Minibot Strategy & Etiquette

[jvriezen]

I'm surprised no one has suggested this scenario:

Your opponent's minibot(s) are faster than yours (or closely matched). Then it might be wise to have your third bot trying to defend the opponent's minibot deployment. This can be done not only by bumping prior to 10 seconds (even if they are at the tower) but also by obscuring their driver's view of the tower so that they may not be able to visually align, or see the tower base lights (if that's is their human based triggering signal.

This will be more useful if it is a high tube scoring game and there aren't many tube points left to be had. MB defense causing 1st and 2nd place winners to be reversed results in a net gain of 20 points. Even if you only fluster the opponent drivers or bot for a fraction of a second, it may be enough to swing 20 points.

[Brandon Holley]

This issue became more prominent as the season went on and minibots became faster and more reliable.

The answer for me and my team was based on scouting. You must understand the capabilities of your partners just as well, if not better than your opponents. Understanding how consistent your entire alliance is will help you greatly to formulate a plan. If you anticipate a close match with good minibots on both sides, you must send your fastest and most reliable. Teams competing at championships must also understand that all teams are there to compete.

It's certainly a very tough discussion to have, particularly for a team just getting their system up and running and trying to show it off to scouts. Hopefully everyone can keep a cool head and realize that part of the competition is making concessions, yet understanding it's still a competition and teams are trying to win!

-Brando

[Ankit S.]

Originally Posted by jvriezen

Then it might be wise to have your third bot trying to defend the opponent's minibot deployment. This can be done not only by bumping prior to 10 seconds (even if they are at the tower) but also by obscuring their driver's view of the tower so that they may not be able to visually align, or see the tower base lights (if that's is their human based triggering signal.

As well as that, get in their way if they are not at their tower yet, just getting between them and the tower once is enough to miss the deployment time or allow alliance partners to deploy. It also works with any robot, as you don't need a defensive drive train to get in someones way, although it helps.

[Bjenks548]

It all depends on what your opponents have for minibots. If they have (a) none (b) slower then all 3 (c) close to the top 2 or (d) way faster then all 3
What I would do?
(a/b) two most reliable. If all are extremely reliable leave the best tube scorer off the poles
(c) Gotta send the two fastest, if there is a question of reliability send the 3rd one in as a back up in case one fails
(d) Again send the two fastest, but this time use the third to try to stop their fastest.
Just what I can think of off the top of my head, none of it is full proof but nothing in robotics ever is.

[Wayne TenBrink]

The amount of time required to align with the tower is also a factor. For an alliance with three comparable deploy/climb times, the one with the fastest alignment should be backup. If your backup can't get from where it is and deploy in about 5 seconds, you really don't have a backup.

Also, how much faith do you have in your alliance partners' self-reported minibot times? Personally, I think ours is alright, but I don't have high confidence in the accuracy of our hand-held stopwatch data. We hope to visit 2081's tower so we can report something a bit more objective.

[SamMullen]

Whenever this problem came up in Portland, we just went with whichever two robots had the most reliable deployment mechanisms, regardless of who had faster minibots, because we figured that making sure a minibot scored any points at all was the most important thing.