Loose Balls

[KenWittlief]

you dont need to pick them up to push them in the corner goals, right?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

you dont need to pick them up to push them in the corner goals, right?

Right. Just like you didn't in 2004. Just push, shove, or maybe even pick up so you can dump a wall in when you load the goals. Your choice.

[Andrew Blair]

Yep, but Aim High is a bit different than 2004. The dillema is that if you score in the corner goals now, your opposition gets the balls. So, not only do you get two less points (Potentially), but you give a scoring opportunity to the other team, versus just leaving them on the field, or picking them up and keeping them. But 1 point is better than none, right!

[santosh]

I think it will be vry important. Although you can load by the human player, I think there will be a ton of balls on the floor from missed shots, which I think there will be a lot of. Also when the human players try to load the balls into their bots, I think it may be more difficult thn most people expect.

Originally Posted by Alekat

I(as human player) plan on spending most of my time scoring points, not loading my robot. They can pick up my missed points and shoot them.

Also, if you are the human player and you are trying to score, imagine how hard that would be. first off, you have to get it in a corner goal 50 ft away . 50 feet isnt too bad, but your sight will be obstructed at most times in my opinion. Also there will be tons of bots bloking the goal. Not to mention the cfact that the goals ar elike 10" tall and the ball is 7". Not an amazing amount of tolerance on your shots there

[Lil' Lavery]

Let's take a look at this problem from the very beginning of the match. Each alliance gets 40 balls to dispose of at their will (10+ MUST be at HP station though).
In a perfect world, all 3 robots could hit 3 pointers, and hit every 3 pointer they made (and every HP would get their ball into the robot every time). Therefore, no ball would ever end up on the field.
But this isn't a perfect world, there will be error. And seeing as you should always assume the worst when preparing strategy, we'll pretend that your alliance isnt perfect, but by some fluke you end up against 254, 71, and 233 (or some other "perfect alliance"). You will NOT be hitting 100% of your shots into the center goal, while they will. Therefore, if you cannot pick up your missed shots, a few options (and their results) appear:
a)push them into the "your" corner goal. Because the opposing alliance is hitting 100% of their shots, when their HP re-introduces the ball, it will be scored for 3 points, while the corner goal only gave you 1.
Net Result: -2 points
b)Leave them on the floor. Now we reach the point where we look at the opposing alliance's robot capabilities once again. In a "perfect alliance" all 3 robots would be able to load balls from both the HP and the ground. Therefore the opposing robots would gather the balls and shoot them for 3 points.
(In a non-perfect world, an alliance may lack the capability of loading balls, and would leave them in the exact same predicament as you for point swings per ball and how to distribute it, making this a very viable solution to leave the balls on the field in those matches)
Net Result: -3 points
c)push the balls into "their" corner goal (the one with your HPs). This will score 1 point for the opposing alliance, but give YOUR HP control of the ball, which, in the best case can result in a 3 point score for you (not counting the minimum of 1 point cost to grant the ball to your HP, and the amount of field movement time to get from your HP station to your effective firing range). But, for every shot you miss with that ball before you hit the shot, its a loss of 1 point that is not counter-acted in any way.
Net result: +2 (AT BEST)

Therefore, only one real reaction can give you ANY positive points from leaving balls on the field, and even then, not as much as the 3 point shot scored without missing by the opposing alliance. So, let's pretend that both alliances shoot 100 shots per match. If you miss even one shot, and you react in the fashion that will give you the greatest net gain, your score will be 300, and theirs (because of the 1 point you scored for them) will be 301.

Okay, let's interject a bit of reality to the opposing alliance. They will be missing shots too (or so everyone hopes...), or your defense should hopefully be able to force them to. Now the amount of balls on the field is far greater, and the action of the balls will have a far greater swing on the outcome of the match. For every ball they are allowed to introduce straight to the robot, they save the mandatory point cost of having their HP aquire the ball, and save the possible time of having to most to a range where the HP can shoot it (depending on the design and capabilities of the HP).

Beyond even all the net gains of each ball that is missed, there is the whole concept of ball "hoarding" when you have the lead.

