[PVCpirate]

Originally Posted by Edxu

I think that most old teams will focus on offense, while the newer teams focus on defensive strategies.

If an old team seeds higher, they'll likely search for a robot that equals their offensive capability, to act as a crutch to fall upon in the alliance, and to enable two-robot offensives in the scoring zone.

In my opinion, an ideal first pick would be a robot that synergizes perfectly with your robot, but is also able to synergize with the next few robot picks.

In terms of second picks, after the "high profile" teams are gone, you'll have to start looking towards teams that will synergize with the first two robots. For example, if you have two robots that are designed for specifically offense, you'll be looking for a robot that will round out your alliance's strengths and provide assistance to the first two robots (a pure assist or strong inbounding assist robot)

With these three robots, you'll have a solid offensive line that can compete in the outscoring competition.

I believe that if teams are conservative, they'll look for a robot that can substitute for one of the three robots in the original alliance, such that they can prepare themselves for a robot break or injury, and not lose as much.

However, if the alliance believes that all of their robots are solid, they'll look towards a robot that can be switched in on the off chance that they will lose an all-out scoring match, and thus look towards a strong defensive robot with a powerful auton presence.

In your first couple of sentences, you appear to be equating team age to robot quality. I'm not sure what your intent was, but I can assure you that there are some rookies this year, as there are every year, that could compete with and beat teams many years their senior.