What is a winning alliance going to look like?

[SeanFitz]

People are talking about a defensive robot being tall, fast, and heavy. However, if each team has only one or two high goal shooters, your defensive robot could be a small and powerful robot that doesn't block the shots, but hit the shooters and cause them to miss. With the relatively small size of these goals, you would only need to angle the robot a little and the shot goes off target, which is not that hard a task.

That being said, my winning alliance prediction is a robot like that that can also breach a few defenses, one high goal shooter, and one low goal/breaching robot. I doubt many alliances would be able to do this, and I see the early competitions having alliances that either focus completely on breaching or completely on goals.

[Eric Scheuing]

Originally Posted by SeanFitz

That being said, my winning alliance prediction is a robot like that that can also breach a few defenses, one high goal shooter, and one low goal/breaching robot. I doubt many alliances would be able to do this, and I see the early competitions having alliances that either focus completely on breaching or completely on goals.

No defenders? Why?

[Kevin Leonard]

Multiple different styles of winning alliances depending on the level of play and the regional they're at.
Some alliances will be 2 all-around robots and a defender or feeder, others will have specialists performing roles.
Hangs won't be necessary to win any event until at least after weeks 5.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Hangs won't be necessary to win any event until at least after weeks 5.

This. After a few days of thinking on it I think most teams would be better served practicing to get 1-2 more cycles than wasting time with a scaling mechanism.

I see an alliance with 1-2 high goal bots and 1-2 low goal breachers/enforcers being the typical regional winning alliance. At least one regional will be won by an alliance with no high goal capability. Good luck winning if your alliance can't consistently breach and capture, those bonus points are worth a lot of cycles when your alliance has exhausted the defenses they can do easily.

[Boltman]

I think the the winning alliance will be...

Excellent High Goal shooter "Spy bot"
Excellent Defense Damage bot
Specialty Bot

Specialty Bot sits at end of Secret passage (with ramp over lip) and Repeats the forward action of the Human player who bowls ball to the bot who intercepts and shoots the ball at High velocity to the "Spy bot" who is deadly accurate from that corner in the high goal.

That means 1 boulder in auto
Then another quick 5 using the HP to Special To High To Castle train after those six are scored against the castle any additional boulders get delivered or the special bot retrieves 2 boulders from field and shoot them to High Goal bot. Castle now weakened.

Special bot slides under low goal twice...then Scales

In the meantime breach has occurred and Damage bot Scales
Finally High Bot scales

[NShep98]

Originally Posted by Boltman

Specialty Bot sits at end of Secret passage (with ramp over lip) and Repeats the forward action of the Human player who bowls ball to the bot who intercepts and shoots the ball at High velocity to the "Spy bot" who is deadly accurate from that corner in the high goal.

That means 1 boulder in auto
Then another quick 5 using the HP to Special To High To Castle train after those six are scored against the castle any additional boulders get delivered or the special bot retrieves 2 boulders from field and shoot them to High Goal bot. Castle now weakened.

You are looking at a G39 there:

G39 ROBOTS are prohibited from launching BOULDERS unless they are in contact with the opponent’s
TOWER or carpet in the opponent’s COURTYARD, and not in contact with any other carpet.
Violation: TECH FOUL per BOULDER

And note G40 as well:

G40
Actions such as “carrying”, “herding”, and “trapping” are not violations
of this rule.
A ROBOT may not cause a BOULDER to move from the NEUTRAL ZONE into the opponent’s
COURTYARD unless:
A. the ROBOT contacts the BOULDER within OUTER WORKS, and
B. the ROBOT completes its CROSSING (i.e. doesn’t completely back out of the OUTER
WORKS into the NEUTRAL ZONE)
Violation: TECH FOUL per BOULDER

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Boltman

Specialty Bot sits at end of Secret passage (with ramp over lip) and Repeats the forward action of the Human player who bowls ball to the bot who intercepts and shoots the ball at High velocity to the "Spy bot" who is deadly accurate from that corner in the high goal.

Either I'm misreading this or we're reading the rules very differently. Several rules conspire to specify that boulders have to be carried individually by robots through the outer defenses. Robots may not project boulders except from within the opponent's courtyard.

Edit: Above content Ninja'd by Nathan

I think there will be one sapper/breacher who also carries boulders in and can score many of them, and two boulder runners/scorers. At least two scale the tower. One of the robots switches to defense once the both the defenses and tower are weakened.

[EricLeifermann]

Look to 2012 and 2010(not the passing in the zones, but the number of hangers) and I think the winning alliances will look like those.

[Noudvanbrunscho]

I expect the number 1 robot would be a Breacher/High goal shooter.
The First pick would be a low bar Robot which does cycles from your secret passage (easy ball recieving) to the high or low goal (and mabye categorie B or D).
And for the Second pick i would choose a high defender.
preferably all climbers aswell

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

I think the winning alliance will be a team of robots that can breach and capture. I don't know if doing both will be necessary with every regional but doing both is a good way to lock down the win or at least be in the running for the win. If two alliances can do that then it will come down to things like autonomous, high goal shots, and scaling.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Multiple different styles of winning alliances depending on the level of play and the regional they're at.
Some alliances will be 2 all-around robots and a defender or feeder, others will have specialists performing roles.
Hangs won't be necessary to win any event until at least after weeks 5.

