[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by dmoody92

... We are wondering if not having a lifter is an almost automatic pass during selection. ...

Short answer is that not having a lifter shouldn't be an automatic pass during alliance selection.

As a case in point, the Granite State Regional was won this year by an alliance with three excellent ball-handling robots (1073, 1519, 1058), of which none could hang. In order to win the tournament, they defeated an alliance with two hanging robots in the semifinals (outscoring the opposition despite their two successful hangers) and the #1 seeded alliance in the finals (who had an awesome hanging robot that successfully hung in every match.) In short, if a robot can score more points through ball-handling (despite defense encountered in elims) than they can via hanging, the ball-handling robot will be a better pick. However, just because a "better pick" is out there doesn't ensure that alliance captains will make the right pick!

The answer to "who gets picked" really depends upon what alliance captains decide is important for their alliance. Our team has learned that a successful alliance captain needs to be careful to pick the best from the teams that are remaining to be picked, and not have a "pre-defined strategy" of what the three teams on the alliance should have for roles. In the past, we have fallen into this trap as alliance captains, and ended up getting defeated in the quarterfinals as a result of not remaining flexible to different alliance compositions that weren't our preferred composition.

For example, let's consider a sample scenario for this year's game: say the #4 alliance captain decides that the winning alliance needs to have a defensive robot that can hang, a mid-scorer, and a near-scorer. That should be an excellent strategy! The #4 alliance captain's team is the tournament's best near-scorer, so they use their first pick to get one of the only elite mid-scorers at the tournament. Then, after the picks of the other alliances, the few excellent hanging robots are all gone -- the only hanging robots left aren't particularly reliable. However, there's also another excellent mid-scorer available that was low-seeded and wasn't noticed by the mediocre scouting of the #5-#8 alliance captains. If the #4 alliance captain sticks with their philosophy of the "ideal alliance" and insists on picking one of the sub-par hanging robots, they aren't likely to win the tournament. On the other hand, if they remain flexible, pick that excellent mid-scoring robot, and then determine roles on their alliance best suited to the pair of excellent mid-scoring robots and their own near-scorer, they are likely to win.

In short, Art Dutra's comment above is spot-on. What makes robots into excellent picking candidates is being the best at something -- the best hangers will almost surely be picked for alliances, as will the best ball-scorers and the best ball-movers. Build one of those and you've got a good shot at being on the winning alliance at a regional! The "jack of all trades" robot tends to suffer from being the "master of none."