unique strategies that worked....... or didn't

[who716]

Now that the 2014 robotics season has come to an end. Many people like me, may be looking back at match videos reminiscing at the good times we had.
Our team has played in a whopping 65 matches, therefore we have been apart of nearly 65 different strategies (no one strategy is the same.)Knowing that there have been 10665 total matches played im sure there have been ALOT of strategies deployed.

at our most recent offseason event, (battle cry) we were the 19th alliance (716,181,2468) going against the number 2 Alliance, of (125,195,1474) if you are familiar with the number two alliance robots' then you know that they are a regional winning alliance for sure.
During our discussion of strategy our alliance partner came up with doing a one assist cycle and stopping them on defense with the other two robots.
I was skeptical at first, as the 2 alliance is capable of putting up big point quickly, but we were down one and had to try something so I said "lets do it"
To my surprise it worked, 181 would in-bound/truss/ score in the top all by itself. while 2648 and 716 would play the defense roll. At the end of the match we won 95-90 with the foul points subtracted (there was a total of three technical foul 1 on our alliance two on opponents alliance)
we came back with the same approach in quarter final 3-3 and took that match by 20 points with a Tec foul against us. They were brutal matches to say the least but it surprised me to see this strategy worked.


What other UNIQUE strategies have you used??

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by who716

while 2648 and 716 would play the defense roll. At the end of the match we won 95-90 with the foul points subtracted (there was a total of three technical foul 1 on our alliance two on opponents alliance)
we came back with the same approach in quarter final 3-3 and took that match by 20 points with a Tec foul against us. They were brutal matches to say the least but it surprised me to see this strategy worked.

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

[Chinmay]

Which is why I think the large amounts of technical fouls were called in those matches... I think you're going a bit far by implying that the strategy that the other alliance used was to break your alliances robots. Things break when defense is played... Fouls are called

Back on subject, I think that one of the most effective things I saw was the "pass back" to a human player but bouncing the ball off a robot, or throwing it into a robot and having the robot spit it right back out.

Another team effectively set up the equivalent of a "full court shot" for this years game by inbounding straight to a truss shot that would land near the far wall every time. Freed up the last robot to always play defense.

As for the strategy you guys used, I think that the number of offensive versus defensive robots each side chose to use in a match was almost like a Rock Paper Scissors game. The team with the lower chance of winning needs to switch things up because head to head, they wouldn't stand a chance. I saw a match earlier in the season with an autonomous mode followed by a 3 man defense for the win. All depends on the situation

[NotInControl]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

This happened at battlecry? I must have missed it. Ouch. How does that even happen? We had a match in quals early on where our air dump valve was hit during a match, dumping all air, and rendering our shooter and intake useless. This year is a tough year from a defense perspective.


I think one of the best strategies I've seen all year is using the human player to quickly pass the ball between alliance robots. At Champs, certain teams would intake the ball and then quickly spit it back out to the human player so they could then inboud it to another robot and pick up a quicker assist.

I don't recall the particular alliance at the moment, but at champs one alliance was inbounding, then quickly shooting cross field to their other human player to get around defense and using the other human player to get the ball into their alliance partner's robot to pick up the assist and score.

It was extrmely effective and enjoyable to watch.

Edit: Chinmay beat me to it. That "pass back" strategy was awesome. And Just for the record, I agree with them whole heartedly about choosing your words wisely.

Originally Posted by Chinmay

... I think you're going a bit far by implying that the strategy that the other alliance used was to break your alliances robots. Things break when defense is played... Fouls are called...

I do not believe any damage was due to malice intent. Esp at BattleCry. BattleCry is one of the friendliest events I have the privelege to attend with some of the most gracious and world-class teams around. I don't even remember what match robot or alliance our air valve was hit in, because it wasn't important, it was no ones fault. We've all been doing this for many year. These things happen. It is not intentional, and I would never even hint that it was.

[Ginger Power]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124547&highlight=how+viable+is+fu ll+court

I think full court assisting proved to be very effective. Team 900 and many other teams did very well with the strategy. A long shot to the human player shortened cycle times, was extremely difficult to defend and worked with any combination of alliance partners. At the Minnesota State Championship all 4607 did throughout the entire event was FCA to the human player and we ended up captaining the #2 alliance to the Finals.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

I heard that isolating your opponents ball works great too.

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by NotInControl

This happened at battlecry? I must have missed it. Ouch. How does that even happen? We had a match in quals early on where our air dump valve was hit during a match, dumping all air, and rendering our shooter and intake useless. This year is a tough year from a defense perspective.

Yeah, in our first match at CMP our kill-switch got hit by one of 5291's protrusions. We put some lexan on that face of the robot after that.

