Team Strategies?

[Oblarg]

We did a very rough calculation today using the following assumptions (they are obviously tenuous, we tried to base the guesses at the numbers on our own team's experience with similar robots in the past, YMMV, etc):

1. You are cycling/scoring alone, and not being fed balls by other robots on your alliance.
2. It takes 30 seconds to grab a ball from the neutral zone and attempt to score it, either in the low goal or the high goal.
3. The low goal is a guaranteed score. If you miss the high-goal, it takes 15 seconds to track the ball down and attempt to shoot again.

Taking into account only the score from the actual goals, i.e. not factoring in contribution to the capture bonus, the accuracy required for low-goal and high-goal to "break even" under these assumptions was calculated to be ~25%. Naively factoring in the capture bonus (simply by adding 25/8 points to the value of each goal, again, we know this is tenuous) raised the required accuracy to ~45%.

You can make of this what you will - it's not intended as anything more than a guide for discussion. If you want the actual calculation, just ask, though I think there's value in working it out for oneself. For my part, I was wholly surprised that the break-even point was so low.