How Will Logomotion Play Out and Develop?

[Wayne TenBrink]

Now that we are all bagged & crated and waiting for the Week 1 events, how do you expect to see Logomotion be played and develop as the season progresses?

- How much will the average scores increase over the course of the season?
- How effective will defense be?
- Will alliances use feeder bots & hangers, or will it be every team for itself?
- Will tubes be fed through the slot or thrown?
- What will dominate - Grippers or Roller Claws? Rotating arms or Elevators?
- Will floor loading be as important as many think?
- Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?
- How will minibots develop? Will they all be similar by Championship?
- How would you like to see the game played?

[Alex Cormier]

- How much will the average scores increase over the course of the season?
I say close to double, starting at 40.

- How effective will defense be?
Not really early on, will be stronger towards champs.

- Will alliances use feeder bots & hangers, or will it be every team for itself?
Each regional will probably see the same, a change from quals to elims. Quals will be some what self, elims will be more like one team.

- Will tubes be fed through the slot or thrown?
Early weeks, maybe see more thrown, later weeks feed/kept in safe zone.

- What will dominate - Grippers or Roller Claws? Rotating arms or Elevators?
Split decision, I helped build an elevator with a roller claw.

- Will floor loading be as important as many think?
Yes. x3

- Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?
Early weeks yes, later weeks it should even out.

- How will minibots develop? Will they all be similar by Championship?
I don't think the same way as others on this one. I dn't think we will see a drastic copy cat come champs. The basis is, team will be keeping those as little secret. Also they are so complicated to gain the .5sec edge.

- How would you like to see the game played?
I would love to see one main scorer and two feeders. Gather all tubes, last 30 seconds the feeders get ready to deploy mini and the main scorer makes all logos.

My thoughts without seeing much week 0 footage and much testing of our own robot. We will be playing week 1 at FLR.

[Wayne TenBrink]

Here are my predictions - documented so I can eat them later:
- Early season average winning scores in qualification matches will be below 50. Early average losing score under 15. Late season average winning score around 100. Late season average losing score around 40. Late season elimination round scores will be higher and closer - around 120 to 90. High score 145.
- The impact of defense will decline as more alliances realize that their struggling partners are more valuable as feeders than as blockers. Fast hangers will be limited by tube supply and a feeder could increase their supply by a full Logo per match.
- More tubes will be thrown as the season goes on. It is faster than driving if done properly, and loose tubes won't turn out to be that big of a benefit to your opponents. You can afford to lose a few unless you plan on hanging 18 tubes a match. Besides, would you drive across the field to pick up a loose tube in a herd of bots if your feeder had just laid one in your safe zone? And how many robots playing defense will be good enough at floor pickup or herding to steal it from you?
- Floor pickup will be to Logomotion what ball handling was to Breakaway.
- The minibot race will become more exciting as the season goes on, but their actual influence will decline. If there is only one that works in a match, those 30 points will define the winner and be predictable. When there are four in a match, the net point margin will be less but it will be very fun to watch.
- I would like to see Logomotion turn into a speed contest with feeders and hangers working as a team, and where dedicated defense bots are seen as a sign of desperation by an alliance that knows it can't win the hanging race. I would like to see the rack scores close enough that its anybody's game going into the minbot race (except maybe when my team is out there).

[nuggetsyl]

- Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?

I think mini bots have way to much power in this years game. I am hoping to be wrong. It will make the end of the game more exciting to watch at the championship finals but IMO really boring in normal rounds because your going to have the haves and have not's.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

My Predictions:

- How much will the average scores increase over the course of the season?
Average scores will increase about 30-50% between week 1 and champs

- How effective will defense be?
Very effective. Many offensive teams will over estimate their bots scoring abilities and will be limites in scoring when good defense is played.

- Will alliances use feeder bots & hangers, or will it be every team for itself?
This will depend on the alliances robot capabilities and will change from match to match

- Will tubes be fed through the slot or thrown?
Thrown ... although I believe this will play into a defensive starvation strategy.

- What will dominate - Grippers or Roller Claws? Rotating arms or Elevators?
Minibots


- Will floor loading be as important as many think?
Yes


- Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?
Minibots will domonate ... although scoring may catch up by championships (unless defens proves as good as I believe it will be)

- How will minibots develop? Will they all be similar by Championship?
Teams will gravitate towards 4-5 effective designs.

