Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

Nice little discussion, but we all know one or more of these fields is just going to go brain-dead for alliance selections and someone is going to get a late 3rd robot that's going to take them over the top. Not to mention all of these fields are by default shallow this season, I honestly couldn't tell you how any of this is going to pan out.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

I can tell you exactly how is going to pan out, the winning alliance in each division will have one of the fastest can grabbers if not two of them.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

Doesn't a 1114-148 alliance fulfill that description? (assuming 1114 does what we all expect and bring a fast can grabber).

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

Agreed!

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

1114 would have to have *the* fastest can grabber on the planet to justify this alliance. If they ever run into any team that is faster they will only have 3 cans. If they have a back up bot (cheesecake) which I assume they will, then they could get by without picking another can grabber.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

Willing to bet all eight division winning alliances will include a very fast burglar cheescaked 3rd bot...the question remains, who will have the fastest/most consistent canburglars? And I wonder which winning alliances will have examples of a winning alliance's bot using a top canburglar from another alliance in their division that didn't advance? The ultimate vicarious Einstein experience for some team?

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

After watching 1519, 195, & 2067 destroy the elimination rounds at the New England Championship with an elimination average of 228.43 sometimes only using 3-4 RCs I think some people are making a bigger deal out of the can wars compared to what we will actually see.

Will it be important? Yes.

Do you need the fastest? Maybe not if the rest of your game involves using the other game pieces to their maximum scoring potential.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

the maximum scoring potential with 3 RCs, without upside-down totes, is 240 points.

An average alliance that puts up 5 capped stacks can beat this eveytime, so getting all RCs means victory in finals

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

True but if you can't assemble those stacks all of those RCs are useless. Believe me our alliance of 237, 501, and 3467 made away with 3-4 RCs in autonomous during the quarter finals and semi finals at NEDCMP and didn't put up scores high enough to beat an alliance with only three. Another alliance at NE champs of 88, 125, and 246 had even faster can arms and didn't make it out of the quarter finals.

Not to mention even if you can drop your arms faster than your opponents it doesn't mean they can't grab on before you drive away and snatch them away from you. We saw that a few times when a team who was fast but didn't have a good grip on the cans was beat out because another team who was slower caught on with a more secure mechanism.

On Einstein where all of the teams are high caliber putting up 2-3+ stacks each the RCs are very valuable and we'll know the winner of the match in the first 2 seconds if someone gets more than two off of the step. I will predict that in several divisions the team with the fastest arms won't make it out of the division and it won't be your ticket to Einstein if you walk in with the fastest.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I imagine some teams have thought up solutions to this problem and implemented them by now.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

I predict that team 343 (Metal-In-Motion) will beat team 111 (Wildstang) to finally get revenge for the tote game of 2003!!! Wooo hooo..... of course we will both be 3rd or 4th picks, on an awesome alliance, from our respective divisions. Hey....can't a guy dream and have a little fun??? :)

Good luck to all the teams competing in St. Louis and I really hope everybody has a safe trip there and back home.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

"Picking the fastest burglar" strategy only works through divisions, unless the fastest burglar is in your division. It also depends on whether can wars are deterministic, which at the highest levels may not be so true.

It's interesting that this year, every alliance has a back-up bot to cheesecake throughout division playoffs.

Having two 188pt bots (a robot capable of scoring 188 pts on their own) on an alliance does give you an advantage considering:

- cheesecaking (or any off-the-field improvements)
- the play-off structure
- possible non-deterministic nature of can wars
- blue side advantage

Such an alliance would only need to win two cans to win, and can play with only two robots, or without one of their best robots, and still proceed through division playoffs. If they had blue side advantage, then they would have to play against two burglars who are faster than them in order to lose all four.

Any alliance that plays a final against an alliance that win all four cans and caps 5/6 stacks will lose. On Einstein, besides improving your own mechanisms off-the-field, there's very little you can do.

An 1114/148 alliance, being both great teams and robots, could theoretically cheesecake two incredibly fast burglars, if they need to.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

I'm not sure where you've been for the last 12 weeks but I believe everyone is in agreement on this one. There literally aren't enough game pieces on the field for you to outscore a team that grabs all 7 can from you and make 5 stacks. That's an 84 point differential you have to make up.

It seems to me that you're conceding that you do need to win at least 2 cans to win the match. Winning the can wars doesn't mean getting all 4, it just means not letting your opponents get at least 3. Of course you can beat the other team if you both get 2 cans. The entire point of the chokehold strategy is to not let that happen.

All it takes is two grabbers faster than you and you just lose every match immediately.
This is the entire point of the whole can race debate, the very debate that you were trying to discount at the beginning of your post.

This is what everyone has been making conjectures about, whether these teams will build good enough can grabbers to justify teaming up. All it takes is one robot that's faster than both of them to make that 1st seed think twice about their pick.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

I wasn't discounting the importance of the can wars. If I did, it was unintentional and I retract the statement. I also wanted to build on what was said, not disagree with it.

My point was that if one of 1114 and 148 finish first, they can't pick the fastest can grabber if the fastest can grabber is on Carson or Archimedes or wherever. The strategy of picking the fastest can grabber only works in Division eliminations for 7 out of 8 alliances that make it to Einstein, and then will stop working.

The other point is there might not be one fastest can grabber, ie that the difference between two grabbers might be so minuscule that it would be difficult to predict even after two matches head-to-head.

The third is the strategic advantage of being able to outscore an opponent with two cans each. That puts pressure on the other team to secure (as in prevent the opposition from reaching) three cans, which requires (most likely) two good robots, not one. IE the 1114/148 alliance can put their best burglar against the other team's weaker burglar (with blue side advantage), whereas the other alliance has to match up best to best.

The chokehold strategy is having the two fastest burglars in all 800 teams. My contention is that it might not be the case that an alliance can form such a partnership, and it might be easier to engineer a 3rd/4th robots that can compete with at least one of every other alliance's burglars.

Re: 2015 Champs Predictions
 

Sorry I guess that was a misunderstanding on my part, your post made it sound like 1114 + 148 could beat everyone with only 3 cans.

Now I see where your coming from. And yes, I pretty much agree with your thought process here, there really is only 1 fastest grabber, and it's hard to know who it is until you actually race them.