Starve Them!

[Jack Jones]

Why is it that team defense amounts to hammering on the three point shooter, then leaving them alone to go get more ammo once they've shot their load?

I could see how pride would work to force the teams to score a point or three, but leaving those Howitzers to reload and score ten times that just does not make sense.

Ram (err - bump - depends on who, where, and when) them in autonomous, then stick to them like glue. At least a chance to win beats no chance at all!

[MattB703]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

Why is it that team defense amounts to hammering on the three point shooter, then leaving them alone to go get more ammo once they've shot their load?

I could see how pride would work to force the teams to score a point or three, but leaving those Howitzers to reload and score ten times that just does not make sense.

Ram (err - bump - depends on who, where, and when) them in autonomous, then stick to them like glue. At least a chance to win beats no chance at all!

You are 100% right Jack. That was supposed to be our strategy in the Detroit finals, but if we stopped the Chickens, the Guerillas would get by us, or vise versa. We couldn't seem to stop them both.

Matt B.

[meaubry]

Jack,
After losing autonomous to the highly skilled and accurate 3 point shooters - You are forced to try and score during the next period (yours to score in and theirs to defend).
Side note-Which a flaw in the game design as the team that won autonomous is already rewarded with bonus points, and the team that lost is immediately required to reload taking time away from their offensive time length, all while the team winning autonomous is able to have their robots go and reload while playing defense. It would have been more interesting to see the team winning the auton period immediately go on offense, someone has to deal with the fact that you shot the balls and must collect more - why place that added burden on the team that is already 10+ points behind?
Back to your topic -
The robots cannot be in 2 places at once - they MUST score while still trying to stop the opposition from reloading. Take your choice, but in most cases the pill is bittersweet eitherway.
That strategy might work if that is the only way to even have a chance at winning - but with so many robots tipping over, the difficulty of the ramp climbing, the fact that teams can push your robot up the ramp and keep you there, the corner trap zones, and penalties, there is no assurance that the "don't let em' reload strategy would work either.
So, trying and dog them the entire match ends up being "pointless" to that team.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by meaubry

Side note-Which a flaw in the game design as the team that won autonomous is already rewarded with bonus points, and the team that lost is immediately required to reload taking time away from their offensive time length, all while the team winning autonomous is able to have their robots go and reload while playing defense. It would have been more interesting to see the team winning the auton period immediately go on offense, someone has to deal with the fact that you shot the balls and must collect more - why place that added burden on the team that is already 10+ points behind?

That is not a "flaw" in the game design. It is exactly what was intended. Play out the inverse in your head - really think it through. You will see that having the team that wins autonomous immediately go on offense would be the wrong thing to do.

-dave

[meaubry]

Originally Posted by dlavery

That is not a "flaw" in the game design. It is exactly what was intended. Play out the inverse in your head - really think it through. You will see that having the team that wins autonomous immediately go on offense would be the wrong thing to do.

-dave

Dave -
I have thought about it - alot. I have watched many matches and both Great Lakes and Detroit. It seems that the "lost time to reload" is penalizing teams that try to win auton but fall short. My observation is obviously just my opinion about the dynamics of the game period sequence.
I am not part of the game committee, so I cannot argue "intent". But, I do not see why it would be "the wrong thing to do". Please explain to me what you obviously think I am missing here. PM me if you want to - I have no problem discussing this that way either.

Mike

[Kevin Sevcik]

Mike,

I think as it stands, we can all see the large, large advantages to winning autonomous. 10 points, plus defense, offense, offense. It's a powerful combination. So, think about the inverse. The team that wins autonomous, call it Blue, goes on offense first. They've just shot all their balls to win auto, even if the Red team doesn't do anything. Worse, if they scored all the balls, then Red has complete control over those balls, and Blue is left with the 10 remaining balls in the bins. So, Blue gets maybe 10 more balls to work with, plus the reloading penalty. Red gets to starve Blue and be on offense 2 periods in a row. Worse, Blue can't reload for their final offense period until Red has scored points.

