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

[loyal]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

But the consequence of that defense was damage that apparently was NOT called as a foul. And we saw some teams intentionally pursue damaging defensive strategies on the chance that they would NOT be called for a foul. So I believe that 125 has a legitimate gripe and 716 shouldn't be extolling its achievement.

So yes 716 should be proud of its achievement along with 2648 and 181. This alliance was able to shutdown the strongest alliance at BC. (IMO) any one that believes that the damage to 125 was caused purposefully by its opposing alliance needs to have their eyes checked. Go watch the video.

[Kevin Leonard]

To get away from the Battlecry debate-

Multiple people have mentioned the 33-1625-1671 match where they ran a somewhat unique strategy.

Their opponents were also trying to do something crazy that match (which unfortunately failed- not that anyone was watching us).

Our alliance of 20-2502-5299 needed to somehow outscore an alliance of those three powerful teams. If you don't know these three robots, both 2502 and 5299 have forklift-style ball pickups. 5299 is a dedicated inbounder.
We assumed 33 would be playing forward and wanted to play constant defense on them. So instead of running the intuitive strategy of Inbounder-Trusser-Forward in some form, we tried something a little different.

2502 would get the ball over the truss to the human player. The human player would put the ball into 20's robot, who would pass it right back (a give-and-go), then the human player would put the ball into the 5299 machine who would score it in the low goal. This would put 20 on constant defense on 33 (in theory).
Unfortunately after one cycle, 5299's forklift broke and they could no longer human load the ball, and multiple missed autonomous balls sealed the match for us. It also didn't help that our opponents had 33 playing the long trusser role instead of the forward.

It was unfortunate, but our alliance needed to try something if we wanted to have a chance of beating that powerful alliance.

[Chris is me]

At FLR we were playing an alliance of 341, 1126, and 1405. 1126 had won our previous regional as the #1 seed. 341 had won a district already and our data showed they were among the top 3 finishers at the event. 1405 had been playing fairly solid D. Our alliance partners included 1551, a decent trusser, and 5349, a rookie team who had yet to score points at the event due to technical problems. We (2791) primarily played the role of the truss robot and rarely scored in the high goal at all at that point.

We knew the 341 alliance would have no problems finding three assists, and we knew that no one on our alliance could score in the high goal well enough to go for a rapid 2-assist strategy. I met with 5349 at the practice field to try and figure out ways to squeeze an assist out of them. Their robot was a Boom Done clone and they couldn't spit out of their intake. They ended up showing me a low power shot they could do which basically dropped the ball right behind their robot. That gave me enough confidence to push for a 3 assist cycle. 1551 had a longer truss shot than us and didn't really feel confident in the high goal. We had scored in the high goal a few times that weekend and we were confident we could rebound into the low goal fairly quickly if it came down to it.

Defense was tricky. 1126 was a long range arm shooter and 341 had a deadly point blank shot. We decided to focus mostly on 1126 as they had the more vulnerable pickup and the line drive shot could be spun off course.

When the actual match began, the assist strategy changed a little. FLR refs were very generous with assists (honestly, I preferred the game played this way), so the HP ended up chucking the ball at 5349 and having them bump it once or twice for the first zone assist. 1551 picked up the ball through the scrum and truss it, while 2791 played defense and scored when the opportunity opened up. Even though none of us were doing exactly what we were used to, we managed to hold off 1126 and keep pace with their cycles, scoring twice in the high goal. A last second two assist cycle finish by us ended up sealing the win by less than 10 points.

Not the craziest strategy in the world, but when I looked at the schedule I didn't expect that match to even be close. Winning that match was a great way to start Saturday, and I'd like to think it helped convince 341 that they'd rather play with us than against us. I'll try and get video of this up at some point.

[AGPapa]

A unique strategy during F3 at FLR that I thought worked well was executed by teams 1507 and 378. 1507's robot usually shot from right behind the low goal (like many robots this year). When 1507 was under heavy defense, team 378 (who's robot is about the same length as the low goal) would go up against the wall and 1507 would use them to line up instead.

Here's a video of it in action.

[DanBrowne]

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

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

I remember watching this from the sidelines. At first I was all "2056 will crush, hands down." like everyone else. As the match progressed I was just in pure shock! when the match ended and the scores went up, my jaw dropped to the floor . I looked at one of my teammates and we couldn't believe that someone had just put up that many points right off the bat in elims.