[Anupam Goli]

We knew we were screwed for our last couple of quals matches at Palmetto this year, so on Friday night, I was tossing around strategies with some of the other mentors and students. We came up with this strategy that we call "the magic school bus", which was a formation where the three robots surrounded the ball, and just kept in formation while running down the field, gathering the 3 assists, and finally scoring it. We thought it would be stupid and crazy enough to work.

Crappy visualization:

R1 0 R2
... R3

Basically, inbound it so the ball lands in the middle of this robot cluster, R3 pushes the ball against the wall for the first assisst, then the formation moves the length of the field, with R2 pushing the ball, and at the final zone, R1 would pick the ball up and score.

The strategy never came to fruition, and I don't remember why, but I think everyone's minds would've been blown at the event if we unveiled it on the field.

[CTbiker105]

Originally Posted by who716

They were brutal matches to say the least but it surprised me to see this strategy worked.

Brutal is one way to describe those matches...

One of my favorite strategies I saw being used this year was at CMP in Archimedes. 33 would inbound, truss it to their first HP who would inbound it to 1671. 1671 would shoot it horizontally across the field to their second HP. Finally, the second HP would inbound to 1625 to finish the cycle in the high goal.

Very cool to watch.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014arc_qm109

[Cam877]

Originally Posted by CTbiker105

Brutal is one way to describe those matches...

One of my favorite strategies I saw being used this year was at CMP in Archimedes. 33 would inbound, truss it to their first HP who would inbound it to 1671. 1671 would shoot it horizontally across the field to their second HP. Finally, the second HP would inbound to 1625 to finish the cycle in the high goal.

Very cool to watch.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014arc_qm109

This was actually done in eliminations in the Curie division, with 573 inbounding and trussing to human player, and then either 1718 or 2451 taking it and shooting across the field to the robot left over. Great strategy, they ended up finalists only losing to the poofs' alliance. I also like the give back to human player strategy utilized by 2590, 1477, and 1625 in Archimedes elims and Einstein.

[Pault]

I guess now that the season is over I may as well reveal the strategy that we wanted to use, but didn't. FYI, we knew it would have taken a really good shooter to execute, and would only work when partnered with a special few robots (probably 2-4 at any given competition). We were going to make sure that we could play the game the "normal" way before we could play it this way.

The prerequisite is a partner robot that can catch and can shoot into either the high or low goal from directly in front of the low goal (obviously high goal is better). They would stay in that position for the entire match. Your robot, which is a tall shooter, would park in the low goal corner on the opposite end of the field, get fed a ball from the HP, pass it full court to your partner robot, and they score it. The 3rd robot would play defense.

10pts truss
10pts catch
10pts 2 assists
1/10pts score
= 31/40pts per cycle

Now, the full court pass may sound crazy, but we were getting well more than 54ft of distance with our flywheel shooter during our robot's early stages (later changes unintentionally decreased that distance dramatically). The real question is whether you can get the accuracy, but I think that a good team could have tuned it enough to be reasonable (I would say you need 66% accuracy for this strategy to be really effective). Game breaking strategy, we just didn't have the capacity to execute it.

[Caleb Sykes]

Low goal extension

[Boe]

Originally Posted by inkling16

Low goal extension

Definitely my favorite match from state

[brennonbrimhall]

Take a look at how alliance #8 beat #1 in Archimedes Quarters. They almost put up 400 points without fouls.

[who716]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

we would never deploy a strategy to intentionally damage another robot. playing defense always increases the chance of damage, and that was just a victim of the defense level. it's unfortunate that we won the match with you goes out, but we have all had issues like this.(glad that you made it back out in time for match 3-3) In our semi finals 2-3 we got hit which reset the CRIo and we take preventative measures against this and since I have been on the team it has never happened until that one match. making the loss deficient a lot larger then what it might have been.

Originally Posted by Chinmay

Back on subject, I think that one of the most effective things I saw was the "pass back" to a human player but bouncing the ball off a robot, or throwing it into a robot and having the robot spit it right back out.

we deployed this in the 16th finals and although it only actually happened once it worked great for a real quick three assist cycle. the strategy was to only do it if both robots were available and the opponent was inbounding.

Originally Posted by Cam877

This was actually done in eliminations in the Curie division, with 573 inbounding and trussing to human player, and then either 1718 or 2451 taking it and shooting across the field to the robot left over. Great strategy, they ended up finalists only losing to the poofs' alliance. I also like the give back to human player strategy utilized by 2590, 1477, and 1625 in Archimedes elims and Einstein.

I find this strategy interesting and I really want to try it, unfortunately our robot does not have the distance on its shot to do it but I can see it being very effective.