2012 Picklist Formation and Strategy

[JABot67]

Originally Posted by EdwardP

Drafting straight off of a list can be a huge mistake. When forming an alliance, there are usually distinct traits you will want from each of your alliance partners. You want to draft to play a strategy. There will be roles that you want your alliance partners to fit into. Figure out what roles you can fit into. Determine what other teams can fit into other roles you want and will play effectively with you.

I've never seen drafting straight off a list to be a bad idea, as long as you make the right kind of list. The list should not be who the best robots are, but instead should list robots in order of their ability to help you win. The OP had a good idea of this, saying you should rank a widebot slightly higher than a longbot with the same capabilities if you want to be able to triple balance. If you make a list of robots based on careful calculations on what teams will most likely allow you to win, and then pick from that list, nothing particularly bad can happen. Of course your alliance selector should be knowledgeable in all the teams to verify that you are making the best possible pick.

For the most part, you shouldn't have a strategy set in stone before your alliance makes its final draft selection. You can have a pretty good idea that you want to triple balance every match, or do a certain thing in hybrid, but please take a look at the teams still available before making a pick based on a certain strategy. For example, if it turns out there's a longbot available for first pick that can shoot 4 balls in hybrid reliably (including 2 from the coop bridge), and no widebots can do that, we will pick that bot immediately because that's 24 points in hybrid plus 6-12 points taken away from the other alliance because the coop balls are ours.

Another thing: If you split your list up into different categories (first pick, hybrid second pick, defense second pick) you can run into this kind of problem:

First pick    Second pick (defense)     Second pick (hybrid)    Good balancers
...           Team B                    Team C                  ...
              Team D                    Team D
Team A        Team X                    Team Y
...           ...                       ...

So Team B is better than Team D at defense and Team C is better than Team D at hybrid. But you should only pick Team B if you really, really, REALLY want a good defense bot rather than a well rounded bot like D. In almost all alliance selections, you want well rounded robots like D so you can change your strategy when facing different alliances. So, say you're smart and pick Team D. Well, you just missed out on a huge opportunity because it turns out Team A was still available! Although they're a great scorer, they can also play defense like a boss and score in hybrid better than all the hybrid bots on your second pick list. THIS is why I always put together a single pick list in order to accurately rank the teams:

Pick List
...

Team A
Team D
Team C (good hybrid)
Team B (good defense)
Team X
Team Y
...

As you can see, the team has decided that Team C (with the good hybrid) would be better than Team B (defense) but Team X (defense) would be better than Team Y (hybrid). We would not have known that if they were on separate lists. Also, making one list encourages picking well rounded teams over teams that are good for only one strategy. This allows your alliance to mix things up strategy-wise when going against alliances with different capabilities.

And another thing, if you really do like a team for one strategy that you think will give you a huge edge over other alliances, put them on your list exactly where you'd want them. I think 3601 was as high as 9th or so on 3322's list at Kettering; without them, we wouldn't have had a 6 ball Rube Goldberg autonomous!