Quote:
Originally Posted by Racer26
Don't get me wrong, I agree it is rarely the optimum usage of an alliance to do everything yourself and carry your alliance partners, and those top teams recognize that too.
I'm merely stating that the perennial powerhouses will be ABLE to carry their alliance to those 2 ranking points without help, in the event of barely functional alliance partners. As always in FRC, the best defense is an untouchable offence. The 2013 Championship Alliance mentioned earlier in this thread and other powerhouse offensive teams routinely embarrass all but the best defense by simply being faster, more agile, and better practiced. The best drivers practice executing their offensive strategy under defensive pressure, and since most defense is an afterthought, the drivers are usually less practiced, and the offence simply drives circles around them.
I'm expecting that at CMP the GDC will be taking their option to adjust the number of BOULDERs required to weaken the TOWER, as many teams present will be able to score 8 BOULDERs alone.
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To be fair, they do need to get their partners to at least cross a defense and help them capture, but I agree with most of this. I just think that the majority of "strong" offensive teams early in the season will really be good-ish drivers with functional robots, and they won't be good enough to outplay some smart defending. There will always be teams that really are that good, though.
I also predict that the tower will get strengthened for CMP, although that provision has been in the rules for a number of years now and has never been used.
Quote:
Originally Posted by evanperryg
I think it's interesting that you bring this up, because I had a feeling the game would progress exactly the opposite of how you described. At low-to-medium levels of play, I expect to see no robot that can solo a breach and a capture in the same match. At higher levels, even, I predict that no more than 3 teams will do this in the first 4 weeks of competition. As a result, I think it will be much more likely to see alliances that have one robot breach and one robot capture at early events, and at lower levels of play. However, as the game gets more advanced, and fields get deeper, I expect to see alliances with three robots all capable of contributing high goal shots and defense crosses. Utilizing all three of these robots most efficiently could entail many things, based on their relative strengths and weaknesses. However, in the case of an alliance with three hybrid scorers, I expect them to all contribute to both objectives.
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At low/medium levels of play, there will be all sorts of bumbling around and that may involve a division of breaching and scoring robots, but those matches won't be very high-scoring or interesting to watch. The unlikelihood of getting three or even two of the robots you described together on an alliance will inhibit the hybrid alliance strategy. I think that the qualification matches of a team that ends up seeding very high in the first couple weeks will feature that team scoring points wherever they can and their partners struggling to get through the class A and C defenses or defending the whole match. Very rarely will an alliance breach and weaken in one match, but many of the times that it does happen, I think one robot will be responsible for a majority of the breaching and a majority of the scoring. The other partners still will probably be focused on those one or two defenses that the shooter doesn't want to worry about.
What I consider specialization, which I don't expect until the second half of the season, it one robot staying in the opponents' courtyard and collecting balls that were deposited by another robot feeding and breaching at the same time. I know it's a goal for a lot of teams to be this feeder robot, and I think that's a great strategy to go for because it can allow you to be quite productive, but I think the population of these robots that work effectively will be quite small in the first few weeks and so they won't take over the game dynamic from the start. Once those robots become common and effective, some will get efficient enough to convince a shooter that they can handle breaching and feeding, and that's when scores will begin to take off.
When you mention having three capable robots together, though, I think that that setup will lend itself to the strongest shooter taking over and getting part-time help from one partner who also plays intermittent defense, while the third is the dedicated breacher/feeder. We saw something similar a lot in 2012, where one robot would stay on offense shooting, one would shoot some but collect balls from the defensive side of the field, and the other would stay on defense, potentially lob stolen balls over the bump, and initiate the balance sequence. I don't expect many alliances of three robots playing relatively equivalent roles.
Of course, I could be underestimating the level of play overall, in which case the "lone wolf" alliances won't come to exist as often.