2012 Picklist Formation and Strategy

[Austin2046]

Originally Posted by EdwardP

But in a more general sense, (as a very simple example) say you draft an offensive robot first (Team A), and decide that you now have enough good scorers that there wont be enough balls to score, so drafting a third scorer doesn't make sense.

The problem I have with picking to strategy is always what if that strategy fails? What if we want to do something different, but now we're limited by the makeup of our alliance partners.

Also, i think there are a number of ways to play defense, a good scorer can also be a good defender, but how would you know unless they played defense in their quals? unless you're ranking defenders on pitscouting and drivebase alone... which i feel would be another mistake. A good defender could simply be a ball feeder/stealer starving you're opponents of opportunities to score.

What if in the course of your matches one of your scoring robots break? Maybe they can still drive but their shooter fell off severely hindering their ability to score. Do you then go with 2 defenders and one scorer? Or can the robots on your alliance switch and adapt to play different roles? If you're third bot is just a drivebase, but a really good balancer and defender, i don't think they can fill that void. So then you have to bring in a backup bot and hope that they can fill the role in your strategy.