[Frenchie]

In my opinion, the best alliance needs everything in pairs:

2 good scorers
2 good ramps
2 strong drivetrain (capable of playing defense)

That means you get:
1 robot with ramp and scoring ability
1 robot with strong drivertrain and scoring ability
1 robot with ramp and strong drivetrain

This allows you to play each match differently. The opposing alliance will never know who's going to go open their ramp, what kind of defense they have to expect and they cannot double team one of the scorers because that would mean leaving the other one alone.


I believe all alliances will NEED a ramp. The ramp has several advantages:
1) psychological advantages. A rampless alliance usually fears an alliance with a ramp. This sometimes lead alliances to make mistakes such as driving in the homezone in the end to prevent ramping, stopping their scoring to try to defend the other team's ramp, etc...
2) All alliances will have at least one (1) good scorer. An alliance with slightly better scoring capability might win the rack, but I'm sure a defensive atlanta alliance will be able to put on enough tube to make it impossible to have long rows... Hence improving their chances to win on the ramp.
3) Guaranteed 60 points at the end of each match (I'm sure Atlanta will have enough good ramps to call it "guaranteed" in some alliances). Week 5 regionals confirmed that ramp could win even the toughest matches in most cases.

Francois.