Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

As seen here: https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.n...Updates/21.pdf

How does this affect how low-goal robots will seed in subdivisions?

Is the change significant enough to effect subdivision playoffs?

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Obviously we'll find out. I think low goal robots will now seed higher than they would have previously, but I'll still take the high goal shooters over the low goal scorers for the simple reason that a team can win a match in quals without getting a capture, especially if their opponent only scores low goals. 4 high goals = 10 low goals, so I think most low goaling teams will be susceptible to a decent-to-good high goal shooter, costing wins and subsequent ranking position.

I seriously doubt it will significantly impact subdivision playoffs, other than possibly emphasizing the scoring capability of third/fourth robots. All/most alliances will still be able to get a capture as before.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I think it should have gone to 12.

Divisible by 2,3,4, & 6. Look at your fingers.
I love the metric system, but we're in 'Murica. :)

Nonetheless, 10 is better than 8.

Can't wait for the first FMS burp that doesn't incorporate this change.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

It is very interesting that they have made this change. I like that it will increase the curve separating the good robots from the bad, but getting 10 boulders in the tower is relatively easy with the level of offense this year presents. I believe that this will affect mid range shooter quite significantly though because with a low health tower teams will be more convinced to play more aggressive defense to prevent captures in elims. I like this change and am looking forward to see how it plays out on the field.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Low goal bots will definitely be a bit more viable, since some high goal shooters (ourselves included) take a bit of time per cycle to line up the shot and require more constant defense.

Speaking of defense, a good defender is now that much more valuable.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

What I find interesting is the addition to G41 in the Blue Box.

Do I smell a new strategy to slow down Breaching coming?

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

How would you use that to make a new strategy?

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Put a boulder in the other alliance's outerworks. It forces the other alliance to clear the boulder before crossing, or cross without a boulder, and hope the boulder follows the robot.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

You're gaming that wrong. This will improve the ranking of fast low-goalers vs. slow high goalers, though it might not get them PAST the slow high goalers.

Assume scoring stays exactly the same after this strength increase. Win-loss RPs stay the same. Say the high-goal alliance scores 8 boulders, but low-goal is faster with 10. With 8 strength, HG gets 4 RP, LG gets 2. With 10 strength, HG gets 3 RP, LG gets 2. LG is 1 RP closer to HG with the added strength.

Basically, this shifts rankings towards goal scoring of any sort, high or low. Faster goal scoring alliances will rank higher. Of course it also puts an emphasis on defense, since the margin for error for a Capture is going to be 2 boulders smaller.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Assumedly this would be a G11 infraction.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

We can shoot 6 high in a game if not being defended.

If being defended, we can shoot low.

We are working on shooting from the Outerworks if the defender is not tall.

A fast defender still messes up low goal shooting (keeps us from getting to the low goal).

A defender can only really block one robot. So two robots that can shoot high and low will still allow one robot to shoot high while the other occupies the defender.

Cycle time, absent a defender, is about the same for high/low. The extra travel time (distance) for low goal shooting is about what we need to shoot the high goal.

With 2 shooting and 1 defending, we would be marginal on getting to 10 against a team that defends. We would probably have 2 shooting and 1 defending, and in the last minute, if close, pull the defending robot to shoot an extra boulder or two (3 on 1).

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I'd say depends on the defense. If you're playing man-to-man, then yes, you can only block one robot. But given that a vast majority of robots that shoot from the outerworks have a largely unblockable shot, I expect that the more typical defense is going to be a zone defense where you generally delay cycles rather than straight up block shots.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

There are 142 robots attending championships who can consistently score 4 or more boulders per match.* With the tower strength at 8, that would mean that there would probably be enough pairings for all 64 playoff alliances to reliably get enough boulders for captures with just two robots, freeing up the third to do something else.

There are only 61 robots attending championships who have proven they can consistently score 5 boulders or more per match though. This means that, given the tower strength of 10, only the top ~3 alliances in each division will be able to reliably get enough boulders for captures with just two robots. The lower seeded alliances now have to think very carefully about what their last partner should do, because they will likely be unable to capture consistently without extra support. Defense also has a much higher potential to dramatically swing scores now.

