Best Stragtey
 

Hey just a poll for what people think is the best strategy they have found through practice or observation.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Stay out of the trouble spots on the field. You should be able to win most of your matches if you pick your scoring opportunities, scout your oposition, and play smart.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Ive got to agree, keeping your trailer empty, even if it means you wont score as much is just as important as outscoring your opponents, unless you have a disabled bot on your team, or a liability.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Just making sure your partners understand the basics of the game (what the PS can and cannot do, and that they shouldn't drive into the opposing corners without good reason) is enough to help you win a lot of matches during qualifications.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Make sure you and your partners show up for your matches and know the rules.
You'd be amazed how many team struggle to do just that.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Other:

Be prepared for alliance selections. This would mean that you have a list that has been prepared carefully and with forethought, written legibly and in an orderly fashion. Scribbles on scraps does not make for a list of potential alliance partners.

Edit: I realize this thread is for game play strategy. I think this list is a part of that.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

What is my bot? Who are my partners? Who am I playing against?
I can't answer any strategy questions until I know those.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

good point...

I was trying to get a good picture of the thoughts of others since I am the only veteran drive on the team and might not even be driving this year, I wanted to get a plan together before next week and VCU

Re: Best Stragtey
 

I'm a little shocked by the current survey. It seems people still think shooters are "better" than the high speed dumpers. I can't say why, since I'm not aware of any shooter that's played so far that has been consistent from more than a foot or two away (dumping) except on very very limited occasions (read as luck).

I'm in no way biased - we made a shooter as well. However, unless the shooters in the field drastically improve, it seems that dumpers are currently the way to go, as long as they have sufficient ball capacity and a good floor pickup.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

In the absence of separate "shooter" and "dumper" poll options, I'm assuming that people from both camps are voting for the "robot shooter" option on the assumption that it covers both cases.

But yes, I agree - there is no question that short range, high volume scoring (call it what you may) has been the most effective design/strategy thus far this season.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Strategy wise, there's no difference between a "shooter" scoring at close range and a "dumper." Look at the success that 148 and 1771 are having today, both of which could be classified "shooters." I agree with the post above me, "short range, high volume" scoring is great, but it doesn't always matter the design of the robot.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Similarly, who are we playing with?

Certainly 3 robots will never win if all three of their strategies is defense... And if that is the case, then you are relying on human player scoring as a second strategy.:p

We had a lot of success in dc utilizing all of those strategies: 1 robot picking up and scoring, 1 robot running empty cells, 1 robot defending the top scorer, and all 3 human players putting moon rocks and super cells in the trailers when it counts! (we lost in the finals because we just couldn't evade the other alliance quite well enough)

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Strategy wise, perhaps they are the same. Shooters can score at close range, but dumpers can outperform them in terms of ball volume and rate of fire, since a "shooter" is generally constrained by firing 1 ball at a time.

By that measure, I'm not sure why people would pick a shooter over a dumper. All data points to dumpers currently being the best choice.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

You are basing your logic still on the terminology of "shooter" versus "dumper". From the beginning of the season, we designed our robot to be a short range "shooter" just calling it that to simplify terminology. We only shoot 1 ball at a time, but we shoot 5 balls/sec. There aren't many robots, either "shooter" or "dumper" that can expel as many balls as us in a given time. I can think of possibly 5. With us having a turret and the ability to adjust distance while maintaining the same rate of fire, we have more scoring opportunities than a non turreted short range system.

This whole debate of shooters vs. dumpers has gotten ridiculous. The winning robot will be a very high throughput robot that has a strong and reliable drive team and strong alliance selection and strategy. The method of delivering balls, either in a single line or 2 or 3 wide will not matter if the robot fulfills these requirements.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

win?

Re: Best Stragtey
 

JVN had a good post about the problem in breaking robots down into "shooters" vs. "dumpers". There is a complete continuum of scoring mechanisms. Is 254 a shooter or dumper? 148?

If by definition a shooter scores one ball at a time, perhaps the motivation would be so that in the event of a "bad shot", only one ball gets wasted. When a dumper misses, boy does it miss. For example, Miss Daisy takes a few seconds to deliver all her balls, but if at any point the target gets away we can instantly stop the flow of moon rocks. So far that ability has paid off for us. And even though they haven't yet captured a banner this season, I'd take a robot like 25, 103, 217, or 1114 on my alliance over your average dumper any day.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

103 is a dumper now :ahh:

Taking a page out of 2753's book.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

They are both a shooter AND dumper now from the looks of it...

Re: Best Stragtey
 

What match is it? Are there any "unattended" trailers? Who are my partners? Opponents? What do they do?

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Our strategy depends completely on who is on our alliance and who we are playing against.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

This is our funny story:
Our mentor convinced us that games this year would be decided with "2.. maybe 3!" balls. Well... he was wrong, badly, as we all have seen games with even 100 points. Back to our story, we planned and built a dumper AND a shooter on our robot and also a conveyor. 2 weeks before shipping our mentor decided to go on vacation in New-Zealand and due to return in April.
The result of all this: A) A crappy dumper, B) a crappy shooter, C) the most useless conveyor you have ever seen, i doubt if it picks ANYTHING... as we finished it almost in the last second.
Regional in 3 days ^^.

AKA: We are SO dead ><".

