How do you decide your strategy?

[NagyH]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

How does your team decide on the strategy you will be using for the game? Is it something pre-determined, something that a small council or subteam makes? Something your mentors do? Or is it a whole team decision?

I ask, because, in the past for our team, we have made it a whole team decision. This is getting quite unweildly, for our 50 person team, and has provided very little advantage (besides everyone is dedicated to the robot...but even then, it can be only 51%). We are curious as to what other teams have been doing, in the hope that we can update our process.

At Kickoff, we gather our entire team (plus mentors and parents). For starters, we watch the game animation multiple times and skim over the rules, as a whole.

Next, we split everyone into small groups of about 8-10. In our small group discussions we discuss possible game play methods, best ways to score, most important aspects of robot/game, game time allocation, possible chokehold strategies, etc. Every group basically analyzes the game and brings up any questions or concerns.

It is essential to recognize that during this entire process we explicity ensure that no technical/design concerns are brought up. We are soley analyzing the game and the aspects our robot should have. For example, rather than saying "6 wheel drive would be best so it can traverse the field quickly." We would say "Robot needs to be agile and be able to quickly traverse the field.

After these discussions, we join back together as a whole and each small group presents their ideas. From these ideas, we can prioritize what are the most important aspects our robot should have, what is the best way to score, which scoring method would be more essential, etc.