*http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3248

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

This change definitely increases the value of defensive robots. Preventing a capture is much more doable during quals. Defensive robots will force mid-teir shooters to think carefully about shooting high and potentially missing out on a capture.

I don't believe this reduces the value of defenders during alliance selections because 2 elite offensive robots should have no trouble weakening the tower on their own. An interesting impact that this could have is with the lower ranked alliances. I could see the need for a 3rd offensive robot to get the capture especially if the top alliances are running with 1 dedicated defender.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Einstein will be like the OK Corral at high noon. Better bring a pair of 6 shooters if you expect to survive.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Ok I honestly don't think that this will make a huge difference in score, especially in matches with high tier teams (which will be quite often as it is world's). I say this because from what I've seen, at least at many competitions nationwide, a -2 or lower tower strength is not entirely uncommon. When it comes to low-goal cyclers vs high goal ones, however, I do see a bit of an advantage on the low-goal robots because of the speed and efficiency they bring to the table. High goals are easier to defend against and are statistically less accurate. However, the scores will not be affected in my opinion. Since balls still count as scored even when the tower is decreased below zero, the alliances will simply gain the Capture later in the match as opposed to after the eighth shot (which has recently occurred pretty early).

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

The lines show the percent of half-matches with a certain score that damaged the tower to a certain degree.

This leads me to believe that increasing tower strength may be a fairly big deal in qualifications (where match scores should hang around in the 100-150 range), but no so much in eliminations, where teams should be able to put up 120+ without the breach/capture bonuses.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I'm actually curious how this change would have affected DCMPs. It'd be interesting to see how the rankings would shuffle with 10 tower strength instead of 8. Keeping in mind that average quality at DCMPs is usually much higher than at CMP.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Seems like a pretty straightforward change. In the New England District at least, by the latter end of competition season (and especially at District Champs) you were regularly seeing both alliances get the breach ranking point every single match. It often came down to which team could score more boulders. Increasing the tower strength only seems to up the ante. It's obviously going to favor the teams who can score quickly and consistently. As others have said, having a tower score <-2 wasn't particularly uncommon amongst the upper caliber of teams, so I'm skeptical about the magnitude of change this rule will make. I think the obvious conclusion is that it will separate the good/quick shooting bots from the exceptional/rapid shooting bots. Things like 2-ball autonomous code will be even more valuable going into worlds.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I wrote a script to calculate just that. Here's MSC, for example:

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

This would certainly have created a very different draft!

However, I suspect higher tower strength would also have caused several teams to play differently.

I look forward to the style of play this change will cause at CMP.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Hope so:D

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

First of all I gotta say i'm pretty happy with increasing the tower strenght to CMP. I was sure that the defences strenght will increase as well because of it...
I don't think this action will effect the low goal robot from the main reason that if you can capture the tower if can get the RP and if you can't you just won't. I't dosen't has anything to do with where you score the boulder, it's all about if you can score 10 boulders in the tower and unfortunately this will effect many teams during the entire CMP.
Whenever it comes to playoffs I believe that the tower health will be down by every game but the real question that still keeps the capture precent pretty low is will the tower will be captured? Will all the teams will be on the batter? That's the biggest misery

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Imo, putting a boulder in your own defenses would not be a G11 infraction by itself. G11's blue box says
Putting a boulder in your own defenses would be a valid defense strategy then, since the opposing robots can choose to slow down and clear out the boulder to avoid the foul. As I see it, the difference is that the opposing alliance is not forced into committing a foul.

