Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I am quite aware haha. May have been exaggerating slightly ;)

I just think people may be underestimating how big defense will effect matches this year especially in elims. It's just been a long time (if ever, not a game i can think of) since there has been a game with two primary ways to score with only one of them being protected. And the one that is is what some would consider less advantageous.

I think we may see a fuel alliance beat a gear alliance. The distance to travel to collect gears and score them is somewhat large as well as blocked by obstacles. Some of the lifts are somewhat hard to see and the peg is not exactly the biggest target. Mix some or two robots in playing defense I think some interesting things could happen.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This year, it seems like gears are the prerequisite for doing well rather than a main task you focus on. I think even for two really strong robots, it will be tough to get all the gears done and even if they can, having a third robot able to do their part in gears is going to be too helpful to pass up. Especially since there are so many other things going on in the game.

I think overall though, a really strong robot will be able to carry itself through qualifications. Alliances, like almost every year in my opinion, will be what wins events.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I think that the auto gear is absolutely essential for fuel robots. My production is to be a first pick you need it and any other robot with it is an auto second pick. Gears are not going to ml win the game at the high level. They will just be the starting point.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

We used a three cim drive train once for 2014.... and let me tell
You for that game it was well worth it. But we have been designing our own gearboxes for years. It's not somthing in would recommend for a rookie team two Will do just fine for this game!

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Aerial assist defense was absolutely insane nothing better then that, you could shut down an entire top ranked alliance And beat them doing one assist cycles. I miss those games

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This year, in quals, there will not be many alliances that can get the four rotors turning, even the top teams. So if you can get those 6 gears plus a little bit of fuel in the high goal to offset the score and a reliable climber, you'll be able to rank high in quals. Pick another robot that is a good gear-er or fuel-er and you focus on your prospective tasks plus a raw defense bot and that's a winning alliance. I just think its going to be really hard to separate out scores in qualification alliances based on how those gear tiers are set up.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Honestly- everybody is talking up how big defense is gonna be, and I gotta believe it.
But we all talk about how important it's going to be, but yet everyone is designing a robot that can score, and talking about this mysterious robot that will come from the shadows and tear apart the souls of top-take down alliances simply because it can move back and forth in a choke point. The fact of the matter is that building a purely defensive robot will NOT happen unless a team uses it as a last resort.
I can however, see high ranking alliances using it in dire situations to get the upper hand on an even higher ranking opponent. (Similar to 2016 IRI finals) The reason is simply that teams will always try to outscore the opponent until they know that they can't. That's when teams will play defense. Otherwise, defense is really more of a net loss for both sides because one team is lacking efficiency, and another is simply losing a second or two during their cycle.
The climbing is the real problem here because if a robot is trying to defend too much and can't climb, they lose a lot of points.
Now, maybe there is a bit of place for it in eliminations if they can stop some gears from being scored, but I honestly don't think that the best alliances will have one individual robot per job. They will more than likely all three be able to climb, cycle fuel, and cycle gears. Even if it meant losing 100 pts in Elims (for not getting all 4 rotors turning) an alliance could easily identify that they were losing and have a weaker alliance member go to defense to even the playing field.

Not that this long winded semi-rant is done I would like to mention-
I've only been at this for 2 years, so I could VERY easily be proven wrong, and that all of this is my opinion with experience and CD browsing to back it up. Do NOT take anything that I said to heart, just bear it in mind.

TL;DR: Somebody actually has to make a robot designed for defense to make defense effective

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I should also mention- most teams don't have a good way to measure effectiveness in defense, so if you did build a defensive robot, you'd purely be hoping that your ability to prevent other robots from scoring wins you matches during Quals, which is not easy to count on. (As well as it makes it harder for your alliance to score rank points due to the fact that you're not contributing to it.) So when alliance selection comes around, most stats will say that that robot scored 0. And it might be noted that t played defense well, but ultimately, alliance captains will want robots that can help score lots of points (such as getting rotors spinning) over having a purely defensive robot.

Like I said though, that doesn't negate the need for a defensive robot in dire situations, but said robot should not be built for defense.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I agree this isn't a defensive game, it's an offensive game, that why there are so many balls and not just one that must be scored, and that's also why there are three davits and not just one. You will not be picked in the finals if all you can do is play defense.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

In 2014 we used mecanum, an instant forfeit of any pushing ability and We ended up as a #8 captain and the #4 pick at our two events so it still went well. I didn't feel like we were at a huge disadvantage, nobody pinned us into a wall for 2 minutes.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Yes. There will be very few teams which can hang 12 gears, and only a few who can get to 40 kPa by themselves. There are likely to be a handful of powerhouses who can do either in any match, but not both. Any team which can do both by itself in the same match with any consistency are likely to be as rare as ginger unicorns.

Alliances will win most qual matches, and essentially all elimination matches.

I expect defense to be important this year for the same reason it was in 2014 Aerial Assault - because while each task looks simple, there are problems that many teams will not discover until their first competition match, leaving them with little or no scoring capability. And most of those teams which are unable to do more offense than they can counter will get in the way, dump hoppers, disrupt scoring, and whatever else they can to slow down their opponents.

Climb will be essential. I don't think it's ever been easier, because you don't have to reach up to a rung but snag a rope within your allowable volume. (Though maybe I'm still missing something here.)

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

I would definitely agree with that statement about the defense. But I also have no doubt that high-scoring teams will find a way to counter it during quals. Otherwise, the usefulness of defense will be major in eliminations when scoring will be much closer. But even then, unless it's in a match where somebody knows they will lose, I still see teams trying to outscore each other.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

The best thing that could be said about 2015 was things could only go up from there.

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

Not true. We saw many things go down from there :yikes:

Re: Will Alliances Win?
 

This is the truth. In 2013 my team's alliance made it to the MSC finals by simply outscoring every other alliance handily. However, once we got there, we lost the first match when the #1 seeded alliance filled the high goal with their full court shooter. We changed our strategy completely to a defensive game, with one robot running cycles and the other two sort of tag-team defending and cycling, and ended up winning. I think in this game we'll get the same thing; an alliance will lose their first match when they can't keep up on the scoreboard, and so for the next match they'll switch to a defensive strategy.