Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
...Late in the season a new method emerged; consisting of quickly passing the ball back to the human player immediately after an inbound, and having that human player throw it to a second robot. This was used plenty during qualifications at MAR champs (as far as I can tell 1089 was the first team to use this), but really gained popularity in St. Louis, to the point where two different Einstein alliances (2590 with Archimedes and 973 with Galileo) used this method to rapidly register an assist without much risk of losing a ball.
You can find similar distinctions defensively, as well. 1712 developed different methods of harassing various inbounders, based on their machine's design. If a team didn't establish firm control of a ball during an inbound, we knew that a well-timed impact could knock the ball loose before they registered a possession. Others we opted to keep away from the inbounding position, since it was difficult to load them at range. Team 2590 could use their arm to disrupt pass-through inbounding and kiss pass attempts. Team 118 used their height to disrupt 254 from being able to score. 1625's swerve (tank?) and drive team were able to punish 33 for their drivetrain selection during the Archimedes finals.
There are plenty of examples of robot-specific match-up that opened new tactical options in this game, plenty more than I've seen in most recent games. Ultimate Ascent was pretty much limited to blocking lower release point full court shooters (or a rare attempt at blocking pyramid shooters), otherwise was limited to pushing matches and parallel play. You didn't really tailor your tactical decisions based on machine characteristics, beyond how many discs a team could score.
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Sean, I don't disagree with your list of tactics. (Well, except bouncebacks and wall balls weren't a late-season development; at least for us they just were net negative until D got really good.) But I disagree that UA didn't have such tactical moves. I remember learning how/when to hit different robots to force misses or jams, pressure into them their pyramid, or interrupt unprotected loading. There was blocking the LZ based on drivetrain, forcing susceptible traffic through a 'mine field' on upside-down discs (which was also an issue working with allies), knowing how and when to risk pyramid defense or through-traffic, bogging down an LZ cycler to screw up a full court ally... not to mention just managing your own alliances traffic to keep routes as fast and robust as possible. In fact, guiding ally and opposing traffic was arguably more critical in UA than AA, since the 'routes' were more defined and particular. We needed to know exactly how long to hold an opponent to force the largest point differential, both in terms of cycle time vs match time and in changing up traffic patterns. This stuff is huge, and it's huge every year; it's just the logistics that vary.