2015 Champs Discussion

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

From the A-Z guide:



Different badges for human players?

I think the "Feeder" is the Human Player, as my interpretation is that it's named that way because they "feed" totes through the chute, among other things.

[jds2001]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

From the A-Z guide:



Different badges for human players?

It doesn't mention that the badges are different, and as I've seen at regionals this year they haven't been. I'd be really surprised if this changed.

[John Retkowski]

Originally Posted by jds2001

The difficulty with this is that if all that you have is canburglers and no stackers, then you don't have anything to put all of your recycling containers on and they'll be worth absolutely zero. You really need a well-balanced alliance.

I couldn't agree more. I meant that it depends on what the alliance captain can do. For instance if the alliance captain can steal two cans off the step, they would probably be best picking another canburgler as their first pick and a stacker as a second. If the alliance captain is good at stacking however, it would be better to pick two canburglers. The situation gets more complex when you add in the factor that at championship, the level of play is probably high enough that at least one if not both canburglers are also going to be decent landfill bots/ stackers in general.

As said before, as long as your alliance gets all four cans off the step, you odds of winning increase exponentially, regardless of if you use all of those cans or not.

[who716]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

I'm not sure how the divisions are done exactly. I'm remembering random with weighting based on team age, so each division has about the same number of rookies, second year teams, etc, but I'm not totally sure. I'm reasonably sure they don't do things like "these are the 5 best robots, let's make sure they're in different divisions" though.

its random to a certain degree, but even that can lad to unbalanced alliances im thinking of specifically 2012 archimedes division where you had 67, 2056, 1114 on the same division among other greats.

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by who716

its random to a certain degree, but even that can lad to unbalanced alliances im thinking of specifically 2012 archimedes division where you had 67, 2056, 1114 on the same division among other greats.

HAHA, we were on Archimedes 2012. It was... interesting. It seems we always get put in the toughest division, except for last year. We somehow managed to avoid Curie

[ehoyla]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

HAHA, we were on Archimedes 2012. It was... interesting. It seems we always get put in the toughest division, except for last year. We somehow managed to avoid Curie

We were in Archimedes in 2012 AND Curie last year. It's definitely harder to get picked in a tough division, but it makes for a really awesome match schedule!

[GuyM142]

Originally Posted by T^2

Not too much to discuss, really. Einstein will be decided in the first 150 milliseconds, perhaps sooner. If you get 3 of the step cans, it's impossible to lose.

Though you must score all of them to guarantee your win.

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by ehoyla

We were in Archimedes in 2012 AND Curie last year. It's definitely harder to get picked in a tough division, but it makes for a really awesome match schedule!

I wouldn't really call our schedule from Archimedes all that awesome, but yeah

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by GuyM142

Though you must score all of them to guarantee your win.

At regional competitions, this may have been tough to do. However, I think most alliances formed at championships will be able to score 5 or more cans.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by GuyM142

Though you must score all of them to guarantee your win.

Realistically, if you steal 3 cans, all you need to do to win 90% of matches would be 5 stacks. Your opponents are limited to 4 capped stacks, so unless they have some serious firepower, they're done.

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

At regional competitions, this may have been tough to do. However, I think most alliances formed at championships will be able to score 5 or more cans.

There is still a luck factor involved, though. The #1 seed at IN State Champs was approaching a 200 match score in their second quarterfinals match when (in the last 5 seconds!) one of their alliance members accidentally knocked over two stacks of 6, topped and noodled and everything. Luckily for the alliance, they scored enough points that match to make it on to semifinals by a slim margin, and they got over that mistake and went on to win the whole thing.

Teams should be aware that mistakes/problems can happen even when you least expect them, and you should never take anything for granted, especially in matches as close as Einstein will be.

[Jonathan Norris]

I've been thinking about the new eliminations format for the last couple days, the need to schedule more time for Division and Einstein eliminations has become pretty obvious (maybe we will end on time this year!), but I am worried that alliance selection on Saturday morning gives a massive advantage to the top couple seeds.

As most of you know the top couple seeded alliances are usually formed before teams line up for alliance selection, it hasn't really been an issue in the past because alliance selection usually occurs directly after the last qualification match. But at champs this year the last matches are Friday afternoon and alliance selection doesn't occur until Saturday Morning, giving the top couple seeds a massive advantage as they can form alliances Friday afternoon and start strategizing their match and picking strategy. Its usually difficult to figure alliances past the top 3-4 seeds, thus the lower seeded alliances are going to be at a major strategic disadvantage going into alliance selection.

The only possible solution I can see is a split alliance selection, where the first round of alliance selection is done at the end of the day on Friday, and the other two rounds are done on Saturday morning (mainly to make sure teams don't pack up and leave on Friday??...).

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Realistically, if you steal 3 cans, all you need to do to win 90% of matches would be 5 stacks. Your opponents are limited to 4 capped stacks, so unless they have some serious firepower, they're done.

Are you talking qualifications or playoffs? In qualifications, it won't hurt your so-called "opponents" all that much, but will help you tremendously. In playoffs it is a different story.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

Are you talking qualifications or playoffs? In qualifications, it won't hurt your so-called "opponents" all that much, but will help you tremendously. In playoffs it is a different story.

Finals. If you have 3 cans, and you make 5 full stacks, it's almost impossible to lose.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by GuyM142

Though you must score all of them to guarantee your win.

No, do the Can Math. You don't need to score all of them to win a match in Finals. And even in Semis, it's a huge advantage.