Championship Gameplay

[MooreteP]

This thread is a testament to just how good a game Aerial Assist is turning out to be.

[JV2073]

Originally Posted by Tyler_Kaplan

During our qualifying matches this year, there wasn't a whole lot of defense played against us. The only defense that was implemented was later in the day. So my question to the CD community is: when we get to the championship level, is there going to be heavy defense right away in qualifying? And also, do teams use scouting information from other events, and if so what information and to what extent is that information utilized?

I think the quarter final matches at Sacramento Regional against 2073 was very defensive. LOL See you guys at champs

[DManz]

I think the championship gameplay is just going to be a greater version of some of the district championships. I am especially excited to see the matches that team 900 plays in specifically because of their "secret sauce" tactic that my team saw when we played them in palmetto and north carolina.

[Link07]

Originally Posted by DManz

I think the championship gameplay is just going to be a greater version of some of the district championships. I am especially excited to see the matches that team 900 plays in specifically because of their "secret sauce" tactic that my team saw when we played them in palmetto and north carolina.

You mean sitting at the inbound station and trussing full field? I saw this a number of teams throughout the season, most recently by Team 203 at MAR Champs.

[DManz]

Originally Posted by Link07

You mean sitting at the inbound station and trussing full field? I saw this a number of teams throughout the season, most recently by Team 203 at MAR Champs.

Yes but something that made them very efficient is that they were able to truss it full field but instead it went straight to their human player who than dropped it into a robot who either went directly for a 1 point goal or the 10 point. This gave them the flexibility of having one robot dedicated strictly to defense.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by DManz

Yes but something that made them very efficient is that they were able to truss it full field but instead it went straight to their human player who than dropped it into a robot who either went directly for a 1 point goal or the 10 point. This gave them the flexibility of having one robot dedicated strictly to defense.

It's going to be hard to win without a three assist strategy IMO.

[Tyler_Kaplan]

That was an exciting quarter finals match, good luck 2073 on Currie, I'll stop by your pit one day to day hi!

[pabeekm]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

It's going to be hard to win without a three assist strategy IMO.

Completely agree here. The dedicated defender strategy worked so well because most of the scoring robots at NC and Palmetto had mecanum drives and it was easier to push them around and slow down their cycles (especially considering most alliances only had one dedicated scorer). But with the more experienced drivers, stronger drivetrains, and presence of multiple capable scoring and passing bots on each alliance, triple assist cycles will become much easier to do and dedicated defense will be much less effective at championships. As a result, we'll probably wind up doing the pass to human player and then dump to a middleman bot who passes to the scorer.

[Cataclysmatic]

3 Assist with dedicated defense isn't all that hard, Check out the first seed from CIR... That is almost exactly what we did, and had our driver (4296) had more experience, such as their ability at Wisconsin during CIR, then this would have actually functioned in a much more powerful manner.

The biggest key to playing this way, was maintaining CONSTANT communication across all three teams of the alliance, if the defense was held up in a good defensive position, a rapid/with out hesitation switch to a 2 assist quick cycle came very powerful.

[pandamonium]

I perhaps have a very radical thought on this but all I think matters for non powerhouse teams is assist points. We have focused on assist points all season and have had the highest at both of our regionals. I dont even care about wins and losses. If we lose a match with 90 assist points I am happy. Estimate win loss distribution based on 100 teams.
10 - 0: 2
9 - 1: 10
8 - 2: 15
7 - 3: 20
The difference between 13th and 28th place is assist points. 29th and 50th is assist points as well.
So I think that game play will be assist focused because rank will matter in such a large field.

[Tim Lehmann4967]

I would expect that eliminations in divisions look something like this or this.

[JV2073]

Originally Posted by Tyler_Kaplan

That was an exciting quarter finals match, good luck 2073 on Currie, I'll stop by your pit one day to day hi!

Good luck on Newton! See you soon buddy.

[Charles Boehm]

Originally Posted by pabeekm

Completely agree here. The dedicated defender strategy worked so well because most of the scoring robots at NC and Palmetto had mecanum drives and it was easier to push them around and slow down their cycles (especially considering most alliances only had one dedicated scorer). But with the more experienced drivers, stronger drivetrains, and presence of multiple capable scoring and passing bots on each alliance, triple assist cycles will become much easier to do and dedicated defense will be much less effective at championships. As a result, we'll probably wind up doing the pass to human player and then dump to a middleman bot who passes to the scorer.

I agree. I think we will see quite a few renditions of the strategy used by 2013 during the eliminations of Western Cananda with a pass from the inbounder to a trusser. Truss from close to inbounding point to human, inbound to robot that is waiting. Then score.

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

I perhaps have a very radical thought on this but all I think matters for non powerhouse teams is assist points. We have focused on assist points all season and have had the highest at both of our regionals. I dont even care about wins and losses.

Yeah, the top teams at NECMP averaged between 60 and 70 assist points per match. The tricky part is is having the patience to continue with 3 assist cycles when the heat is up.

[JesseK]

There weren't very many matches where we weren't defended against at our Regionals. Often times we were double-teamed at Chesapeake. I really wish we had our Saturday morning matches recorded - they were our highest consistent scores and I only vaguely remember the defense situation. From the videos, it looks like NC & VA were very similar.

I think there will be much more high-speed ramming at Champs, unless it is specifically addressed in the driver's meeting. Chesapeake refs were very straightforward: high-speed ramming would be penalized, Low-speed ramming (i.e. starting from just a couple of feet away) would not. It made for good defensive play all-around.

Offensively, the teams who are patient and make good decisions about low goal vs. high goal will do better at Champs. That 3-assist low goal looks pretty sweet if the defenders are very good a 'bump and turn' defense. A 2-bot cycle will keep defenders on their toes in clutch moments, but I don't think is a default strategy for the whole match unless there is a partner who literally does 'nothing'.