[Taylor]

In reading the posts on this thread, it seems to me that most people think the only way HPs can get balls is from the corner goals. Keep in mind the center goals will be feeding back to the HPs as well, so as long as your team is scoring, the other side will never be starved.
New and interesting strategy: build up a ton of points at autonomous mode, get the early lead, stock up on balls and play pre-shot-clock-era basketball where you just hold them until the absolute end of the match. If this means scoring for your opponents, as long as you've got the lead, that's OK. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. Yeah, your RP will be hurt because by design the games would be low-scoring, but if you've got all Ws, who cares?
One more thought: you don't have to have a ball in your hopper (or magazine or whatever) to have control of it - it could be in your alliance station, or you could simply corral the balls in a corner, have 1 or 2 bots in that corner making a fence and defending the balls from the opposition.
So for this strategy, loose ball manipulation would be critical.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by boiler

New and interesting strategy: build up a ton of points at autonomous mode, get the early lead, stock up on balls and play pre-shot-clock-era basketball where you just hold them until the absolute end of the match.

We war-gamed this strategy, and it works well, especially if you have a mixed team with a good shooter and a good defense bot. We hypothesized a robot with an amazing ball sucker, a big hopper, and a powerful 2-speed drive train following the suck-and-dump-once-at-the-end strategy. It worked really well, especially if the sucker could transfer balls to the shooter (a ball ejector on the top that could drop balls into a top-mounted hopper on the shooter). Regardless of the quality of the strategy, our students thought that this 'bot would be boring to build and went with a shooting strategy instead. I know of at least one old 3-digit team that is building a bot like this, and is even giving up ramp-climbing to focus on ball-hoarding.

[insub2]

Originally Posted by Alekat

I(as human player) plan on spending most of my time scoring points, not loading my robot. They can pick up my missed points and shoot them.

while throwing the 7 inch diameter ball, the human player has to stand 4 feet behind a 6 foot wall then it is another 54 feet to a corner gaol that is only 10 inches by 48 inches. a shot i would think to be extremely dificult. and santosh raises another point, ROBOTS! they'll be in your way. so, to sum up, i don't think human players will be scorring many (if any) pionts.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by boiler

In reading the posts on this thread, it seems to me that most people think the only way HPs can get balls is from the corner goals. Keep in mind the center goals will be feeding back to the HPs as well, so as long as your team is scoring, the other side will never be starved.
New and interesting strategy: build up a ton of points at autonomous mode, get the early lead, stock up on balls and play pre-shot-clock-era basketball where you just hold them until the absolute end of the match. If this means scoring for your opponents, as long as you've got the lead, that's OK. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. Yeah, your RP will be hurt because by design the games would be low-scoring, but if you've got all Ws, who cares?
One more thought: you don't have to have a ball in your hopper (or magazine or whatever) to have control of it - it could be in your alliance station, or you could simply corral the balls in a corner, have 1 or 2 bots in that corner making a fence and defending the balls from the opposition.
So for this strategy, loose ball manipulation would be critical.

That would be an amazing strategy if you were ahead by 26+ points, but otherwise, or your opponents lack the ability to get 3 robots onto the platform. Additionally, you could go for the ramp, which would force the opponent to score very rapidly to make up for the difference, but in many situations they may be able to do so, or at minimum prevent you from getting ramp points (or in a worse case, pin your robots on their ramp).
Because the platforms can potentially be worth 50 points (25 for them, 25 for you), any strategy forsaking the platform can be very risky.
Additionally, because of the fact that any balls score re-circulate back into play, a large lead in this game will be hard to accomplish. I predict that almost every "blow-out" will involve the winning team having more "platform points" than the loser. This is also magnified by the fact that "ball hoarding" is a viable (if yet risky during the final period) strategy. And because of that the 2/3 periods may become very very defensive. (They may also be incredibly offensive depending on robot capabilities and how the back-bot acts-and how the other alliance reacts to the backbot).

This game has more potential for different styles of play than any I have ever seen, and it will be hard to see which strategies work and which don't until you see what the robots' capabilities are.