Best Game STRATEGY
 

What are the most impressive strategies and most effective strategies you have seen employed over the past few weeks?

Also, does anyone have any good pointers for drivers/operators trying to get ready before the game (anything good to sort out or figure out before the competition?

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

I think strategy is dependant on a robots capabilitys, though I have seen MOE's strategy to be almost concrete. I watched them at drexel each matched thier moves tended to be almost exactly the same.

As for pointers, Communication is key. Never stop talking, announce where your going, what you want to happen. Team coaches should stay aware of the time, and where to cap as drivers and operators stay more aware of the field where robots are, and communicate with the human player, tell them to get ready. I saw more then once at drexel human players not ready to load thier robot and wasting valuable time.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

From what I have seen in attending the NASA/VCU regional in Richmond and watching a whole bunch of regionals on the web, here are my thoughts on strategy:

(Here is a simple diagram of the field that I will use to refer to goals)

RED 1---*-*---4---*-*---7 BLUE

RED 2----------5---------8 BLUE

RED 3---*-*---6---*-*---9 BLUE

If you have a very effective capping robot (and you are RED):

• Spend the first 1:40 of the round capping goals 1-6
• With 10-20 seconds left, acquire a tetra and make a run for goal 7 or 9. Cap that goal and then defend that goal till the end of the match.

This strategy is particularly effective if you have two partners who are somewhat capable cappers, because you will have a lot of points tetras scored, probably at least one row, and your opponents will not have their home row.

If you have a somewhat effective capping robot (and you are RED):

• Spend the first 1:20-1:30 of the round capping goals 1-6
• With 30-40 seconds left, acquire a tetra and make a run for goal 7 or 9. Cap that goal and then defend that goal till the end of the match.

This strategy is effective for similar reasons as to why the first strategy is good. The key to this strategy though, is that your alliance partners will have to make sure that goals 1-3 are safely owned.

If something went terribly wrong and you can't cap or score at all :ahh: :

• Talk to your alliance partners. Find out if either is capable of capping. Assuming that you will be teamed up with at least one 'capable capper', you might try the following strategy:
• Strive to own goals 1, 5, and 9 or goals 3, 5, and 7. As I'm sure you already know, if you own either set of those three goals, your opponent can have NO rows.
• You might do this by having the capable capper(s) spending some time capping the home row, then attempting to cap goals 7 and 5 (or 9 and 5) with less than 40 seconds remaining. All the while, you can run interference on the other alliance robots trying to cap 5 and 7 (or 9).
• In the last 20 seconds, each of your alliance's three robots can focus on defending just one of the three goals (1,5,9 or 3,5,7). In most matches, having this row along with some other tetras will likely get you the victory.

I have thought about millions of strategies while watching the webcasts, but hopefully these three prove useful.

-Andrew

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

That strategy works well in my opinion. Although, I'd out one robot on defense to protect the center goal, and/or the side one that is on the same side of the opposing alliance you plan on capping in the end. Example...you have your home row, or atleast 1 & 3. If you protect 4 & 5, then you can cap 7 and get two rows. If you protect only 4 or 5, you can get one more row if you cap 7. Also, if you have a row already, don't bother putting tetras on the other goals, take the goal closest to the loader that works best, and just cap the stuffing out of it until time runs out, or it appears to be tipping over, in which case you would move to the next closest goal. This works well because you don't have to navigate amongst the other side of the field (saving time).

As for preperations...Get your Drive Team, Coach, HP, and Alliance captain (if applicable) together and go introduce your self to the your alliance partners Drive Team, Coach, and HP. Next, after everyone has met up, go find a place and talk strategy. Typically..atleast one alliance member will have a good scouting report, from which you can discuss the other robots abilities. From there, you can decide on strategy for the next match. This strategy should include: Who is capping which goals, what to do if someone becomes unable to cap (who will take control of capping said goals), who will the defensive bot block on the other team (if applicable), etc.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

In theory that all works well. With no opponents or partners it might look good on paper. But the real stradegy comes when u find out who your partners are. The stradegy looks good but will it work with 3 robots pounding you everywhere u go? Many factors must be taken into consideration. Personally our stradegy is to cap 3 tetras and triple play our home row. Our autonomous covers one of the side goals by capping and dropping scoring 4 points. If we can get our partners to defend for 40-50 seconds then we can do this easily. After that time our partners should be free to do what they do unless they prefer otherwise. From there our robot will protect the home row and get back before time is up or will go across the field to make a cap either on the center row or the opponents home row. This is variable depending on the partners we get per match. Cooperation between the teams to get the best possible score is also a key. There were times at UTC where we would ask a team to help us out, they would agree, and then when we needed them they were off doing there thing. I can tell u this much...u won't get far without cooperation among the alliance members.

-Crash

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

I don't think planning will win you a match by itself. Agreeing to the same sort of strategy that we had in every match, our alliance wound up getting every goal on the field capped by the opposing alliance (by teams 498, 1492, and 1290, final score 112 to 13). Just forming rows and holding them with your alliance members is all you need to do.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

Penalties = lost match. With the way First refs have been handing out penalties any defensive strategy is risky. Concentrate on capping. That's not to say you shouldn't take a shot at an opponent on the way to or from a goal. I saw too many teams spend the last seconds trying to cap a goal only to fail. Get your alliance back in your zone and take that 10 points. The game is very fluid. The adults can see the whole field while the drivers tend to only see the bot. The adults need to communicate the next goal to cap to the student player who then instructs the driver. The student player also needs to communicate peripheral actions that are going to affect the bot to the driver. I kind of wished the refs had allowed things to get physical. There were allot of top heavy unstable bots just asking to be put down but, they were left alone for fear of penalties.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

I have still to play in a regional this year; however, based on the regionals that i watched:

- First priority: Home row
- Second Priority: Center row
-Third Priority: Opponent Row

I see it like this, First 40 seconds cap home row, for next 60 seconds cap center. If at anytime home row and center are done try to make one or two diaognals. Never Ever lose your home row. Make your fastest/most reliable capper to attack in the last 20 seconds. If there is no threat to your rows, try to get behind the line in last 10 seconds.

