Playing a different game on Einstein

[MaxMax161]

I've been watching a lot of match video and thinking about how this year's game play will be different on Einstein and in elims compared to in qualifying matches. It seems that teams in qualifying matches were flooding the field with tubes and it seemed that the better hangers would win, unless someone had a working minibot in which case the game was there's. Robots rarely needed to travel far for their tubes and could score pretty much as fast as they could lift. However in most emils I saw that there was a lot less tubes on the field and robots had a harder job of finding tubes to hang. What do you guys think the game on Einstein is going to look like? Will there be a ton of tubes, a few, or none at all on the field. Will teams be to afraid to make a mistake and give their opponent a tube with a bad throw and come to the feeder station instead? Will teams flood the field and just focus on hanging faster? Something else?

[Brian Ha]

I think the alliances with the minibot power will use a starvation tactic while the alliance with less power will go more with flooding. The alliances with minibots will hang wat they can but really their dependent on their minibots winning. and then there will be alliances where they can do everything and ill bet on them just launching tubes so they can outscore the other team

[Jared Russell]

In more than half of the Einstein matches, I would expect to see:

* All 6 ubertubes hung
* At least 8 total logos (red + blue)
* All four minibots hitting the top before the 8 second mark

And my dark horse prediction that I hope doesn't come true:
* I think someone will deploy a minibot with ~10.3 seconds left on the clock, and whether or not the refs both see and call it will decide the World Champion

[Brian Ha]

I think he meant more in tube throwing and starvation but i agree with you very much

[Greg Leighton]

My vision would be this: a systematic combination of accurately throwing tubes and picking up tubes from the feeding lane. I think by the time we get to Einstein you should see great tube throwing human players, especially when it comes to throwing the circle. I think at the very least the circle will be thrown into the alliances safe zone consistantly enough that teams will be able to time this to where they will hang a triangle or square and the circle will coviently be waiting next to them to score. As far as picking tubes up from the lane, you probably wont see a lot of teams going all the way to the far end of the lane to be hand fed, these robots will be too good at floor pickup for that. So you will probably see the human players putting the tubes at the end of those lanes.

That is all assuming you do not have a good defensive bot or feeder bot, which I think you will see both of those on Einstein as well. I would both hate and love to see a wall bot but I think you will see one of those as well

[Brian Ha]

There are a couple really cool looking wall bots out there but man they are gonna be a pain in the arse

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Brian Ha

There are a couple really cool looking wall bots out there but man they are gonna be a pain in the arse

A thought that has been nagging me over the first two weeks of competition:

There will be three robots on the World Champion alliance. 98% of FIRST seems to have designed with tube scoring in mind. Yet every single piece of evidence I have seen and experienced with this game shows that three tube scorers on one alliance is a crowd - you invariably get in each others' way as you try to fill up the rack. And there are likely going to be dozens of robots that will be able to reliably score at least 2 logos by themselves by the time St. Louis rolls around (I have been to two Regionals in person and witnessed perhaps 6-8 teams capable of this already).

Will the winning alliance's third robot simply be another scorer? Will it be a scorer pressed into defense/tube shuttling duty? Or will it be a purpose-built third robot (think 148 from 2008)?

[Swampdude]

I think 2 good tube scorers, 3 ubertubers or 1 bot that can do 2 and another does 1. I definitely see 1 defender on each alliance. There's just not enough room for 3 scorers to work together effectively. Then some wicked fast minibot matches. All 4 minibots hitting the top within a second of each other. visually we won't know who won other than the indicators.
Throwing Vs human load: I still don't get the throw them all out there strategy. Everyone thinks human load is a handycap but I think we proved that untrue. There's a dynamic that happens with us on the field that isn't obvious. Since we do not throw tubes out, our ground loading partner gets a chunk of the other teams tubes along with their own. But there's missing tubes on the floor when we play that I think is statistically playing into our favor. So I think 1 ground loader, 1 human loader and 1 defender is optimal. We also draw attention away from our ground loading partner while traversing the field. I think after the top row is done middle is bonus but minibots are really the only way to win the match after the top rows are filled.

