[theycallhimtom]

I think because of the matching algorithm the alliance selections will be a lot more interesting this year. A team can be ranked very high if it played an easy team every single match. A good scouting team will be valuable.

So far the matches have mostly been well played (I'm on drive team so I don't get to watch many matches). I am a little surprised by the number of bots who have a hard time picking up rings. Overall at this point in the game a strong ramp bot is about all that a team needs to win as very few games go over 30 or 60 points from the rack. That might change later with a couple of good scoring bots on the same team in finals.

Penalties have been somewhat nonexistent. Touching controls/throwing rings early has been a big one (and those penalties decided some matches). There was the occasional going into the other teams home zone at the end of the match. Also a few times a ramp would fold out outside of their home zone and exceed 72" by 72". No penalties in any of my matches. Not many penalties for pushing or things like that.

I think the highest scoring match was 128-0 and the highest combined score was 106 to 76 or something like that. The highest score might have changed later in the day.

One of the more interesting things that I have noticed is that all of the top robots are either scoring robots or ramp robots. There is not any really strong robot that has both a ramp and an arm. That really surprised me considering the number of teams with both a ramp and an arm.