[FRCTop25.com] CMP Division Preview Show

[Mike Starke]

Hello everyone!

We are very excited to announce that we will be doing our annual Division Preview show, this Saturday the 19th, at 10PM Eastern. We are in the works of finalizing some special guests, so please stay tuned! We will be live at http://www.new.livestream.com/FRCTop25, where we will introduce our guests, and let each of them talk about what we should expect to see in the division they have chosen!

This is always a fun show, and a great warmup to Championship! We hope to see you all tomorrow night!

[Justin Montois]

Tonight we will be featuring Karthik Kanagasabapathy from Team 1114 Simbotics and Tyler Olds from Team 2826 WAVE Robotics as we preview the Championship event!

We will begin the show with a Roundtable discussion of the Championship event, what we can expect and the change in gameplay that Aerial Assist has gone through.

After that we will move into the divisions and talk about each one, highlight some top performers, honorable mentions and some dark horses. As always, we encourage topics to be brought up by the FRC community! Post in this thread or send us an email and we'll discuss it with our experts!

Championship is only a few days away!! We'll see you tonight!

[Aidan H.]

I don't know if you already plann on taking about it, but I find the inclusion of a 3rd pick (4th robot) on elimination alliances at championships to be a POSSIBLE complication/change/addition to the strategies that may be employed in eliminations.

Some points I have thought of about it/are relevant:
- Will they only act as a backup in case a "main" robot breaks?
- What aspects (inbounder, defense, truss-er, scorer) will alliance pickers be looking for in a 3rd pick?
- Will they be used as an augment to two other robots in order to substantially change the strategy of the alliance to through the other alliance off? (strategy may be the determining factor at such a high level of play)
- Will they just go completely unused (unless a breakdown) and just be along for the ride? (The other robots may be substantially better performing and the 3rd pick was just picked because they were a preferable backup compared to the usual "highest seed left".)

I think that there is a big unknown in what a 3rd pick could mean for strategy. It has never really (recently) been used at such a high level event in a game that depends so much on strategy (when most of the robots are very capable of all aspects of the game).

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Aidan H.

I don't know if you already plann on taking about it, but I find the inclusion of a 3rd pick (4th robot) on elimination alliances at championships to be a POSSIBLE complication/change/addition to the strategies that may be employed in eliminations.

Some points I have thought of about it/are relevant:
- Will they only act as a backup in case a "main" robot breaks?
- What aspects (inbounder, defense, truss-er, scorer) will alliance pickers be looking for in a 3rd pick?
- Will they be used as an augment to two other robots in order to substantially change the strategy of the alliance to through the other alliance off? (strategy may be the determining factor at such a high level of play)
- Will they just go completely unused (unless a breakdown) and just be along for the ride? (The other robots may be substantially better performing and the 3rd pick was just picked because they were a preferable backup compared to the usual "highest seed left".)

I think that there is a big unknown in what a 3rd pick could mean for strategy. It has never really (recently) been used at such a high level event in a game that depends so much on strategy (when most of the robots are very capable of all aspects of the game).

In 2013, having a 4th robot would have made the world of difference. i.e. Blocking full court shooters.

This year, I see the backup robot as being the "backup" who plays- if either 1 of the 3 robots break down, or if 1 of the 3 robots is just not panning out against the opposition with the planned strategy.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by waialua359

In 2013, having a 4th robot would have made the world of difference. i.e. Blocking full court shooters.

This year, I see the backup robot as being the "backup" who plays- if either 1 of the 3 robots break down, or if 1 of the 3 robots is just not panning out against the opposition with the planned strategy.

I actually think the 4th robot is a change of strategy. If you think your opponent has a better 3 assist setup than you, you bring in your 4th to do pure defense and force the other alliance to beat you 2v2 and only do 2 assists and if you guys are a crazy alliance, you pick an auto-blocking robot and sub them in to beat a team that always scores 75pts in auto.

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by dodar

I actually think the 4th robot is a change of strategy. If you think your opponent has a better 3 assist setup than you, you bring in your 4th to do pure defense and force the other alliance to beat you 2v2 and only do 2 assists and if you guys are a crazy alliance, you pick an auto-blocking robot and sub them in to beat a team that always scores 75pts in auto.

I agree with this.
In almost, if not every scenario, the first three robots in an alliance will be chosen to fulfill a certain match strategy or ideal (win by massive outscoring), while the last 2 picks will be versatile robots that are able to fit within many different types of strategies, differentiating between offense and defense, as well as stall-type games that are aimed at winning the game in autonomous.

I think that robots that are able to play a variety of roles will be weighted very heavily as a 4th alliance robot.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Edxu

I agree with this.
In almost, if not every scenario, the first three robots in an alliance will be chosen to fulfill a certain match strategy or ideal (win by massive outscoring), while the last 2 picks will be versatile robots that are able to fit within many different types of strategies, differentiating between offense and defense, as well as stall-type games that are aimed at winning the game in autonomous.

I think that robots that are able to play a variety of roles will be weighted very heavily as a 4th alliance robot.

Exactly. I see the 3rd bot as the "backup" selection. Pick them then while there is still a "premium" of robots left that are close enough to the first 2 bots' caliber.

[Justin Montois]

We're going live at the top of the hour! We hope you'll join us!

[David8696]

So um... I'm getting a blank page with "This event doesn’t have any posts yet..." where the video should be.

Is this a common problem, or should I be concerned that as a member of a team claiming to deal exclusively in technology I'm having trouble watching a video online?

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by David8696

So um... I'm getting a blank page with "This event doesn’t have any posts yet..." where the video should be.

Is this a common problem, or should I be concerned that as a member of a team claiming to deal exclusively in technology I'm having trouble watching a video online?

Let it sit for a bit, I had the same problem.

[czielinski]

I'm getting the same error.

[Alpha Beta]

Me too.

[barn34]

Is this not streaming? When I go to the link it says event started instead of live now and it doesnt link to the stream. Anyone know whats up?

[Alpha Beta]

I'm in now. They started 7 minutes late.

[David8696]

Theeeeere it is