Ideal Alliance Structure

[Jonathan Norris]

In Waterloo we had the great opportunity to be in a very strong and ideal alliance with 188 and 771. Even though we did not win in the finals we proved throughout the elimination rounds that we truly worked great together.

We had a deceptively simple autonomous strategy where we choose 771 to play offence and score usually 6-8 balls in the lower corner goal. While us, 610, played defense on the opponent shooting robots. We did have the option to run a shooting autonomous where we would have been able to score more points than 771, but if any defense was played against us we would not be consistent. This allowed us to play defense against the shooting autonomous modes, and proved to be very successfully. We won all autonomous modes up until the finals this way, and won one out of the two autonomous modes in the finals.

During the game these three robots worked amazingly well together on both defense and offense. 188 would always be the backbot, due to problems with tipping if playing defense and that they could only floor load. While 610 and 771 played tough defense, 771 focused solely on defense during the matches shutting down our opponents very successfully, 771 had a strong drive system and was very maneuverable. While 610 was able to play strong defense with our 2-speed gearbox, but while defending we would also load up with balls. 771 and 610 teamed up to play very strong defense and were able to shut down some strong alliances of shooters to only 18 and 25 points a lot of the time. In the finals we were able to bother two of the triplets and restrict them to more reasonable scores of 40-60's.

On offense 188 and 610 would both park themselves in front of the goal and when not bothered were able to fire off 10+ balls in a mater of seconds. But with all the strong defense being played 188 got bullied a lot which often allowed 610 to be open to unload into the goal. Because of the two strong scoring threats of 610 and 188 the defense bots usually had to alternate between us, usually leaving one of us open for long enough to score a few balls. During our offensive period 771 would come back and protect us from one of the defensive bots, and during the free period they would go back and play defense. At the end of most matches both 610 and 771 would climb the ramp at the end.

I really feel that we had a close to ideal alliance structure, with two strong shooters, one very reliable autonomous mode, two strong defensive bots, and two ramp climbing robots. The only thing that stopped us from winning the Waterloo Regional was the unmatched firepower of two triplets 1114 and 1503.