What are your thoughts of Aerial Assist now?

[wasayanwer97]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

I don't know why people say this game has strategic depth, especially when it comes to elims. It was more or less 3 typecasted robots trying to do the same thing over and over as fast as possible with defense inbetween. Some neat assisting techniques involving passing the ball back to the human player came out, but they were just a way to speed up the same old process.

As far passing back to the human player, I'm not sure why that took so long to occur. We did it at SVR during our elimination matches, but that was the earliest I saw it.

Anyways-
The depth is in how flexible alliances had to be at times. Every moment in the match had to be accounted for. Strategies had to flexibly adapt to how the opposing alliance chose to react. (I can't help but think of 254 and 1114's autonomous chess game.)
Last year the average pre-match strategy was "Where are you loading, and where are you shooting from?" Everything had to be coordinated this year, and continuously updated mid-match.

[connor.worley]

Originally Posted by wasayanwer97

Last year the average pre-match strategy was "Where are you loading, and where are you shooting from?"

I guess that's true in quals. I feel like the variety of robots in eliminations last year was much better. Cyclers, ground pickup types, full court shooters, FCS supporters (keeping the defense off them), standard defenders, climbers and dumpers. We spent a lot of time thinking about how the offensive matchups between robot types would go last year. Would a FCS / Ground pickup / Support be able to beat a pair of Ground pickups and a Defender? What about two Ground pickups and a Cycler vs two Cyclers and a Defender?

This year it felt more like you just needed to get the best possible robot for each of the 3 roles.

I agree that in quals this year, teams needed to be more fluid and quickly adapt to situations. I think that's more of a matter of execution though.