Best Game STRATEGY

[jpsaul7usa]

I don't think planning will win you a match by itself. Agreeing to the same sort of strategy that we had in every match, our alliance wound up getting every goal on the field capped by the opposing alliance (by teams 498, 1492, and 1290, final score 112 to 13). Just forming rows and holding them with your alliance members is all you need to do.

[Gdeaver]

Penalties = lost match. With the way First refs have been handing out penalties any defensive strategy is risky. Concentrate on capping. That's not to say you shouldn't take a shot at an opponent on the way to or from a goal. I saw too many teams spend the last seconds trying to cap a goal only to fail. Get your alliance back in your zone and take that 10 points. The game is very fluid. The adults can see the whole field while the drivers tend to only see the bot. The adults need to communicate the next goal to cap to the student player who then instructs the driver. The student player also needs to communicate peripheral actions that are going to affect the bot to the driver. I kind of wished the refs had allowed things to get physical. There were allot of top heavy unstable bots just asking to be put down but, they were left alone for fear of penalties.

[thoughtful]

I have still to play in a regional this year; however, based on the regionals that i watched:

- First priority: Home row
- Second Priority: Center row
-Third Priority: Opponent Row

I see it like this, First 40 seconds cap home row, for next 60 seconds cap center. If at anytime home row and center are done try to make one or two diaognals. Never Ever lose your home row. Make your fastest/most reliable capper to attack in the last 20 seconds. If there is no threat to your rows, try to get behind the line in last 10 seconds.

I noticed some times all 6 robots were ebhind the line with 10 seconds remaining which was quite odd.

[Revolverx7]

The stategy that won us SBPLI and made us finalists in Drexel is similar to the strategy allready stated.

First you get your home row.
Second you go down either the left or right side of the field.
Third at the end of the match get the center.

It doesn't matter who you are playing, as long as 2 robots can cap it doesn't matter what the third can do, although it is great if all three can cap. If all 3 can cap then set each robot on 2 goals, first robot gets middle left and far left, second robot gets back left and back center, and the last gets middle middle and back right. Of course there is variations on who gets what goal but as long as you keep recapping the goals you want the strategy holds strong.

[Ianworld]

Originally Posted by Revolverx7

The stategy that won us SBPLI and made us finalists in Drexel is similar to the strategy allready stated.

First you get your home row.
Second you go down either the left or right side of the field.
Third at the end of the match get the center.

It doesn't matter who you are playing, as long as 2 robots can cap it doesn't matter what the third can do, although it is great if all three can cap. If all 3 can cap then set each robot on 2 goals, first robot gets middle left and far left, second robot gets back left and back center, and the last gets middle middle and back right. Of course there is variations on who gets what goal but as long as you keep recapping the goals you want the strategy holds strong.

Thats the same strategy my team used most of the time. Being able to stack 6 tetras a match let us complete the L(back row and one side) by ourselves which we had to do a couple of times. Unfortunatly we were left in a similar situation in the finals. At which point its not enough to just cap goals, they'll quickly switch hands back and forth. You have to take them and defend them. A much tougher task.

[danield710]

Strategy really depends on the robots that you are with and what your robot can do
if your robot is a fast efficient stacker then you will probably just try to stack as many tetras as possible in the match and not worry about defense
if your robot has defensive capabilities and you are the only robot that has those capabilities on your alliance you will probably play defesne for that match
now for some of the specific strategies i have seen in the regionals: some are to stack the other alliances corner goals, towards the end of the match because if u can own that goal then u can have 2 more rows added to ur home row and center row
for advice for operators and drivers before a match: have a general game plan and talk with your other alliance partners, u wanna make sure that when you go out there u kno wat goals ur going to stack and if ur gonna come back for ten points, etc...now the strategy may change on the field due to a robot being broken or flipped over, etc. and thats wat the coaches are for to give u more eyes on the field and tell u wat to do if the strategy does change

[Liz C]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

Penalties = lost match. With the way First refs have been handing out penalties any defensive strategy is risky.

