Theory: Low bar robots are a bad thing for Stronghold.
I'd argue that the competitive floor of Palmetto was no lower than it has been in previous years. The upper end included a number of very good low bar teams including the winning alliance captain 179.
Fact: Defense is back in a big (Good) way.
There was negligible defense played during quals because of all the incentives to breach and capture every match. Defense showed up at the higher levels i.e. playoffs, but it didn't detract from the excitement of the game, it enhanced it. Watching teams beat a defender to score was much more entertaining than seeing a robot hit every high goal, and taking their sweet time to do so. I think this dynamic will only expand as Stronghold evolves.
Theory: Low goals are automatic, and far easier for most teams than high goal.
Low goals proved to be exceedingly difficult for teams who slowly reversed their intake to score them. The boulder had a tendency to roll down the batter. It seemed to be less of an issue for the teams that shot the ball into the low goal, but that seemed rare. I think as Stronghold develops low goals will fade out and high goals will become the more efficient alternative for the top 10% of teams. The bottom 90% would still benefit from doing low goal.
Fact: High Goals are hard.
We knew they would be. Small goal, big ball. Pretty simple math. A large majority of teams shouldn't do high goal ever. A missed shot is a capture killer in many cases.
Fiction: The defenses are hard to cross.
Most teams were able to cross most defenses under ideal conditions. Obviously ideal conditions are hard to come by when you have three opposing robots ready to disrupt you at any time, but more often than not the disincentive for defense provided room for teams to cross defenses. I think most teams would benefit from getting a larger running start for the defenses. It seemed like a large majority were trying to slowly drive up the defenses. If you're not getting air, you're not going fast enough.
Fact: The seed of your alliance doesn't matter as much as it did for that 2015 game, whatever it was called.
In 2015 it was very easy to tell which teams were going to win an event. Just add OPR's and see who has the highest. This year, an 8 can beat a 1, and it's purely based on scouting and strategy. Stronghold is the most strategically deep game since 2013, and probably since long before then. Don't get me wrong, when the top 2 teams at an event pair up, they're inevitably going to be the favorite. I will side with Car Nack on this one and say that a non first seed will win the event for more often than a typical year.
Theory: Fouls will ruin the early weeks in a similar way to how they did in 2014.
Fouls changing the outcome of a match were a very rare thing during week .5. That could be because a lot of fouls weren't called that should've been, but at least that way it's less noticable. We'll see where things go from here with regards to the outerworks being a safe zone or not. If they're not then Stronghold is going to take a step in the wrong direction.
Fact: Climbing is rare, and it gives you a nice bonus.
Climbing will become so much more valuable when breaching and capturing becomes the norm for the playoffs (I'd wager by week 4 of 5). A climb on red cancels out 3 challenges by blue, that gives huge, match-swaying power to one robot. We didn't see climbing factor into the alliance selections so much at Palmetto, but I suspect that will change when there is more parity between the top breacher/shooters, making climbing the deciding factor.
Fiction: Having a high release point is a significant advantage.
It didn't seem that this was the case from the livestream, but obviously I wasn't out there coaching or driving. Most defensive robots seemed to play drivetrain interference, rather than blocking and the blocking that did occur didn't seem to be all that effective. I didn't see one deflected shot from a blocker, just missed shots from drivetrain interference.
Fact: Stronghold is going to be epic.
'Nuff said
