Re: Best Stragtey
 

I do agree with most of what you say. Sure 9 matches doesn't invoke the law of large numbers but it is starting to get close. In selecting partners an alliance captain has objective measures and subjective measures. If an alliance captain selects higher seeded robots robots for subjective reasons and they end up doing a significant better job than their seed rank would indicate, then you would expect to see teams with higher average ranking beating teams with lower average seed rank, as indeed your examples might indicate. This is the indicator that the subjective measures are outperforming the objective ones. I haven't looked yet at the correlations for past events or other regionals. However, at 2009 Florida, none of the selections of higher ranked seeds resulted in a win with one exception. The top seed 1144 lost in the QF. But another poster has mentioned that 1144's pick was an accidental error. So we can't really attribute their opponent, with a higher average rank, to winning due to it's picks of robots seeded 29th and 36th (of 52).

As for last year championship, An average seed of 23 out of 86 is pretty much the same average seed as 12.7 out of 52. Most games need both performance and balance. The theoretical best picks on seeding alone may not be balanced. So achieving balance often means picks that pull up the average seed.

Nationals are a little bit different situation and so too are regionals with lots of teams on their second or third competition.

My points were really three. 1)Teams with a chance to be ranked 12th or better should be prepared to pick their Alliance partners, 2) you don't need to worry about picking teams that are lower seeds than you - you won't ever pick them - they pick you. 3) you should have a good reason for picking higher seeds over significantly lower seeds.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

our team used the strategy of having the lowest scoring bot, act as a pinner/blocker against the highest scoring bot on the other team. then our high scoring bots were free to score on the pinned bot. and the other team could not get a high score, because there best bot was pinned. this strategy can also be used to block two other bots as well.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

We also think that this was the most effective strategy at the Florida regional. The pinning/pushing capabilities of some bots resulted in indirect scoring by human players, at least until they ran out of moon rocks. And pinning/pushing the opponents high scorer was effective as long as you didn't become vulnerable yourself.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

1. What team am i on (im going to say 945 for example)
2. Who are my Opponents (im going to say were at the florida regional)
3. Who are my Partners (same as above)
4. Where is my scouting person (looks like im that person for this team, while im queing)
5. What does the drive team feel like doing. (after all, im not coaching YET)
6. What do my partners think is the best idea (open minded/ agree/disagree)
7. LETS DO IT

945 was one of those teams that could score, but not great, they were also a little slow on defense

if we were going up again against 103/25 like we did in the elimination rounds. I would use the same strategy. all three teams run around as decoys while 1557 and us would target one, pin, and 1902 would drop it like it's hot on their trailer

it also matters if its practice, qualifying, or eliminations.... if it's practice, it really doesn't matter, if it's qualifying rounds, lets go with the basic offense/defense strategy.

But if it's elimination, that's when the more elaborate/creative strategies come into play.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

The strategy I found most useful at Florida and suggested to most of our alliance partners was to essentially have a complete offense bot, a hybrid offense/defense bot, and a defense/empty cell runner bot.

We used this fairly successfully in the qualifying rounds. We were the team that 1144 picked accidentally.. if you will. Our first match strategy was to keep the 8th seeds #1 offense bot busy, while 1144 played offense and 1885 played defense. Now the problem with that was when we played their offensive bot, we ended up getting scored on a bit, and we lost the first match by two points.

The next match we went back to my favorite strategy with us playing the hybrid offense/defense bot. Kind of acting as a pick for 1144 while playing some good offense. We found when you didn't directly engage a robot and play "zone defense", you have a much better chance of not getting scored on. We won that match by a decent margin.

Not to take anything away from the 8th seeded alliance, but I'm fairly confident that we would have won the third match if our robot hadn't been stuck in the starting position from w/e technical difficulties we were having with the field.

So, personally I like the mix of the three different types of robots. If you have a good enough offensive robot, I believe you are better off putting another offensive robot that has a decent drivetrain in the hybrid spot. This strategy might not be for everyone (since normally our team played the hybrid spot), but if you have a robot that can do that, I think it's worth a try. It's certainly a strategy I'm looking to tryout in ATL especially with the amount of completely offensive robots that will be there.

-Greg P.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

that's what i meant, i just flipped the numbers, and yeah

Re: Best Stragtey
 

We lost (and won) more of our matches by the super cell, so I think transporting empty cells is HUGE.