I noticed some times all 6 robots were ebhind the line with 10 seconds remaining which was quite odd. :rolleyes:

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

The stategy that won us SBPLI and made us finalists in Drexel is similar to the strategy allready stated.

First you get your home row.
Second you go down either the left or right side of the field.
Third at the end of the match get the center.

It doesn't matter who you are playing, as long as 2 robots can cap it doesn't matter what the third can do, although it is great if all three can cap. If all 3 can cap then set each robot on 2 goals, first robot gets middle left and far left, second robot gets back left and back center, and the last gets middle middle and back right. Of course there is variations on who gets what goal but as long as you keep recapping the goals you want the strategy holds strong.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

Thats the same strategy my team used most of the time. Being able to stack 6 tetras a match let us complete the L(back row and one side) by ourselves which we had to do a couple of times. Unfortunatly we were left in a similar situation in the finals. At which point its not enough to just cap goals, they'll quickly switch hands back and forth. You have to take them and defend them. A much tougher task.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

Strategy really depends on the robots that you are with and what your robot can do
if your robot is a fast efficient stacker then you will probably just try to stack as many tetras as possible in the match and not worry about defense
if your robot has defensive capabilities and you are the only robot that has those capabilities on your alliance you will probably play defesne for that match
now for some of the specific strategies i have seen in the regionals: some are to stack the other alliances corner goals, towards the end of the match because if u can own that goal then u can have 2 more rows added to ur home row and center row
for advice for operators and drivers before a match: have a general game plan and talk with your other alliance partners, u wanna make sure that when you go out there u kno wat goals ur going to stack and if ur gonna come back for ten points, etc...now the strategy may change on the field due to a robot being broken or flipped over, etc. and thats wat the coaches are for to give u more eyes on the field and tell u wat to do if the strategy does change

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

yes, this is definitly the case. Many times, our alliance parters and our team would concentrate on the home row and center row, with robot 1 capping home, and 2 and 3 concentrating on center. Having two on center helped because that is where most of the "action" is. Sometimes confident alliances would go over and cap a corner goal on the opponents side. When successful, this would always win the match, but its risky, and since your in their side there are three major problems (they can easily recap, as it is their side, it is obviously harder to see and the risk of penalties is large). If we were up against a strong opponent, we generally didn't even go near the idea of capping their goals. When the home and center rows were all owned (in your favor), we generally decided to cap the center rows if we had time, to make it harder for those who could not cap high; however, this occasion was rare. Also, this may seem simple, but it helped us win a few times: if you are planning on capping a home goal, and getting behind the line, just bring the tetra with you and get behind the line. Its so simple, but may not be thought of during those last few seconds of the game.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

In qualifing I'd say anything goes depending on who your alliance is. For us, our alliances just kept screwing up and haveing bad matches and getting penalties so to be honest after 2 or 3 losses in a row if we weren't matched with who our scouts considered one of the 5 best teams, we were out for ourselves because we had to look impressive for the top seeds to notice us. If we were paired with one of those 5 teams we worked out a plan because we felt with any other of those 5 teams on our list combined with our team would win a match against almost anybody and we'd tell the other team on our alliance not to get penalties. At UTC the 5 or 6 best teams all week were teams 20, 69, 126, 173, 1071, and 230 . Teams 1071 and 230 had bad luck with alliances and were ranked down in the 20-30 range, but going out and playing their own game got them both in the top 2 seeds.

When we got to elimination our alliance was awsome to work with. Team 69 didn't boss team 126 or us around telling us what to do. They let us decide what our robot was capible of doing. The first 2 rounds of elimination all three teams went out to score because if we didn't get defended against we could score 60-70pts easily (best out of 3 matches with consistent 60-70 points will beat a #7 seed). If one of our teams got defended we felt any two teams on our alliance could beat any 2 teams on the other alliance.

When we got to the finals we knew team 69 would at least match or outscore team 20, we felt team 126 would out score team 173 (nothing against those teams just teams 69 and 126 our team had confidence in), but we felt team 230 would tie or beat our team, and we knew we could keep them scoreless and make sure it was a tie and make the match 2 vs 2, which is what we did.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

With my teams robot the strategy I stated earlier works great because we just keep capping over other caps fast instead of taking a risky and time consumeing route of defence.

Another good thing to do is if the opposing alliance is very strong you can just stick with the back row and middle row. Putting two robots on offence keeping them on your side of the field and one robot to play defence that circles the center goal so no one can get into your side of the field. This strategy is also good for keeping up your QP's because it allows the opposing team to get a row and as many caps on top of those they want.

Re: Best Game STRATEGY
 

The favorite strategy that I saw employed this year was the Red Alliance of 1641, 1266, and 1378 against the Blue Alliance of 1324, 399, and 585 in the Quarterfinals at Las Vegas.

In one of the matches, the Red Alliance took 3 tetras immediately and rushed the Blue side, attempting to cap the Blue Home Row almost immediately. Sadly, the strategy wasn't fully implemented as Red would have wished, but it was an awesome strategy to watch.