How do you decide your strategy?

[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.

[P.J.]

I don't have any super awesome advice, since my former team is having this same problem. But I would suggest talking to Karthik, from 1114. I've looked over some of the stuff he has posted on their website, and it was really helpful. He does a presentation at Nationals every year called "Effective FIRST strategies" (or something like that) and the powerpoint he uses is on the website.

I have his email written down somewhere, but I've been to nervous to use it so its not in my contacts. I think it's in the PowerPoint though.

I hope this helps a little bit, and I'm sure someone much more intelligent than me will respond soon.

[dudefise]

It's a whole team decision. We have a smaller team, but we make the "big" decisions as a team and then subgroups make the smaller decisions.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by P.J.

I don't have any super awesome advice, since my former team is having this same problem. But I would suggest talking to Karthik, from 1114. I've looked over some of the stuff he has posted on their website, and it was really helpful. He does a presentation at Nationals every year called "Effective FIRST strategies" (or something like that) and the powerpoint he uses is on the website.

I have his email written down somewhere, but I've been to nervous to use it so its not in my contacts. I think it's in the PowerPoint though.

I hope this helps a little bit, and I'm sure someone much more intelligent than me will respond soon.

Feel free to email mentors when you have questions like this. Don't be nervous to ask them for help, no matter how well known they are. They are, after all, mentors for a reason. It would probably be preferred if you just PM Karthik here on Chief Delphi though.

[BJT]

We think of all the different possible strategies and write each of them in little squares on a big piece of paper. Then we tell a freshman to go find a chicken. Place chicken on paper. First strategy pooped on wins.

[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.

[roboticsgoof95]

I was on the drive team my freshman year, you really have to know what your robot can and cannot do. You have to see where the drivers are comfortable with.
In breakaway, we had to figure out which part of the field our robot played best in. we played mid field, andd we lost all the matches, and then we moved the robot closer to us. I must say its all dependent on what you can do. Its alot to do with the drivers and how they strictly want to play.
You need the bond between the drive team and the mentors and the rest of the team. Im not saying that the drive team is the most important, but alot of the stategy falls on them.

(After the robots made^)

[roboticsgoof95]

Before the robot V

Well watch the animation several times, and then have several people come and think of different parts of the robot, see what follows the rules and breaks them. make sure you have someone checking the rules, write down questions that you can look for in the rules or report to FIRST.

Ask any quesstion that comes to mind and be ready to change things. Listen to all ideas, because you can take something and use it even from the craziest ideas.

Dont spend too much time on the design.

and remember HAVE FUN!!!
Hope this helps.
-----
JAMIE ORTIZ-DELEON

[akoscielski3]

On the first weekend (kickoff weekend) the team usually gets together to talk about what we are going to have the robot do, like having a climbing device(2010) or having a minibot (2011). Then we usually start coming up with concepts for this. Usually at this point the strategies start to develope, with everyone coming up with new designs and new ways to accomplish the tasks. Throughout the rest of the 6 weeks, and up until our competitions we create a few diffrent strategies and would choose which one we would be using for that match, this would be the drive team and other alliance drive teams "discussion". When the Elimination alliances are picked right before lunch we got together with the other teams we were with and all decided what we wanted to do, and who was doing what. After matches talk about what went right, what went wrong and how it can be changed to benefit the alliance later on in eliminations, this will go on until the competition is over. Then, since we have a parent video tape all matches, The drive team would continue watching old matches and what we need to improve for the next competition/championships.

[JamesCH95]

On team 95 we try to pick a game strategy that will be fun to play, but still have a shot at being competitive.

To make most major decisions (strategy, design, and logistics) there is an open dialog between the students, mentors, and engineers with the ultimate decision resting with the engineers and mentors with the most experience in FRC. We strive to reach a consensus about each decision. Experienced mentors and engineers having the final word on big decisions helps to keep the robot effective, which I think is much more rewarding for the students. In hindsight, I am really glad some (most? ) of my ideas were never adopted. What makes this process work for our team is that the engineers carefully explain why ideas are implemented or rejected, regardless of who they come from. Knowing "why" is more important than all else, I think.

[Wayne TenBrink]

On Saturday afternoon, we hold an all-team "brainstorming" session at the kickoff site (thanks to GVSU for making rooms available to teams) and we STUDY THE GAME RULES together as a team. We try our best not to decide a strategy at that time. Everybody is supposed to read them again over the weekend and be prepared to talk about objectives, strategies, and perhaps general design concepts at our Monday evening meeting. Some come prepared, others don't. The self-selected group that comes prepared generally does most of the talking, which leads to the strategy, which leads to the general design concept, which leads to some prototyping and eventually the final designs. The world belongs to those who are passionate about what they are doing and come prepared.

We continue to review and fine tune strategy as the game develops. And, of course, you set the final detailed strategy based on your pre-match discussions with your alliance partners.

[apalrd]

What we do:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2493 - Jim Zondags season blog. The beginning talks a about strategy.

[LeelandS]

This is how strategy goes on 1126:

Kick-off day, and the first day thereafter, we, as a team, review all the rules. We all study the rules as a group and on our own, and each individual tries to come up with something in the game we could use in a strategy.

After that, we have a specialized strategy team (Mentors AND Students) that gathers and reviews everything again. We split up the game into autonomous, teleoperated and end game, and list all the possible ways to score/what we could do in each mode, and rank them on difficulty to perform and pay-off (points earned). What we determine to be the most effective ways of scoring are what we do in competition, and then we determine what our robot has to be able to do to complete these tasks efficiently (fast vs controlled, maneuverable vs pushing) .

We then release what we determined would be best to the whole team, for questions, comments or concerns. Unless someone has a serious problem with what we decided to do, we proceed with what we determined best.

This process has generally worked well for us in the past
I hope this helps! Any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

[DonRotolo]

What just about everyone else said, particularly NagyH.

Maybe this will help: Suppose you've never even heard of Baseball. Here are the rules, how do you play this game to win?

The obvious is "score more runs", but how, exactly?

Now think of how well-refined the strategies in Baseball are. We've known the game for decades, and we understand the nuances of the game, like when it's a good idea to bunt.

Your goal in setting strategy is to figure out how to win the game - not on the surface layer, but getting into some of those nuances, those less-obvious ways of winning. THEN (and ONLY then) do you start designing a robot to do what it takes to win.

Don

[BJC]

I'm very surprised no one has mentioned either of these.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2250

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2175

The first is JVN's paper on Applying the Engineering Design Process to Competition Robotics.

The second is JVN's paper on using Weighted Objective Tables for Competitive Robot Design.

No matter what you decide to do I would read both of these papers. If you use these papers as your guide in the design process you will be happy with the resulting robot.

Sincerely, Bryan

(P.S. Seriously.. Read Them!)