Re: Best Stragtey
 

I believe that the best method of scoring has been to pin opponents robots near your side of the field/human player and effectively use it to your advantage. In this fashion, regardless of what you alliance partners can do, you can score with dumping robots, score with your human players, and/or prevent opponents from scoring on you and your opponent from scoring PERIOD. It's a proven method. The best robots haven't really been dominating in elimination matches because of less sophisicated robots getting together, strategizing, and using one such as this. You don't need to be the fastest robot on the field to pin an opponent and get their trailer filled up. I've seen it done time and time again.
Ask Ms.Daisy how effective this stratgey works, they beat RAWC(968)! :D

Re: Best Stragtey
 

I know what you mean. THe number 1 seed had a worse alliance than they should have had apparently because they accidentally read the 3rd person on their list instead of the 2nd when the 1st declined. They lost in the quarter finals when we a 4th (eventually 3rd after 2 seed went with 3rd) seed and made it to finals with a narrow loss.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

I thought that the Alliance selections at the Florida regional were a bit bizarre. If you look at the elimination results, versus the "average" seeding rank, the pattern is clear. The finals were a close match between the teams with average seeding ranks of 12.7 and 12.3. The teams that lost in the semifinals had average ranks of 18.0 and 17.5.

The way the alliance selection works, the expected average seeding for all teams should be 12.5 or better and the first seed picking 2 and 17 could average as low as 6.7, even less if teams below 17 were still available. Even the 12th seed (in the 8th alliance) can do no worse than picking 14 and 24 for an average of of 16.3.

As it turns out, the average seed of alliances in the Florida regional was 19.3 and the lowest were 12.3 and 12.7. The highest were 29.7 and 25.6. 9 Teams ranked 14 -24 (average 16.1) were left unpicked while 8 teams from 25 - 47 (average 35.2)

I would have expected teams ranked 14 - 20 to be picked, especially over teams ranked (36 - 47 etc). Several alliance captains appeared completely unprepared. Going by name recognition, low team number, loudest shouts in the stands, color of t-shirt, etc. is not likely to be a successful strategy.

Seeding for sure is not the sole reason for picking a partner. The alliance must be balanced as well. And there are often mechanical breakdowns or other reasons which explain poorer performance. But, if this were the case we would see teams with higher average ranks doing better in the eliminations. After 9 matches, the seeding is likely to reflect much more than the luck of the draw - things like pinning ability, consistency, human player ability, driver ability, penalty avoidance, etc. I think the alliance selection at Florida left a lot on the table.

The teams that have a possibility of doing 6 wins or better have to be prepared for alliance selection immediately following the last match. Your first pick can always be a team ranked 14th or higher and your second pick can always be 24th or better. You will never be able to pick a team ranked higher than you. Don't worry about them. They won't be on your list. You should know which robots ranked below you that are complementary to you. Unless you have a good reason otherwise, you may want to pick the lowest seed that is complementary.

IMHO alliance selection should account for 1) proven performance against the field (an objective measure based on final seeding rank), 2) balance for the team (shooting/defense/empty cell) and 3) experience (often reflected in lower team number).

For lunacy, it appears to me that the most successful alliances consists of an excellent shooting bot and a good defensive bot that can reliably play defense on the opponents best scoring bot and pin opponents for easy human scoring. During the early phase of the game, pinning for human scoring is essential. In the latter phase, when humans run out of moon rocks, neutralizing the opponents top dumper (or equivalent shooter) is essential. In all phases, penalty avoidance is essential. Teams that draw penalties or waste moon rocks on poor targets are usually reflected in the standings.

Just my $0.02

Re: Best Stragtey
 

I think this clearly shows, as any FIRST vet will tell you, rankings are not what's important (especially in an event that runs less than 11 or 12 matches).
Last year's Championship winning alliance was constructed of teams ranked 1st (1114), 12th (217), and 57th (148) out of 86. An average ranking of more than 23. In 2007 the Championship winning alliance was ranked 9th (190), 37th (987), and 50th (177), or an average rank of 32nd.
Even in Lunacy this still applies. Look at the Cass Tech event, which ran 12 qualification matches. 469 started out 1-7, finished 5-7, and ranked 27th out of 40. Yet 469 was selected 2nd and reached the finals.

Seeding doesn't equate directly to robot quality.
While I'll agree some captains were unprepared, as they always are, most of them did a fine job in picking out who was ranked higher and lower than they should have been.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

IF A ROBOT TRIES TO PIN OR BLOCK ANOTHER ROBOT THAT MEANS THAT BOTH ROBOTS ARE NOT MOVING MUCH. WHICH INTERN MEANS BOTH ROBOTS ARE PINNED. SO DRIVERS NEED NOT TO PIN BUT NEED TO JUST MOVE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE IT IS THE BEST BET TO SURVIVE

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Plain and simple. There are two main startegies and both work equally well.

1. Score more points than the opposing alliance.
2. Figure out how to make the opposing alliance score fewer points than you.

Either one works well.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

Our alliance used the same strategy throughout the elimination matches, we had 2 turret bots, and whatever you called ours(technically a shooter? maybe?). we were fast and heavy, we scored fast and scored early, kept moving and kept to our side of the field. At one point in a quarterfinal our robots pushed the other alliance into our corner from the center of the crater and held them there for maybe 30 seconds. We won our regional as the 8th seed, one of our picks was 34th, i'm not sure of the other

Re: Best Stragtey
 

We were picked by the number one seed at long beach just because of our defensive capabilities (we were 57/60). We showed teams how great we are at neutrailizing a robot.

Re: Best Stragtey
 

They were actually 43rd of 46. I just found this out. :D

And is that you Patrick?

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.