Disclaimer: Just a student's interpretation of the rules. The refs may call it differently.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Read one rule further. ::rtm::

G12-1 ROBOTS may not deliberately use FIELD elements, e.g. BOULDERS, in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements, e.g. DEFENSES. Violation: FOUL. For every five (5) seconds in which the situation is not corrected, FOUL

And its Blue Box:

Example actions that violate G12-1 include, but aren’t limited to the
following: adding BOULDERS to your Moat to make it harder for your
opponents to CROSS the Moat, using a BOULDER to prop up Cheval
de Frise elements, propping open a DEFENSE door with a BOULDER.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I think you all are missing a very valid point. Consider this:
A consistent, accurate high goal shooter, spends a lot of time chasing down boulders. A consistent, fast, robot that can breach most outer works can feed the high goal shooter. Get a ball, drop it in front of the high goal shooter and go get another one. Repeat the cycle. Quickly. Two things happen, the outer works fall and the cycle time for high goal scores drop. Scores go up. Discuss.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

What is the third robot doing in this situation? If there is a good defender against the high goal shooter who can do something with the boulders that the feeder bot brings, it would cause the shooter to go chasing boulders down instead of shoot, load, rinse and repeat.

EDIT: Third bot could draw the defender's attention away from the shooter and allow it to do its thing, or remain undefended and make up for the lost cycle time. If the third bot is playing defense, I feel this strategy would get shut down pretty quickly.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

If you had a reliable shooter whose limiting action is its defense crossing ability, you could consider running the third robot in tandem with your shooter, setting picks and crossing defenses, but not manipulating balls.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

One of the things you have to remember about low vs high is that it takes 2.5 low goals to = 1 high goal. Look at the following situation. One alliance scores 10 boulders all in the low goal in elims this = 45 points. The opposing alliance shoots just 9 but all high goals this = 45 points. A low goal shooter is really valuable for bringing down the tower, but it is going to take the high goal to win divisions or Einstein. If the high goal shooting alliance previously mentioned scores just one more ball, the swing is 30 points. You cannot just rely on the low goal, at the CMP level you will be out scored on most occasions on Saturday, however you will gain that ranking point in quals which is always wanted. You have to put some boulders in the upper chains. This is going to be a neat addition to offensive and defensive strategy at CMP.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I think you made a typo...

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I think they are accounting for a capture.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Ah! Now I see it. Thanks! :)

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Low goal robots in districts everywhere are mildly annoyed this wasn't a thing for DCMPs, which are generally stronger events than the Championship anyway.

But I'm happy with this change. Ball handling and ball starvation are much more important. Ball hoarding strategies where you deliberately don't score balls for extended periods are riskier. Teams that shoot high still have to play the seeding game and can't just shoot high a few times a match and be done with it.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I was hoping for 12.
I don't think this will affect quals much, high goal scoring still wins the match no matter how fast the low goal scoring all else being equal.
But I do think this will affect elims, mainly by putting a larger gap between the top two or three alliances and the others. The top alliances will have two good high goal shooters from the outerworks and still be able to capture the tower with the third robot feeding or playing defense. The other alliances will be forced to either play all three robots on offense to capture the tower or find some way of slowing down the opponent cycles, possibly by boulder starvation.
This game favors some complex strategies that are very difficult to pull off in quals but are a must for lower seeded alliances in elims. A very interesting game to play.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Just for a talking point, taking all Week 6 Regionals and District Events (with the exception of DCMPs), the capture rate in Qualifications was about 10%. Now only counting matches where the alliance captured AND scored 10+ boulders the capture rate drops to about 4%.

In Eliminations the capture rate drops from about 31% to about 15%.

Granted some of these alliances could have probably scored 10 if they knew they had to, I just really like numbers so I did some quick comparisons.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I guess I'm a little biased to low goal, fast cyclers (our robot) and comparing to PNW DCMPs. In that event, capture rate was 48% in quals and from that, the top 1/3 of teams make it to CMPs for even better capture rates. Once we weakened the tower, we went back to finish off the 5th defense and did not further weaken the tower.
I expect capture rates to be higher and will push the advantage to high goal robots. That leaves the low goal robots with a somewhat ambiguous strategy - do we focus on scoring many low goals to capture the tower in quals or do we play defense to help secure the win? In most situations, we can probably prevent more high goal points than we can score low goal points. But where does that leave us for alliance selection? There are many robots in this predicament and we will have to see what capture rates are.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I don't think 2 more borders is going to make much of a difference if any from what I saw when the tower drops way down I was hoping for like a 15 power then it brings back the strategy of going low and come Einstein getting the tower down would be the difference between winning and losing and the team that gets it down maybe low goal robot wins

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Nearly doubling the tower strength would be a bit much.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

If you raise the tower only to try to make low goalers more important, it wastes the time of the teams who spent large amounts of time building shooters, and basically throwing out the game strategy analysis that many teams did at the beginning of the season. It shouldn't be the fault of the high goal shooters that other teams didn't build one.

