unique strategies that worked....... or didn't

[who716]

Now that the 2014 robotics season has come to an end. Many people like me, may be looking back at match videos reminiscing at the good times we had.
Our team has played in a whopping 65 matches, therefore we have been apart of nearly 65 different strategies (no one strategy is the same.)Knowing that there have been 10665 total matches played im sure there have been ALOT of strategies deployed.

at our most recent offseason event, (battle cry) we were the 19th alliance (716,181,2468) going against the number 2 Alliance, of (125,195,1474) if you are familiar with the number two alliance robots' then you know that they are a regional winning alliance for sure.
During our discussion of strategy our alliance partner came up with doing a one assist cycle and stopping them on defense with the other two robots.
I was skeptical at first, as the 2 alliance is capable of putting up big point quickly, but we were down one and had to try something so I said "lets do it"
To my surprise it worked, 181 would in-bound/truss/ score in the top all by itself. while 2648 and 716 would play the defense roll. At the end of the match we won 95-90 with the foul points subtracted (there was a total of three technical foul 1 on our alliance two on opponents alliance)
we came back with the same approach in quarter final 3-3 and took that match by 20 points with a Tec foul against us. They were brutal matches to say the least but it surprised me to see this strategy worked.


What other UNIQUE strategies have you used??

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by who716

while 2648 and 716 would play the defense roll. At the end of the match we won 95-90 with the foul points subtracted (there was a total of three technical foul 1 on our alliance two on opponents alliance)
we came back with the same approach in quarter final 3-3 and took that match by 20 points with a Tec foul against us. They were brutal matches to say the least but it surprised me to see this strategy worked.

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

[Chinmay]

Which is why I think the large amounts of technical fouls were called in those matches... I think you're going a bit far by implying that the strategy that the other alliance used was to break your alliances robots. Things break when defense is played... Fouls are called

Back on subject, I think that one of the most effective things I saw was the "pass back" to a human player but bouncing the ball off a robot, or throwing it into a robot and having the robot spit it right back out.

Another team effectively set up the equivalent of a "full court shot" for this years game by inbounding straight to a truss shot that would land near the far wall every time. Freed up the last robot to always play defense.

As for the strategy you guys used, I think that the number of offensive versus defensive robots each side chose to use in a match was almost like a Rock Paper Scissors game. The team with the lower chance of winning needs to switch things up because head to head, they wouldn't stand a chance. I saw a match earlier in the season with an autonomous mode followed by a 3 man defense for the win. All depends on the situation

[NotInControl]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

This happened at battlecry? I must have missed it. Ouch. How does that even happen? We had a match in quals early on where our air dump valve was hit during a match, dumping all air, and rendering our shooter and intake useless. This year is a tough year from a defense perspective.


I think one of the best strategies I've seen all year is using the human player to quickly pass the ball between alliance robots. At Champs, certain teams would intake the ball and then quickly spit it back out to the human player so they could then inboud it to another robot and pick up a quicker assist.

I don't recall the particular alliance at the moment, but at champs one alliance was inbounding, then quickly shooting cross field to their other human player to get around defense and using the other human player to get the ball into their alliance partner's robot to pick up the assist and score.

It was extrmely effective and enjoyable to watch.

Edit: Chinmay beat me to it. That "pass back" strategy was awesome. And Just for the record, I agree with them whole heartedly about choosing your words wisely.

Originally Posted by Chinmay

... I think you're going a bit far by implying that the strategy that the other alliance used was to break your alliances robots. Things break when defense is played... Fouls are called...

I do not believe any damage was due to malice intent. Esp at BattleCry. BattleCry is one of the friendliest events I have the privelege to attend with some of the most gracious and world-class teams around. I don't even remember what match robot or alliance our air valve was hit in, because it wasn't important, it was no ones fault. We've all been doing this for many year. These things happen. It is not intentional, and I would never even hint that it was.

[Ginger Power]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124547&highlight=how+viable+is+fu ll+court

I think full court assisting proved to be very effective. Team 900 and many other teams did very well with the strategy. A long shot to the human player shortened cycle times, was extremely difficult to defend and worked with any combination of alliance partners. At the Minnesota State Championship all 4607 did throughout the entire event was FCA to the human player and we ended up captaining the #2 alliance to the Finals.

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by NotInControl

This happened at battlecry? I must have missed it. Ouch. How does that even happen? We had a match in quals early on where our air dump valve was hit during a match, dumping all air, and rendering our shooter and intake useless. This year is a tough year from a defense perspective.

Yeah, in our first match at CMP our kill-switch got hit by one of 5291's protrusions. We put some lexan on that face of the robot after that.