Overall, I think all that adds up to a disadvantage much larger than the 10-point bonus. So you'd have the odd situation of the really highly capable teams NOT wanting to win autonomous. It might be interesting to see robots aiming for opposing goals in autonomous trying to score just enough points to put the opposing alliance on offense first, but it wouldn't be right.

[Koko Ed]

I'm just glad autonomous means something again after two years of meaningless "victories" (ooo I released all the balls or cool I capped the center goal and got a couple more tetras).
The first year autonomous meant something because you have to clean up all those boxes that got thrown into your side of the field. It changed how you played the game. You see it this year and this is the way autonomous should be.

[Don Wright]

I think the way the game set up requires more thought into strategy. That way, if you choose to try and autonomous mode, you better win it or you are left with no balls to shoot and have to reload for most of your first offensive period.

There have been a few rounds where we knew we couldn't win autonomous and elected to keep the balls until the final round to score. We would reload our helix and then go and human load all the balls they scored with and then tried to score them in the final round. We would starve their human player so they couldn't reload.

It is risky, and it might burn us against really good opponents (or if you drop a chain like we did in Detroit), but it was the strategy we chose to take for that round.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

There have been a few rounds where we knew we couldn't win autonomous and elected to keep the balls until the final round to score. We would reload our helix and then go and human load all the balls they scored with and then tried to score them in the final round. We would starve their human player so they couldn't reload.

I thought that might have been one of your strategies. Especially if you were in an alliance with another shooter that might win auto by themselves. It was an awesome sight when you loaded and then in 2nd or 3rd period threw 25 or more balls up toward the goal.

I must hijack this thread to congratulate you on your performance this weekend in Detroit. (Despite the fact that your 12-0 record meant you defeated 1188 3 times on Saturday. And how did that alliance in last round of qualifying come about, anyway?) Usually there are about 3 tiers of robots in a competition - the good, the average, and , not being mean but realistic, the "thanks for trying". 469 was a cut above, creating it's own tier.

Back to whether winning autonomous mode gives the alliance too much of an advantage, wasn't that what was requested by many after the low benefit of scoring a vision tetra in Triple Play?

[Don Wright]

Originally Posted by GaryV1188

I must hijack this thread to congratulate you on your performance this weekend in Detroit. (Despite the fact that your 12-0 record meant you defeated 1188 3 times on Saturday. And how did that alliance in last round of qualifying come about, anyway?) Usually there are about 3 tiers of robots in a competition - the good, the average, and , not being mean but realistic, the "thanks for trying". 469 was a cut above, creating it's own tier.

Thank you for the compliments. We had a great weekend for sure. Our alliance partners were awesome and helped us finish the weekend with the win. It felt great especially after coming up a little short at GLR where we also went undefeated in qualifying, quarters, and semis, only to come up against two of the triplets in the finals giving us our only two losses of the season.

[Thread Content]

Dan, our lead strategist, came up with the requirements of our robot based on the same discussions we had concerning the game at the beginning of the season. We had to hold 30 balls, be very tough to move, have a turret to track the target, and have a good enough drivetrain to get out of a trapped position. I think our combination of maneuverability and speed in one mode and power in the other makes it difficult to trap us one-on-one. Then, if you put two robots on us, hopefully we have a partner like 217 that can also load up and get to shooting...

[Not2B]

Originally Posted by dlavery

That is not a "flaw" in the game design. It is exactly what was intended. Play out the inverse in your head - really think it through. You will see that having the team that wins autonomous immediately go on offense would be the wrong thing to do.

-dave

OK, good. That's what I thought.

I mean, if you win autonomous and go directly into offense, why bother shooting in auto mode?

It would be a bigger bang for the buck if you DIDN'T shoot in auto mode. Why let the tiny computer aim and possibly miss a bunch when you could wait and let the human (with a superior organic computer) aim and hit with higher accuracy later on. And it's not so much the aiming, but the decision to fire. In auto mode, the robot doesn't know it's about to get pushed... but the human can see that and hold off on firing.

