Thread: Starve Them!
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Unread 19-03-2006, 11:04
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Not2B Not2B is offline
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AKA: Brian Graham
FRC #0862 (Lightning Robotics)
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Re: Starve Them!

[quote=meaubry]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Not2B
OK, good. That's what I thought.

I mean, if you win autonomous and go directly into offense, why bother shooting in auto mode?

To get the bonus points silly!
Of course the bonus points are good. But there is more to it than that. It comes down the the hidden value of going on defense first.

If you unload in auto mode and get 10 extra points, you spend the next 40 seconds wondering around. You are almost out of ammo. The op-force has no reason to feed you balls. They are reloading. When it switches, they are now fully loaded. Do you spend the time loading AFTER they score (slow loading) or do you prevent them from scoring? To recover 10 pts, you only need to shoot 3.33 balls - something easier to do if you are flush with ammo.

It's a wonderful problem to think about. So complex, and so many variable. Time to reload, time to pick balls off the floor, time for human player to toss the ball, heck - even time for the balls to run down the ramp and tube. If you are starving at the beginning, you don't practically feed again until 60 seconds into the game.

For my own curiousity, I checked the GLR scores. 18 out of 83 matches were decided on 10pts or less. (Which was more than I thought it would be.) 10 pts are important, but are they important to stop playing for almost half the game?

I like it today. It favours a strong auto mode. Grant it - not something 862 has, but I still like it.

Of course, I could have this totally wrong. I mean, I'm not Bill Beatty!!
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