the importance of strategy with the human player
 

Hi guys, after our regional last week I found out a lot of the strategy can be used in cooperation with the human player, and not only feeding other robots
up untill the competition I thought the human players job will be to
A. refill bots which can't pick up balls
B. throw balls towards the backbot if his area is empty
C.throw balls that will go into corner goals and/or near them so other bots may push them in...

after the competition I realized there is so much more the human player is capable of I wish I would've seen it sooner

first off, scoring balls into the corner is easier then we thought (it's hard but not as hard), and those 2-4 (even more...) points can really tip the balance eventually (lets say we won a game 15-13 when our guy scored 2 points into the corner goal),

but the most important thing I think a human player can do is disable or interrupt the opposing's alliances ability attempts at going up the ramp

what we told our HP to do (and to out alliances HP's) is to throw as many balls as possible as near as possible to the ramps, without hitting the curve so the balls won't roll into mid-field

by stuffing the parameter of the ramp with balls no robot we have seen could go up the ramp (no bot that could've before), this is because each bot that CAN go up the ramp had a few inch window between the floor and it's bumpers causing the balls to go under it and either disabling it completely (rare), tipping it over if it's at high speed (in combination with the ramp, not so rare), or it simply won't go up

while this makes us loose our "highest score" in a close uncertain match it can block up to 25 points from your rival!

the trick is to do it when your alliance isn't going to shoot anymore, since it might block your firing areas

one time, I saw a bot tip in the middle of it's run to the ramp, and I didn't understand why (it was a bot from the other alliance), what happened later I was told by my HP, he told me that he threw a ball at the ramp (like he was supposed to), and it hit right in front of that tipping bot, which rolled untop of the ball and was disabled for the rest of the match, it made me feel a bit "ungracious" but it opens a whole new section of "hp strategy"

sorry for the long post =), hope you have some HP strategy's and stories too :D