- How would you like to see the game played?
Fairly ... with no major rule changes after week 1

[IKE]

Look through the old Looking Forward Posts. Reapply the titles to this years game, and you will have an accurrate portrait of how things will go.

[waialua359]

Teams that dont have minibots with a deployment will continue to NOT have one from weeks 1-6.
In any regional match, if one alliance can put two minibots on the pole and the other alliance cant put any, GAME OVER. As a scouter and coach, the first thing I am going to ask teams is about their minibots or lackthereof.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Lets see how wrong I can be.

- How much will the average scores increase over the course of the season?
At some of the first week events we will see matches regularly without any successful minibots. Meaning the scores will be in the 12-25 range. In eliminations that is going to rise to 80-100 range for the eventual regional winning alliance. As the season gets longer and minibots get better rarely will we see matches with less than 50 points being scored to win.

- How effective will defense be?
Not very, defense could have been a very good strategy but there are way too many rules that limit it this year. The pinning rule by itself makes defense very tricky because once an opponent touches anything teams are going to back away in fear.

- Will alliances use feeder bots & hangers, or will it be every team for itself?
Until the tube throwing stops feeder bots are not needed.

- Will tubes be fed through the slot or thrown?
Even if they are not thrown in to the open feeding through the slot will be very slow. I imagine teams will throw them to the end of their lane instead of to the middle of the field.

- What will dominate - Grippers or Roller Claws? Rotating arms or Elevators?
Roller Claws for sure!!
Arms and elevators it depends on who builds them, 148 has a 4 bar arm and 118 has an elevator both are amazing machines and are going to do really well. My team built a roller claw on an elevator that we think will work very well for how we are planning to play the game. I will say that the full double jointed arms are going to be very challenging for teams like they are every year.

- Will floor loading be as important as many think?
Will be make or break for teams. If you can't floor load passing tubes get's way harder and you can't get thrown tubes.

- Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?
Influence will decrease even into the elimination matches of week one because you will see 4 up in several matches.

- How will minibots develop? Will they all be similar by Championship?
There will be some similar designs but due to deployment some teams won't be able to change their minibot too much.

- How would you like to see the game played?
As it will be, with people adapting strategies and making their robots do things they didn't design for to try to gain an advantage. I love to see an alliance figure out how to beat a team in a novel way.

[PayneTrain]

- How much will the average scores increase over the course of the season?
33% from week one, with total scores going from 60 to 90. Champs are a whole other animal, where we could see max scores.

- How effective will defense be?
As a defender, i would be too worried violating one of the many rules to actually defend. So, no.

- Will alliances use feeder bots & hangers, or will it be every team for itself?
It will be every bot for itself, but I have not and do not anticipate seeing a feeder that moves faster than a robot's wheels.

- Will tubes be fed through the slot or thrown?
They will be slotted through early qualifications, but if you get the right bots and HPs in elims, we could see people chucking triangles to midfield.

- What will dominate - Grippers or Roller Claws? Rotating arms or Elevators?
The internal claw and 2-bar lift my team made. 5 second total lift, we believe XD

In numbers, I expect Grippers and arms, with some shoddy elevators. Success wise? I believe a high quality elevator can beat the arm, but a consistent elevator is a hard thing to ask for. I don't know how consistent ours is.

- Will floor loading be as important as many think?
I will restate as above; it will be make or break for teams.

- Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?
Also restating above: influence will decrease even into the elimination matches of week one because you will see 4 up in several matches.

- How will minibots develop? Will they all be similar by Championship?
I think teams will be able to master a minibot, by virtue of a simple set of parts, and an infinite amount of tetrix parts able to be brought in.

- How would you like to see the game played?
Making it a good defensive struggle, and figuring out how to devalue endgame. (improbable and impossible)

[Zoughtbaj]

In regard to defense, I'm starting to get the feeling that defensive teams, at least in qualifying matches, will be more of a hindrance rather than assistance. According to the scoring rules, the winning alliance will get as many points as the losing team gets, not including penalties, and the losing team is along the same lines, except with penalties. Under this guise, one might think that, even if you are losing, not to defend at all...

