is best for your team, especially if you're not in the same match, is one of those things that kind of makes you go, "What are they thinking?" If you're in the same match, on the same alliance, and agree on a strategy that benefits one of the teams at the expense of the others, that's one thing. In that case, the alliance agreed to do it in that match. But in any other match, that's another thing entirely. Note that I'm not going to say it isn't GP, especially because it can be context-dependent whether it's even a good strategy. What I am going to say is, sometimes you just need to play the game like it's supposed to be played and not try to game the rankings, and allow everyone else to do the same.

The other issue that I have with this part of the quoted post... well, it's kind of hard to determine what's not GP. There's some discussion of why that is in http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh....php?p=1133905