[Chinmay]

[/quote]
I don't even remember what match robot or alliance our air valve was hit in, because it wasn't important, it was no ones fault. We've all been doing this for many year. These things happen. It is not intentional, and I would never even hint that it was.[/quote]

I love battlecry and I agree with you completely. I was just cautioning against making a rush judgement in a "strategy" thread about heavy defense or isolating a ball as intentional/strategic. Read carefully (not your post) and I think you'll see what I'm talking about


There was a robot or team I remember from earlier this season called secret sauce or got sauce or something about sauces (I know I'm making a bit of a fool of myself here but I wanted to remind people about that robot). They posted videos of the full court assists way back in the early weeks and I was amazed at how accurate they could be. I am pretty sure they inbounded and just hucked the ball to their other human player across the truss across the field.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by Chinmay

There was a robot or team I remember from earlier this season called secret sauce or got sauce or something about sauces (I know I'm making a bit of a fool of myself here but I wanted to remind people about that robot). They posted videos of the full court assists way back in the early weeks and I was amazed at how accurate they could be. I am pretty sure they inbounded and just hucked the ball to their other human player across the truss across the field

The team was 900 The Zebracorns. They did full court assisting better than anybody.

[GKrotkov]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

The team was 900 The Zebracorns. They did full court assisting better than anybody.

I don't know if it was better than anybody. 203 + 25 would give them a run for their money. (Ignoring, of course, consistency.)
Bit of MAR pride here, look at the last cycle for the blue alliance:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014mrcmp_qm47

[Canon reeves]

Our team had a last minute design so we didn't get to do much refining to make it better, but our strategy seemed to do pretty well for the resources and experience we had. We made a robot that is just under 5', and made it open up the full 20 inches on both side and had a sloped net in it. Needless to say it was great to develop strategies with because we could catch easily providing the 3rd assist, and we could block just about any shooter there was just by being in front of them. While catching wouldn't have been the best strategy on einstien for sure, it was still very useful at our regional and we got picked 8th because of it. It was somewhat surprising how in all of our matches we had pretty much the same strategy and that was a 60 point cycle or us playing defense and alliance members scoring. I can only imagine how much better it would've been if our robot did reboot every 20 seconds!

In all reality though, our robot's design coupled with an outstanding 6 CIM drivetrain could've really been a great defender. We were able to really get inside our opponents heads some matches because we wouldn't let them score any missed auto balls and that would throw of their game.

A strategy I really wish we could've used was in the Arkansas elims, we were on the 8th seed alliance and were going against 16, 3937, and 4500. 4500 was not working right, but 16 and 3937 were still a great offensive power. Our alliance chose to try to out score them by running 60 point cycles. What I wish we had done was spend the first 45 seconds of the match making it extremely difficult for the other alliance to score, getting in their heads and making them get frustrated by playing hard defense, then trying to score as much as possible while still slowing down their alliance. Our robot rebooted early in the match, but towards the end we were able to play a little defense on bomb squad and block a last minute truss.

[Jscout11]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

I don't know if it was better than anybody. 203 + 25 would give them a run for their money. (Ignoring, of course, consistency.)
Bit of MAR pride here, look at the last cycle for the blue alliance:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014mrcmp_qm47

I'll second this. 203 was a really fun robot to play with at MAR Champs. We ran a similar strategy with them in Quals Match 8 (without catching) and it worked very well. 900 may have a little bit of an edge though because they can make it over to the human player, so they don't need to rely on niche catchers or even just robots that can catch well to not have to sacrifice time and ball control by just launching downfield

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Jscout11

900 may have a little bit of an edge though because they can make it over to the human player, so they don't need to rely on niche catchers or even just robots that can catch well to not have to sacrifice time and ball control by just launching downfield

900 also is taller. Their height and shot trajectory is such that they cannot be blocked.

[pabeekm]

Originally Posted by Chinmay

There was a robot or team I remember from earlier this season called secret sauce or got sauce or something about sauces (I know I'm making a bit of a fool of myself here but I wanted to remind people about that robot). They posted videos of the full court assists way back in the early weeks and I was amazed at how accurate they could be. I am pretty sure they inbounded and just hucked the ball to their other human player across the truss across the field.

That was us. The Secret sauce strategy won us the NC regional and got us the creativity award at Archimedes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjSUAmLFnwY

We even added automatic vision targeting for championships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT2OmzrAhPI

We on team 900 love our sauce .. our competition robot was named Hot Sauce and our practice robot was called Not Sauce.

[Chinmay]

Originally Posted by pabeekm

That was us. The Secret sauce strategy won us the NC regional and got us the creativity award at Archimedes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjSUAmLFnwY

We even added automatic vision targeting for championships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT2OmzrAhPI

We on team 900 love our sauce .. our competition robot was named Hot Sauce and our practice robot was called Not Sauce.

Wow. I didn't know if I was making things up but I remembered both hot sauce and secret sauce and I'm glad it was right congrats on a great season! Lots of ppl can learn from that strategy for remaining offseason events

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I heard that isolating your opponents ball works great too.

yes.

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

And yes. This was unpenalized as well...after we were penalized for a similar foul in the same match. I'm still shocked the sidecar and the printer cable were able to be replaced in less than 10 minutes.

Its safe to say one alliance was allowed to play defense, and the other wasn't.