[RMiller]

Originally Posted by Jared341

... And there are likely going to be dozens of robots that will be able to reliably score at least 2 logos by themselves by the time St. Louis rolls around (I have been to two Regionals in person and witnessed perhaps 6-8 teams capable of this already).
...

Out of curiosity, where were these teams getting the tubes from? How well defended were they?

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by RMiller

Out of curiosity, where were these teams getting the tubes from? How well defended were they?

Mostly from the floor, but a few teams (1218 in NJ and 179 in FL jump to mind) reliably scored 4+ tubes per match using nothing but human loading.

I have seen plenty of (attempts at) defense, but I have not yet seen a strong scorer get truly shut down. The human loaders tend to be fast and agile enough to squeeze by defense into the zone, while the floor loaders with good human players seldom need to leave the zone to find a tube.

[Greg Leighton]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Yet every single piece of evidence I have seen and experienced with this game shows that three tube scorers on one alliance is a crowd - you invariably get in each others' way as you try to fill up the rack.

Will the winning alliance's third robot simply be another scorer? Will it be a scorer pressed into defense/tube shuttling duty? Or will it be a purpose-built third robot (think 148 from 2008)?

I've been thinking the same thing, I imagine there might be a couple alliances that can figure out the three offensive bot scenario but here is my list of what I think your third alliance partner will consist of (in order of usefulness).

1. Wallbot
2. Feeder bot (aka robot with great pickup and driving ability)
3. Another strong offensive bot
4. An elite minibot robot (this would allow for one of your top two bots to score tubes during the race portion of the match)

Now you very well may see a combination of those things but thats what I perdict.

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by Greg Leighton

4. An elite minibot robot (this would allow for one of your top two bots to score tubes during the race portion of the match)

I really hope alliance captains don't rely on only two minibot-ers this year. It reminds me of '08 when the "ideal" alliance only needed two hurdlers and one lapper. Which was great, until one hurdler broke... and then your alliance loses in semi's even though it was practically guaranteed that you'd get to go to Atlanta.

Not that I was effected by this personally at all.


<3 you 1625, 1730

[RMiller]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Mostly from the floor, but a few teams (1218 in NJ and 179 in FL jump to mind) reliably scored 4+ tubes per match using nothing but human loading.

I have seen plenty of (attempts at) defense, but I have not yet seen a strong scorer get truly shut down. The human loaders tend to be fast and agile enough to squeeze by defense into the zone, while the floor loaders with good human players seldom need to leave the zone to find a tube.

Thanks for the information. The better teams I saw at Lake Superior were all floor loading. A couple were able to get two logos themselves when they had tubes available (even as far as their towers) and had minimal defense.

[Greg Leighton]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

I really hope alliance captains don't rely on only two minibot-ers this year. It reminds me of '08 when the "ideal" alliance only needed two hurdlers and one lapper. Which was great, until one hurdler broke... and then your alliance loses in semi's even though it was practically guaranteed that you'd get to go to Atlanta.

Not that I was effected by this personally at all.


<3 you 1625, 1730

I imagine on Einstein all robots on the field will have a minibot, atleast that was my assumption when I posted that comment. The thought I was trying to get across was that when picking for eliminations you may see an alliance persuaded to pick a team based on having an especially good minibot, one that stood out from the rest. I imagine the first two bots will have minibots that work just maybe not as good an elite minibot that the third pick might have.

[MaxMax161]

Hmm unless there was an amazing defense bot that didn't have a minibot and the other two alliance partners had really reliable minibots, which could happen, I think all robots on Einstein alliances are going to have a minibots.

What do you guys think is the best way to counter an alliance with really strong minibots and good hanging (about 3 logos a match) if you're a team with good minibots and really strong hanging (4+ logos a match), and vise versa?