Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

[/quote]
I don't even remember what match robot or alliance our air valve was hit in, because it wasn't important, it was no ones fault. We've all been doing this for many year. These things happen. It is not intentional, and I would never even hint that it was.[/quote]

I love battlecry and I agree with you completely. I was just cautioning against making a rush judgement in a "strategy" thread about heavy defense or isolating a ball as intentional/strategic. Read carefully (not your post) and I think you'll see what I'm talking about


There was a robot or team I remember from earlier this season called secret sauce or got sauce or something about sauces (I know I'm making a bit of a fool of myself here but I wanted to remind people about that robot). They posted videos of the full court assists way back in the early weeks and I was amazed at how accurate they could be. I am pretty sure they inbounded and just hucked the ball to their other human player across the truss across the field.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

The team was 900 The Zebracorns. They did full court assisting better than anybody.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

That was us. :) The Secret sauce strategy won us the NC regional and got us the creativity award at Archimedes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjSUAmLFnwY

We even added automatic vision targeting for championships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT2OmzrAhPI

We on team 900 love our sauce .. our competition robot was named Hot Sauce and our practice robot was called Not Sauce.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

This was the only elimination match I missed on Archimedes prior to us getting eliminated. I came back to the stands, saw the score briefly and asked a mentor sitting beside me, "Did they really score 390 points against 2056?" His response was, "Yeah, the ball never really touched the ground. It was very impressive."

I'm surprised there weren't more bots that could preform the role 1918 did.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Wow. I didn't know if I was making things up but I remembered both hot sauce and secret sauce and I'm glad it was right :) congrats on a great season! Lots of ppl can learn from that strategy for remaining offseason events

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

yes.

And yes. This was unpenalized as well...after we were penalized for a similar foul in the same match. I'm still shocked the sidecar and the printer cable were able to be replaced in less than 10 minutes.

Its safe to say one alliance was allowed to play defense, and the other wasn't.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

It's funny you should mention that because both strategies were actually things that 1625 and 2451 had a chance to practice in the weeks leading up to worlds. We were lucky enough to have a fun bunch Illinois teams down to our shop to practice several different strategies including the ones mentioned above. Based off our practice we had a pretty good feeling that these strategies would come into play but to what degree we weren't sure. In Archimedes the giveback strategy was utilized by many teams in the qualification rounds. 27 was rocking that strategy almost exclusively in qualification matches and were extremely successful with it(1010 assist points, 8-2 record, 3rd seed). A similar form of that strategy was also used by the Galileo alliance in the semis on Einstein.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

We also discussed (and had plans to utilize if necessary) a no-movement strategy as well. Both 469 and 2848 had full court HP assist shots; 74, 254, and 2848 both had right-back-to-HP cheeky passes (and 2848 had a giant brake pad making them virtually unmoveable); and 469 and 254 could both load and finish from right in front of the low goal. There were a variety of ways we could have made it work.

It would have been a very risky strategy, though. You are basically giving up on playing defense and betting the other alliance that you can out-execute them. As it turned out, we played a murderer's row of tough alliances in Curie and on Einstein and never had a chance to try it (or 469 catching, for that matter).

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

The all Illinois team practice we got with you guys definitely factored into our push to run what we came to call the "z" in elims on Curie. Scrimmaging with you guys as well as all of the other teams in attendance was definitely time well spent.

Watching your elimination alliance play on Curie I was actually surprised that you guys weren't utilizing a strategy along the lines of what either 1625/2590/1477 or our alliance were running. Given 469's great inbounding and long trussing ability I was fairly certain we were going to see them inbound and truss over to your HP and then see some robot-HP-robot or HP-robot-robot action for the second and third assists. Instead you stuck to the basics, and I can't imagine you're at all disappointed with the results.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I don't know if it was better than anybody. 203 + 25 would give them a run for their money. (Ignoring, of course, consistency.)
Bit of MAR pride here, look at the last cycle for the blue alliance:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014mrcmp_qm47

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Our team had a last minute design so we didn't get to do much refining to make it better, but our strategy seemed to do pretty well for the resources and experience we had. We made a robot that is just under 5', and made it open up the full 20 inches on both side and had a sloped net in it. Needless to say it was great to develop strategies with because we could catch easily providing the 3rd assist, and we could block just about any shooter there was just by being in front of them. While catching wouldn't have been the best strategy on einstien for sure, it was still very useful at our regional and we got picked 8th because of it. It was somewhat surprising how in all of our matches we had pretty much the same strategy and that was a 60 point cycle or us playing defense and alliance members scoring. I can only imagine how much better it would've been if our robot did reboot every 20 seconds!

In all reality though, our robot's design coupled with an outstanding 6 CIM drivetrain could've really been a great defender. We were able to really get inside our opponents heads some matches because we wouldn't let them score any missed auto balls and that would throw of their game.

A strategy I really wish we could've used was in the Arkansas elims, we were on the 8th seed alliance and were going against 16, 3937, and 4500. 4500 was not working right, but 16 and 3937 were still a great offensive power. Our alliance chose to try to out score them by running 60 point cycles. What I wish we had done was spend the first 45 seconds of the match making it extremely difficult for the other alliance to score, getting in their heads and making them get frustrated by playing hard defense, then trying to score as much as possible while still slowing down their alliance. Our robot rebooted early in the match, but towards the end we were able to play a little defense on bomb squad and block a last minute truss.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I'll second this. 203 was a really fun robot to play with at MAR Champs. We ran a similar strategy with them in Quals Match 8 (without catching) and it worked very well. 900 may have a little bit of an edge though because they can make it over to the human player, so they don't need to rely on niche catchers or even just robots that can catch well to not have to sacrifice time and ball control by just launching downfield

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

900 also is taller. Their height and shot trajectory is such that they cannot be blocked.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

1718, 2451, and 573 did the same thing on curie. 573 would inbound and truss, 1718 would pick it up and shoot it across the field to a human player, who would load it into 2451 and they would shoot.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

There were a few that could park in the corner, catch the ball from the HP, and score without moving (254, 469, 2771 for example - 2771 was the only one that I saw really using it). Perhaps we were best suited for it since we were tall and didn't have any parts hanging out that could be exploited to interfere with the shot. This wasn't something we specifically designed our robot to do, but we realized it was a capability early on. We never had many opportunities to try it during the season, and it never worked as well as it did with 51 and 2485 - they were the key that made it work.

It was a very interesting strategy, but it had its problems. The fact that we lost in the semi's is proof that it isn't a game lock strategy. As Jared Russell pointed out, it takes one robot out of the defense role and it requires clean execution. Our HP was the one feeding our bot, and it really took a toll on his nerves. A few missed shots into the bot cost us cycle time we coudn't afford to lose. The fact that we were parked in the corner instead of playing defense made it harder for 51 & 2485 to get the ball to the forward HP & easier for our opponents to run their cycle.

In hindsight, I think it would have been possible for us to take a more active role in the match and still be in the corner when we needed to be. We still have the MARC and the WMRI coming up. Perhaps we will get some chances to try it again!