Not to mention, as has been mentioned, the penalties that can more easily be acquired from defending.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by Zoughtbaj

In regard to defense, I'm starting to get the feeling that defensive teams, at least in qualifying matches, will be more of a hindrance rather than assistance. According to the scoring rules, the winning alliance will get as many points as the losing team gets, not including penalties, and the losing team is along the same lines, except with penalties. Under this guise, one might think that, even if you are losing, not to defend at all...

Not to mention, as has been mentioned, the penalties that can more easily be acquired from defending.

Are you reading the 2010 rules? This year is Win/Loss/Tie. The ranking points are a tiebreaker, making defense a viable strategy this year.


I feel that defense will play a huge role, especially in the minibot race: If your team has a 4 second minibot, and another has a 2 second one, if your ally can delay the opposing team to the pole by just two seconds, then you've won the race. Thats an extremely small time margin!

[davidthefat]

Defensive bots are essential. The towers are on the side you are defending, the time to get to the towers are cut in half than when trying to score. Deny one "power house" bot from scoring the whole game, and get the minibot to successfully and get first, you have the potential of making a 58 point gap (assuming team is capable of making a logo on the top with the ubertube bonus)

[pfreivald]

In my analysis of the game, the offensive robot will be better able to use the tower as a pick than the defensive robot will, due to penalties for lane incursion. This in and of itself will limit (but not eliminate, of course) defensive effectiveness.

Have I missed something? Am I just flat wrong?

It's happened before. I hope it hasn't happened this time!

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

In my analysis of the game, the offensive robot will be better able to use the tower as a pick than the defensive robot will, due to penalties for lane incursion. This in and of itself will limit (but not eliminate, of course) defensive effectiveness.

Have I missed something? Am I just flat wrong?

It's happened before. I hope it hasn't happened this time!

I personally think that the offending robot would get the penalties, if there were to be any. (or at least in my interpretations of strategy). Now the robot DOING the ramming is getting the penalty I presume. What if my strategy just consists of getting in the way, driving perpendicular of the offending robot' velocity. Now work is not done by the defending robot in the collision, the offending bot is. Essentially it is a t bone crash.

[ttldomination]

How much will the average scores increase over the course of the season?

You'll see a linear increase, but I'm not convinced that the increase will be as large as everyone is saying. One has to remember that championships are a whole different caliber of playing. You often have 2-3 dominant robots that play on one field.

The field this year is deep and more teams than ever have finished their bots early and have posted that this is their best robot ever. I think that the high scores we see at a week 1 event like Alamo won't be too far off the mark from what we'll see all season.

How effective will defense be?

There will be that one defensive alliance that rides one main scorer to the finals. I can feel it.

Will alliances use feeder bots & hangers, or will it be every team for itself?
Feeder bots are becoming slightly obsolete. Why should I waste the effort of one robot to bring me tubes, when the human player can chuck the tube across the field?

Video of the Suffield Scrimmage shows a lot of tubes on the field. So if you can floor load, what's the point of a feeder again?

Will tubes be fed through the slot or thrown?
Thrown like no one's business. Good teams will want tubes coming fast. Some teams are counting on slot loading, and more power to them, but any time that isn't on the field is wasting points.

What will dominate - Grippers or Roller Claws? Rotating arms or Elevators?
Roller Claws and Presets will win matches.

Will floor loading be as important as many think?
Yes. Floor loading will make a difference this year. The amount of difference is up to the level of the field.

Will the minibots define the winners, or will their influence decrease as more teams get them working?
I agree with the general consensus that as matches get heated and as you get better and better teams playing, the minibot will decide things.

How will minibots develop? Will they all be similar by Championship?
I believe you'll see three tiers of minibots. Tier one is the team that chucked the tetrix GB and worked their own magic. Tier two is the team that did their best with the tetrix GB, and still put up a 2-3 minibot. Tier three are the minibots that are clunky, heavy, and slow.

By championships, I think we'll see more teams fall into tier two, but tier one will still be dominant.

How would you like to see the game played?
I want to see offensive battles. I want to 12-15 logos hung each match. I want to see scores climb high. I want matches to be close to the point where each tube matters. Defensive matches are a bore, but an offensive frenzy is something that everyone can enjoy, even if you're on the other side of the plastic.

And judging by the pure level of robots that we're seeing this year, I think that eliminations in general will be a roller coaster.

- Sunny