Originally Posted by GeeTwo
The strategy you intend to play determines what YOU need the robot to do. The game design includes point values, and those are certainly part of the weighting of the strategy selection, but after you select your strategy, you design to that.
For example, this year we realized that if we could cross both instances of four categories of defense, we could ensure (or nearly so) that we would get a qualification point each match, win or lose, and that if we got eight boulders in the tower AND everybody was mobile enough to get on the batter, there was another likely one. Scaling gave game points.
Based on these considerations, our strategy was to go after those QP first, working on additional game points as a secondary item. This put importance on being able to cross four classes of defense (all but the drawbridge and sally port), and also to be able to pickup, carry, and score boulders. Based on our strategy, the drive train, low ceiling, and CDF/portcullis manipulators were top priority, the boulder pickup, carry, and score was a close second, and scaling was a distant third.
Other robots seemed to focus on scoring boulders and scaling, and were able to only cross a few defenses (at least one I saw could only do the low bar going in, though of course it could do the drawbridge or sally port on the way out). This design was apparently based on a different game strategy, but the same game rules.
Edit: To further clarify, my "Analyzing the game" includes determining the payoff, difficulty, and risk of each game activity.
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