yes, this is definitly the case. Many times, our alliance parters and our team would concentrate on the home row and center row, with robot 1 capping home, and 2 and 3 concentrating on center. Having two on center helped because that is where most of the "action" is. Sometimes confident alliances would go over and cap a corner goal on the opponents side. When successful, this would always win the match, but its risky, and since your in their side there are three major problems (they can easily recap, as it is their side, it is obviously harder to see and the risk of penalties is large). If we were up against a strong opponent, we generally didn't even go near the idea of capping their goals. When the home and center rows were all owned (in your favor), we generally decided to cap the center rows if we had time, to make it harder for those who could not cap high; however, this occasion was rare. Also, this may seem simple, but it helped us win a few times: if you are planning on capping a home goal, and getting behind the line, just bring the tetra with you and get behind the line. Its so simple, but may not be thought of during those last few seconds of the game.

[nobrakes8]

In qualifing I'd say anything goes depending on who your alliance is. For us, our alliances just kept screwing up and haveing bad matches and getting penalties so to be honest after 2 or 3 losses in a row if we weren't matched with who our scouts considered one of the 5 best teams, we were out for ourselves because we had to look impressive for the top seeds to notice us. If we were paired with one of those 5 teams we worked out a plan because we felt with any other of those 5 teams on our list combined with our team would win a match against almost anybody and we'd tell the other team on our alliance not to get penalties. At UTC the 5 or 6 best teams all week were teams 20, 69, 126, 173, 1071, and 230 . Teams 1071 and 230 had bad luck with alliances and were ranked down in the 20-30 range, but going out and playing their own game got them both in the top 2 seeds.

When we got to elimination our alliance was awsome to work with. Team 69 didn't boss team 126 or us around telling us what to do. They let us decide what our robot was capible of doing. The first 2 rounds of elimination all three teams went out to score because if we didn't get defended against we could score 60-70pts easily (best out of 3 matches with consistent 60-70 points will beat a #7 seed). If one of our teams got defended we felt any two teams on our alliance could beat any 2 teams on the other alliance.

When we got to the finals we knew team 69 would at least match or outscore team 20, we felt team 126 would out score team 173 (nothing against those teams just teams 69 and 126 our team had confidence in), but we felt team 230 would tie or beat our team, and we knew we could keep them scoreless and make sure it was a tie and make the match 2 vs 2, which is what we did.

[Revolverx7]

With my teams robot the strategy I stated earlier works great because we just keep capping over other caps fast instead of taking a risky and time consumeing route of defence.

Another good thing to do is if the opposing alliance is very strong you can just stick with the back row and middle row. Putting two robots on offence keeping them on your side of the field and one robot to play defence that circles the center goal so no one can get into your side of the field. This strategy is also good for keeping up your QP's because it allows the opposing team to get a row and as many caps on top of those they want.

[Joshua May]

The favorite strategy that I saw employed this year was the Red Alliance of 1641, 1266, and 1378 against the Blue Alliance of 1324, 399, and 585 in the Quarterfinals at Las Vegas.

In one of the matches, the Red Alliance took 3 tetras immediately and rushed the Blue side, attempting to cap the Blue Home Row almost immediately. Sadly, the strategy wasn't fully implemented as Red would have wished, but it was an awesome strategy to watch.

[gobeavs]

Originally Posted by Joshua May

The favorite strategy that I saw employed this year was the Red Alliance of 1641, 1266, and 1378 against the Blue Alliance of 1324, 399, and 585 in the Quarterfinals at Las Vegas.

In one of the matches, the Red Alliance took 3 tetras immediately and rushed the Blue side, attempting to cap the Blue Home Row almost immediately. Sadly, the strategy wasn't fully implemented as Red would have wished, but it was an awesome strategy to watch.

I saw that....didn't work too well though ...IIRC only one tetra was put on, and they ended up losing the match. Would have made for an interesting match if it did work.

As far as our strategy was concerned, it varied greatly depending on the robots in our alliance. One strategy that I liked was capping one of the corners on the opponents side, and we would usually try to work that in somewhere if possible - and it usually worked pretty well. We tried to plan most of it out beforehand, but some times things wouldn't go as planned so we had to do things on the fly. We tried never to cap a goal we already owned, and I think that helped a lot as far as wins go...sometimes you see two red tetras in a row on a goal, and if one of those was on a blue goal it could have made the difference.