Also, if you unload "Rambo style" into the goal and win... you are empty and just made your life harder.

In other words, had it been the other way, people would be "penalized" for having a shooting auto mode.

And I'm sure the GDC likes the increase in Auto modes. (Which, by the way, is really cool this year - best auto modes EVER.)

[meaubry]

[quote=Not2B]OK, good. That's what I thought.

I mean, if you win autonomous and go directly into offense, why bother shooting in auto mode?

To get the bonus points silly!

Don,
I agree strategy would be impacted and that was my point in the first place. Teams developing their strategy would have to decide not only how many shooters will attempt to win auton, but also if they need one of their partners to hold onto the balls in case they lose auton.
It just a different angle - and something to think about "what if". I doubt that it would cause the best auton teams any harm, other than reduce the initial auton score. Teams that can score in auton can obviously also score in Offense periods - so it really only is a matter of time and it also slightly reduces the # of blowouts.
The concept is dependent on seeding vs, elimination matches. I was thinking only about seeding matches and NOT about elimination matches.

[Not2B]

[quote=meaubry]

Originally Posted by Not2B

OK, good. That's what I thought.

I mean, if you win autonomous and go directly into offense, why bother shooting in auto mode?

To get the bonus points silly!

Of course the bonus points are good. But there is more to it than that. It comes down the the hidden value of going on defense first.

If you unload in auto mode and get 10 extra points, you spend the next 40 seconds wondering around. You are almost out of ammo. The op-force has no reason to feed you balls. They are reloading. When it switches, they are now fully loaded. Do you spend the time loading AFTER they score (slow loading) or do you prevent them from scoring? To recover 10 pts, you only need to shoot 3.33 balls - something easier to do if you are flush with ammo.

It's a wonderful problem to think about. So complex, and so many variable. Time to reload, time to pick balls off the floor, time for human player to toss the ball, heck - even time for the balls to run down the ramp and tube. If you are starving at the beginning, you don't practically feed again until 60 seconds into the game.

For my own curiousity, I checked the GLR scores. 18 out of 83 matches were decided on 10pts or less. (Which was more than I thought it would be.) 10 pts are important, but are they important to stop playing for almost half the game?

I like it today. It favours a strong auto mode. Grant it - not something 862 has, but I still like it.

Of course, I could have this totally wrong. I mean, I'm not Bill Beatty!!

[Paul Copioli]

Mike A,

I agree with you on most things, but not this one. I have to take Lavery's side on this one. Having the auton winner go on defense is an incentive to win auton. If it were the other way around, we probably would not have focused on auton as much.

If you do not think you can win auton, then don't shoot. Get in position and rapid fire as soon as your offensive round starts. You will overcome much of the auton deficit. I agree that winning auton is a big advantage, but not just because of the 10 points. The bigger advantage is the 80 seconds of continuous offense and the transition game that has to happen in the last 40 seconds for the team that loses auton.

I like all the different strategies that are involved in this game, but my head hurts after every match due to the incredibly fast pace. This is the hardest game I have ever had to coach. Thankfully, my student drivers are a lot smarter than me and covered for me on several occasions.

[BrianR]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Mike A,
If you do not think you can win auton, then don't shoot. Get in position and rapid fire as soon as your offensive round starts. You will overcome much of the auton deficit. I agree that winning auton is a big advantage, but not just because of the 10 points. The bigger advantage is the 80 seconds of continuous offense and the transition game that has to happen in the last 40 seconds for the team that loses auton.

At Midwest, this is exactly what team 71 did in the last match of finals. They were against team 111, who has a vicious automode, which is nearly impossible to stop due to their turret, and were winning auto every time, while 71 was wasting balls, as they were less accurate in auto than in human control. Thus they tried the strategy of saving their balls to have a huge first round, but they ended up in trouble because after emptying their stores, they went back to human load, and were blocked, not pinned, into the corner, and never made it back across half court.

Its an interesting strategy, but I am of the opinion that you must win auto mode if you want to win the match.