This isn't to say this wasn't a good change, but 15 definitely would have been too much. And Einstein, in my opinion should be a game of high goals, which is much more exciting.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

i don't see it as being overly aggressive maybe 13-14. I am thinking of it like this:
For the DCHAMPS and the final two weeks of regional events NOT getting a capture in eliminations was a rare thing. for the most part a capture would happen.

Even in qualification matches the majority of the alliance where able to get the tower down the reason the capture did not happen was because the 3rd robot wasn't able to get to the platform.

Going into championship the robots and drivers are going to be even better causing more and more goals to be scored. you have more and more robots that can get 10 ball in by themselves. by increasing it to 13-14-15 it would require a team effort strategy would key, and i think the matches will become more intense.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Look at breakaway3739's post on the previous page. Currently 10 low goals = 45 pts (20 + 25), 9 high goals = 45 pts (9 * 5). Increasing the tower strength just increases this disparity. In your case, 15 low goals = 55 pts, 11 high goals = 55 pts. High goal robots just don't have to work as hard.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Oh. I didn't consider this other rule:o . This rule would invalidate almost all strategies blocking the defenses with boulders.
But in very few situations, it could be possible to place a boulder to "block" the defense without making it harder. For example, a ball behind the sally port in the outerworks imo does not "amplify" the challenge of driving across the flat part of the sally port.
I would like to Q&A this, but I cannot.:]

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

That seems like it's just asking for a controversial Ref foul waiting to happen...

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I'm hoping Einstein goes up to 11.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

If it was, the update would have said so.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Thank you Nigel Tufnel.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Its an interesting rule change, and I think a good one overall.

This might be a slight boon to some quicker low goal bots, but overall what it incentivizes efficiency and teamwork. (I'd be interested to see statistics about how many teams could score 8 boulders solo vs 10 boulders solo). Low goal bots have the advantage of a "miss" usually being quick to recover from. Accurate high goalers still have a decided advantage compared to a low goal bot, but misses are MUCH more costly now.

This will also be a benefit to teams that are willing and able to modify their strategy on the fly to take the relative "sure-thing" low goal while being defended, compared to missing one or more high goals.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

I had not taken a look at this data until now. I really like it, thank you for providing it.

I just graphed the teleoperated high boulder score, the stat I think best reflects playoff performance. Of course this data cannot be directly applied to champs since teams will behave differently at champs than the events the data is from.

Average calculated teleoperated high boulder score

• 0-1 boulders: 55% of teams
• 1-2 boulders: 12% of teams
• 2-3 boulders: 11% of teams
• 3-4 boulders: 16% of teams
• 4-5 boulders: 6% of teams
• 5 or more boulders: 4% of teams

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

The part about this graph that most intrigues me is the single team* that averages 7.5 balls high a match. That is a whole boulder a match more than the second best shooting team.

*I'm going to guess it's 254.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

We have a winner.

Top Guns of Stronghold
 

After thinking a bit longer* about Caleb's database, I sorted the teams that have demonstrated 5+ high goals per match, using eOPR1 to rank. I think it will very interesting to see how these teams are distributed across CMP divisions. Alliances with two of these high shooters will be challenging to play against.

The list of 24 25 top guns includes

• nine Michigan teams: 27, 33, 67, 85, 2771, 3620, 3641, 4967, 5460
• five California teams: 254, 330, 971, 3309, 3476
• three Canadian teams: 1241, 2056, 4334
• two three New England teams: 195, 1519, 4564
• and one team each from Indiana (1024), Texas (118), Iowa Minnesota (5172), Arizona Nevada (987), and PNW (1540)

--------

*but not long enough!

