Best Game STRATEGY

[AJunx]

From what I have seen in attending the NASA/VCU regional in Richmond and watching a whole bunch of regionals on the web, here are my thoughts on strategy:

(Here is a simple diagram of the field that I will use to refer to goals)

RED 1---*-*---4---*-*---7 BLUE

RED 2----------5---------8 BLUE

RED 3---*-*---6---*-*---9 BLUE

If you have a very effective capping robot (and you are RED):

• Spend the first 1:40 of the round capping goals 1-6
• With 10-20 seconds left, acquire a tetra and make a run for goal 7 or 9. Cap that goal and then defend that goal till the end of the match.

This strategy is particularly effective if you have two partners who are somewhat capable cappers, because you will have a lot of points tetras scored, probably at least one row, and your opponents will not have their home row.

If you have a somewhat effective capping robot (and you are RED):

• Spend the first 1:20-1:30 of the round capping goals 1-6
• With 30-40 seconds left, acquire a tetra and make a run for goal 7 or 9. Cap that goal and then defend that goal till the end of the match.

This strategy is effective for similar reasons as to why the first strategy is good. The key to this strategy though, is that your alliance partners will have to make sure that goals 1-3 are safely owned.

If something went terribly wrong and you can't cap or score at all :

• Talk to your alliance partners. Find out if either is capable of capping. Assuming that you will be teamed up with at least one 'capable capper', you might try the following strategy:
• Strive to own goals 1, 5, and 9 or goals 3, 5, and 7. As I'm sure you already know, if you own either set of those three goals, your opponent can have NO rows.
• You might do this by having the capable capper(s) spending some time capping the home row, then attempting to cap goals 7 and 5 (or 9 and 5) with less than 40 seconds remaining. All the while, you can run interference on the other alliance robots trying to cap 5 and 7 (or 9).
• In the last 20 seconds, each of your alliance's three robots can focus on defending just one of the three goals (1,5,9 or 3,5,7). In most matches, having this row along with some other tetras will likely get you the victory.

I have thought about millions of strategies while watching the webcasts, but hopefully these three prove useful.

-Andrew