Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
A semi-related tangent based on some of the discussion on the last page about dumpers vs. shooters.
I was talking to some other mentors before Einstein started, and the general attitude among the group was "I wish I built a turreted shooter instead of a dumper." Granted, these were teams who were very capable of building shooters with high rates of fire (one of these teams did just that in 2006). But given the style of play, particularly in Atlanta, the ability to aim without repositioning your robot was very valuable. The amount of time it took orienting and lining up with some of the dumpers was a definite disadvantage, even if they had a slightly higher firing rate than the shooters.
After all, in many ways it's cycle time that matters, not just firing rate.
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This was especially true for alliances that employed strategies based on field starvation - such as 217, 68, 247.
The goal was to maximize your own alloted 60 moonrocks, while giving as few away as possible to your opponents to score. Net scoring principles applied this year to full effect - a moonrock missed by your human player, dropped by your robot, then scooped by and converted by your opponent was a double whammy.
What to do? Human load moonrocks into reliable volume scorers, never let those moonrocks hit the ground, and have no more than one robot rely on scooping off the ground the entire match, make sure your HPs take only the highest % shots. Make sure that ground loader robot is fast, and can convert shots quickly, as if there are only 4-5 balls in the area, it can scoop them up and score them lightning fast. The hope is, there are few, if any moonrocks on the field, and you've starved your opponents of ammunition, while you in turn have converted their misses.
Not a complicated strategy, but wholly effective when executed right.
Two top loaded volume power dumpers, and a quick-cycle turreted shooter would've been the right mix to execute this gameplan -
and those of us on Curie saw plenty of it.