I agree. With the number of points scaling is worth, it's not really a defining factor until you get to a stage where one high shot could be the difference between a win and a loss. This game is very unique in that no one objective is worth significantly more points than any other objective. (2015-cans, 2014-passing, 2013-climbing, 2012-balancing, and so on) Therefore, especially as the competition between teams gets closer, alliances' scores will get closer and closer to each other, until the ability to do something worth only average points, that (probably) requires its own separate mechanism, is absolutely necessary for success.

On the defense role:
"Defense bots," or robots that only defend, are (usually) not going to be a viable pick this season, even as a second pick. The only time a dedicated defender will be useful is on an alliance that doesn't rely on tower points, against an alliance who relies entirely on tower points. Especially at lower levels of play, where a breaching specialist alliance is viable, the role of the defender could be rendered largely useless. Yet, on the other hand, a capture specialist alliance is equally viable, and this would be the defender's time to shine. Therefore, a defense bot could be a game-changer in one series, then completely useless the next- that kind of situational quality is very risky, and without a backup bot to replace the defender in a situation where they're useless, it could mean the end of an alliance's run.
However, at medium-to-high levels of play, where both shooting and breaching becomes necessary for victory, the defense bot is now stuck between being pointless and being a great asset. On one hand, knocking a shooter off-angle during a shot could save your match. On the other hand, for how many points the defender prevents, it could be contributing just as much, if not more, by inbounding and getting balls to the enemy courtyard for its ally to score more conveniently. With the limits on possession, and the precision required for high shooting, a courtyard full of balls is your best friend if you're a shooter, and the defense bot could easily make that happen.
tl;dr: a "defense bot" is only useful in very, very specific situations, and often could be better utilized as an inbounder, breacher, or a combination of the two. We complain that last year's game had no defense, and GDC makes a game where defense is possible, but not strategically beneficial. Well played, GDC. Well played.

[pandamonium]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Hangs won't be necessary to win any event until at least after weeks 5.

While I often agree with you Kevin, any event just seems off. Hanging mechanisms will be the cheesecake flavor of the year IMO. If one robot on the alliance can climb in theory all 3 could with cake. 10 additional points is not a big advantage but 30 is. I would even go as far to say that climb points will be the winning margin at at least 5 regionals before week 5.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

Hanging mechanisms will be the cheesecake flavor of the year IMO. If one robot on the alliance can climb in theory all 3 could with cake.

I can see climber cheesecakes being a thing, but I'll bet that at lower levels of play, collector cheesecakes will be the flavor of choice among tower-focused alliances.

[tprize]

Alliance Captain - Shooting Bot
1st Pick - Breacher
2nd Pick - Assist Bot

I believe that there will only be one shooter with an assist bot because to have only one shooter that would not need to move and would be constantly fed ammo by the assist bot, this should allow the shooter to get off 33-66% more shots and should be more effective than having two shooters.

[Grayspecter]

I think a winning alliance would probably consist of a cycling high goal shooter, a specialist breacher, and a secondary support/high goal shooter.

In autonomous, the cycling shooter and the support/shooter will attempt to cross the outer works and score in the high goal. The breacher will attempt to cross a defense and then cross back out to give it a head start in the breaching process.

During teleop:
The cycling high goal shooter (probably the alliance captain) would run cycles between the neutral zone and the opponent's courtyard through the entire match, passing primarily through Group B and D defenses.

A specialist breacher would spend part of their match running between the neutral zone and the opponent's courtyard a total of at least 6 times in order to damage the defenses for the minimum requirement for a breach (6 because the high goal shooter will be crossing defenses as part of its cycles). Optionally, if it is capable of going under the low bar, it can cycle two more times to net extra points.

The secondary high goal shooter would start their match as the defense robot in their own courtyard, harassing enemy shooters and blocking access to undamaged defenses (note: G25 states: "A single ROBOT blocking access to a particular DEFENSE is not considered impeding the flow of the MATCH."), as well as collected missed shots of opponents and placing them in the secret passage for access by the cycling high goal shooter. Personally, I think this role is crucial to an alliance, since with a limited amount of boulders on the field, it's important to maintain control of a slight majority of boulders at all times, so that high goal shooters can continue to shoot points throughout the match.

When the specialist breacher has finished satisfying the requirements for a breach, it will switch positions with the secondary high goal shooter, which will head towards the opponent's courtyard to shoot additional high goals. The breacher will continue to play the support/defense role of the secondary shooter until end game. At higher levels of play, this transition would be made more smoothly than in the beginning of the season, as breacher bots get more experienced and efficient at damaging defenses as fast as possible.

In the end game, they will at least capture the tower and most likely 2 out of the 3 will scale the tower.