Alliance Request

[Dezion]

Originally Posted by Aura_

Thanks, but when we get constant horrible match ups how are we suppose to advertise ourselves any better?

There are two situations with of "horrible match-ups."

First, your alliance partners are "horrible." If you feel that is the case, find out what your alliance partners can do and fill in the gaps with your robot. For example, 3661 is a chassis bot. At Wake County, we chose them as a defensive robot because of their speed. We won the event with them. At Campbell they stopped us and 2655 from capturing the tower in qualifications. In eliminations, we chose them again as a second pick and in one of their matches they only allowed two low goals the whole match (once they got back). Teams have potential, even if you believe their one of the worst teams at an event; you have to recognize that in every team to be successful.

Second, your opponents are very good. Yes, of course, you will definitely play against multiple top-eight teams in one match in qualifications. Again, recognize how your teammates play and develop a strategy that counters the opposing alliance. Even if your alliance does lose the match, if you perform the best that you can, you will be noticed by other teams.

Onto talking to other teams about forming alliances. Usually, if we're on the top 8 (particularly the top 4), we'll approach the team that we want to pick and tell them that honestly, "we're planning on picking you guys. We think we would together good. What do you guys think?"Usually since we pick partners that work well with us for strategy, they'll usually want a robot like our on their alliance. (As a breaching robot that likes passing to teammates with occasional low goals, we generally want a reliable high goal shooter that we can easily funnel boulders into. Generally, high goal shooters want to shoot as often as possible, so by us demonstrating throughout qualifications our passing and shooting, usually high goal shooters want a robot similar to ours.)
It is quite often we're not the top 8. At Campbell we were 6th, but had discussed strategy with 2nd. We introduced ourselves to them and discussed how we could help benefit them. Due to our qualifications, they had noticed us performing well with boulders. Right before alliance selections, we did end up deciding to not form an alliance because we couldn't get the tower done fast enough.

Point: If you specialize in a role and perform your best in that role, other teams will notice.