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

1519 also meets this criteria with our performance at New England CMP... our overall OPR was higher at Pine Tree (although our teleop High Goals weren't), so that event's stats are what is included in the CMP Preview tab.

1519 @ NE CMP:

0.73 Auto HG
5.72 Tele HG
14.56 Auto Points
81.79 eOPR1

1519 @ Pine Tree:

0.76 Auto HG
4.65 Tele HG
19.19 Auto Points
82.79 eOPR1

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

While 5172 won the Iowa Regional, they are still from Minnesota.

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

This is an interesting data set, but looking at it I think it can't be accepted right at face value.

IMO the 5 balls per match stat is very situational. The two biggest cases of tons of high goal scoring are doing low bar cycles and stealing from the secret passage. In quals for example I think that stealing from the secret passage is going to be much more prevalent than in elims, just because of the defender who will be in play. The low bar scorers who hit 5+ per match are great but how many of them do less if this route is not available (ie. 2 low bar cyclers on a single alliance).

I think that this stat does give us a good top list of the best shooters at the championship, but I also believe we will see some teams on that list fall to defense with lower averages and some teams with lower per shot averages jump up, as the situation changes.



Also in general I feel that the biggest impact of increasing the tower strength at championships will be to combat defense during qualification rounds. There will be less 2 robot alliances who can drop the tower themselves so in order to secure the 4RP mach, the 3rd partner can't be just a defender. On the flip side it also has the possibility to make defense more impactful as keeping an alliance from scoring 1-2 balls can really sway things in regards to event ranking.

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

Same with 987. Won the Arizona West regional, but are from Las Vegas.

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

Not sure if this was deliberate or a typo, but it made me giggle. Yes, the biggest misery is when one of your partners doesn't make it onto the batter!

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

5172 is a force to be reckoned with. anyone who looks over them is a fool

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

While I do agree with that, I'm sure they'll make big enough splashes at champs to be seen by good scouting teams or be the alliance captain themselves. I'm excited to see how 5172 performs. Certainly one of the best MN bots going to championships in a while. The last standout one had to be 2169 in 2013 heading into champs.

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

Not entirely certain of your criteria... or of how these various values were calculated for the table but I believe that Team 230 also qualifies especially if you take into account the "Subtracted Tower Strength" values which are both above 5. Since we haven't been shooting any low goals (although we are able to if needed) this value indicates that we are averaging 5 high goals per match in both of our last 2 events:

230 @ NEDCMP:

0.69 Auto HG
4.99 Tele HG
5.52 Subtracted Tower Strength
16.43 Auto Points
82.86 eOPR1

230 @ Pinetree:

0.66 Auto HG
5.54 Tele HG
5.94 Subtracted Tower Strength
12.25 Auto Points
78.85 eOPR1

(Note our autopoints were lower at Pinetree as we were doing our tuning of our autonomous shot.)

Re: Tower Strength Raised to 10 for CMP
 

They might have changed it so that it provides more challenge to down the tower and possibly go into the negatives. I like to think this is a good change for Worlds.

Re: Top Guns of Stronghold
 

My initial criteria were pretty simple-minded: just look for Teleop Boulders High >= 5 in column F of Caleb's championship preview tab, then sort results by eOPR1. That missed your team by 0.01 -- I certainly agree Gaelhawks belong on this list. If I've missed stronger teleop HG performance by another team please let me know.

Updated table attached. Eight teams with Teleop HG > 6 are highlighted in yellow (254, 2056, 2771, 195, 33, 4967, 3641, 1024). Michigan teams are highlighted in orange.

As Greg pointed out, high goal shooting can be situational. For example, many teams shoot more high goals when defense is light and/or a partner is handling more crossings. Teams on this list have demonstrated sufficient speed and accuracy to put up a lot of teleop boulder points while taking down the tower, given the right alliance.