What's the best qualifying rounds strategy?

[DigitalVector]

Hello All,

Well there are many strategies out there but the one that I, and my team, found effective was a one goal and 15-25 balls with 1-2 robots in your or the other teams zone. The second part to our strategy is to let the other aliance get two goals and go home. This gives them a 30-35 point round and we usually scored 35-55 points with balls, ONE goal, and robots at home. Our team, #16 - Baxter Bomb Squad, did this and we won most of our matches and seeded first with an average QP score of 80.something. The games we lost were due to first a loose wire on our right high speed drive system and second when we lost a potentiometer that operates from the algorithms in a feedback loop to steer our machine. Other than those two matches we won the rest.

ALSO

Team 118 in no way let the Baxter Bomb Squad down. Things happen (Losing drive motors and axles) and in no way did this let us down. Darn, we only recieved SECOND place. LOL. I loved the 118 machine and our two bots made an awesome aliance.

Hope to see all in St. Louis or Nationals!

[activemx]

Wen ur in real need take the balls out if the opponenet has the goal. HHEHE

If I was playing Baxter or Delphi in a qualifier -
I'd let them score most of the balls they wanted, but at the last minute pull their goal to our side
Result 38 to 35 ( I'd mess with the goal a little
so they could score only about 15 balls.) If I were a two goal grabber playing with a Baxter or Delphi,
I'd still grab two goals and then let the ball handler gather up balls - towards the end of the match - the ball handler could either score for us
or for the opponent.

Again - in qualifiers it is better to lose half your high scoring games then win a lot by shutting down your opponnent. Winning all your games
60 to 20 gives you 60 QP average. Winning 1/2 of
all your games by a 40/40 tie will give you an 80
QP average.

[DigitalVector]

Other teams also thought about taking our goal of balls. But we know that that one goal holds most of our points, and not one bot could take them away from us. We were against Team #624 (A one goal POWERHOUSE) and they tried to take it away from us but little did they know, we have a beast of a high torque crabbing (swerve) drive system ALONG with our high speed drive.

Although I wouldn't doubt a match or two where we might possibly lose a goal but we also have a strategy of when coming home, we remove a goal from the other team by pushing it into our home zone.

It'll be interesting to see more robots and I can't wait for St. Louis! Hope to see some of you there!

Tommy Cline

[Jeff Rodriguez]

My opinion(if it matters) is "screw points, blow them away". If you're robot can come out every time and win 60-10, than i think any smart team will pick you for the finals in a heart beat. Smart teams will also do their scouting and know what youre robot can do and can't do, and not just by asking you what it does. We were doin real crappy in qualifying and teams realized we could kick %%%. and we did

We almost declined 353 if they picked us, we might have declined because we don't belive in anything they do. To us they built a battlebot and thats not right, build a batllebot for battlebots, and use the strategy in battlebots. this(FIRST) clearly isn't battlebots

[Don Taylor]

One of the great things about this years competition is that it is almost impossible to have a robot/strategy that does well in both the qualifying and the elimination rounds. Ball handlers do great in the qualifying because they can fairly easily add points to either side as necessary to maximize their final score, however the eliminations are all about controlling the goals.

Don Taylor
MnM or (3+4)^3

PS we obviously chose to control goals because we felt that it gave us the best chance in the eliminations. We play next in St. Louis and are working hard on a strategy that will help us do better in the qualifying rounds. At KSC we never scored less than 30 but we seldom scored more than 40, however most teams that scored > 35 won their qualifying matches.

[Matt Attallah]

Well, we liked to get 1 goal, gobble all the balls (Out of 20, we got ~17 in just from one of the sides) + the other 10 from the human, get the scattered balls on the way back to our zone, and than deploy our gate to get back in the other zone too!

All that roughley got us 50-60 pts. Our partners blocked for us, than helped them out w/ the last few seconds!!

[Scott358]

As a mentor on Team 358, where we designed a robot to play defense, our stratregy was to go out and win qualifing matches, let the qualifying points fall where they may, and get picked for the finals.

While our QP's in the end were around 60 in both the LI Regional (where we were seeded 11th) and NYC Regional (where we seeded 6th), the fact was that we won 8 of 10 in LI, and 9 of 10 in NYC, with some of the wins showing we could shut down the top seeds. Basically, winning 17 of 20, and having an average of 60 QP meant that teams had trouble scoring more than 20 against us.

Winning against the top seeded bots, even if you end up with relatively low QP's, can be a very effective strategy, as it shows you can win in the finals.

In the end, with our alliance partners, we made it to the quarter finals at LI, and won in NYC (where as the 6th seed, we were picked by the number 3 seed, after they rejected being picked by the number 2 seed. Thanks Team 237).

Regards,
Scott358

[GregT]

I think the best qualifying round strategy is a good coach and communication with your partner. Its all about knowing what to do at the last minute, if you have a running bot you can score big points.

[Perseus]

i aggree with greg t. any strategy can get you big points if you can strategize well. If you know your opponents capabilities you can come up with a well suited plan. also, your drivers must know how to score well. If they know whether or not to go into their opponents endzone or not forbigger points is clear