Prediction: Veterans take off the gloves in Week 3

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I can't wait for your prediction on West Michigan.

[Athleticgirl389]

Also watch out for Team 341 at Chesapeak... along with 75 they will be a team to watch. Just my 2 cents

[ScoutingNerd175]

Originally Posted by Athleticgirl389

Also watch out for Team 341 at Chesapeak... along with 75 they will be a team to watch. Just my 2 cents

I'd take a look at 293, 836, and 1629 (yeah, I know that 836 and 1629 are higher numbers) as well. Not that I've seen anything but pictures. But 293 had a great robot last year and I've heard good things about 836 and 1629 this year.

[Michael Corsetto]

Watch out for 190 and 114 at Silicon Valley, two veteran teams both with one regional under their belt. The Poof's may be the Yankee's, but the Red Sox's have to win eventually, right? ....right?

[Mullen]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I can't wait for your prediction on West Michigan.

thats gonna be a tough tough prediction with the amazing caliber of the teams attending

[GaryVoshol]

If the scheduling algorithm is similar to last week, you'll want to get there early to see some good matches in Detroit. Match 1, 2, and 4 could be prequels to the finals.

[wilsonmw04]

These are some interesting predictions considering the dynamics of this year's game. Over the past two weeks I have seen many, VERY good, scoring bots be neutralized by simple and effective defensive bots. Position is too large an advantage to be countered by a complex scoring device.

[JoeXIII'007]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I can't wait for your prediction on West Michigan.

In some cases I wish I was going there, but we're going down to Buckeye, and I am quite curious what he'll have to say re: that.

-Joe

[Jay Trzaskos]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Over the past two weeks I have seen many, VERY good, scoring bots be neutralized by simple and effective defensive bots. Position is too large an advantage to be countered by a complex scoring device.

I tend to disagree with this statement. Every great offensive robot I have seen, along with many decent scoring robots, are able to place ringers through at least one defensive robot. I have seen offensive teams held to one or two tubes when they are being pressured with two defensive robots, but I have also seen great scoring machines place 5 tubes through one very good defensive machine.

In my mind it all comes down to driver skill more than robot ability. If your driver could successfully maneuver the Rage '02 bot, then your team is golden, give your drive team anything with an arm, and they will manage to get the job done. But if you give a young, untested, driver something like ‘Stang ’07, you may be hard pressed to score 4 tubes.

This is where I see veteran teams having an upper hand. Not only do they have the knowledge of past games to help them train their drivers, but they also have drivers with past experience there to back them up along with new drivers being trained every year that are willing to push themselves to be better than their predecessor.

But back on topic, I agree with every one of Dr. Joe’s predictions. For some reason at UTC I see 173 teaming up with either 177 or 195 and beating the 25 alliance. As for Detroit, I have this gut feeling that Killer Bee’s have what it takes to beat out the 217 alliance. As for 47, they are going to be on one side of that epic battle, I just don’t know which.

[JamesBrown]

I am going to have to agree with the first part of Jay's post, good scoring bots can beat defensive bots. Also he is right, Good robots win qualifying matches, but good drivers win regionals.

As for the part about UTC I am curious about every ones omission of Team 20, The seeded very well(possibly first?) last year and then ended up getting beat by a strong defensive alliance. The year before they seeded first but ended up losing to a 69/126 alliance. I would not be surprised to see them up there with or ahead of that fantastic strech of UTC teams.

If the algorithm doesn't change for this week, we may get to see numerous clashes of titans with the tendency of teams with simmilar numbers to play against eachother, we will undoubtedly see combinations of 20, 25, and 40 as well as 173, 176, 177

[Akash Rastogi]

Good predictions.
hopefully team 11 will be more focused and try to go fro the win also.
good luck everyone!!!

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Jay Trzaskos

I tend to disagree with this statement. Every great offensive robot I have seen, along with many decent scoring robots, are able to place ringers through at least one defensive robot. I have seen offensive teams held to one or two tubes when they are being pressured with two defensive robots, but I have also seen great scoring machines place 5 tubes through one very good defensive machine.

That's another big statement :-) i've only seen a max of 6 ringers for any finals alliance (just what i've seen, there might be more) I feel that for all the alliances for all the finals this week, we will see a combined score of 100-120 points per game. That looks like a lot of D to me.

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

That's another big statement :-) i've only seen a max of 6 ringers for any finals alliance (just what i've seen, there might be more) I feel that for all the alliances for all the finals this week, we will see a combined score of 100-120 points per game. That looks like a lot of D to me.

If you want to see how easy it is to score more than that just watch the svr finals, 254 can probably score that them selves. While the average combined score per match in eliminations may be around 100 the teams that win almost all of the regionals will have matches where just there alliance puts up more points than that.

254, 175, and 25 all return this week at regionals with pleanty of scorers capable of scoring well over 100 points.

Also 71, 111, and 45 debut robots, and while history doesn't guarantee success I would have a hard time picking against any of these teams.

I also believe that a combined score of 100+ is respectable and does not feature much defense. 100 points is not very common, if you look at teams high scores there aren't tons over 100. to say that 100-120 looks like alot of D really shows a poor understanding of the game.

[wilsonmw04]

my understanding of the game is just fine, thank you. it's a combined score for BOTH alliances. that means 50-60 points for each side. with and average of 15-60 "bonus" points per game that means 2-5 ringers per side per match. That IS alot of Defense, when you stated that one scoring bot can place 5 rings through one defensive bot. A good alliance should have two bots that can score and a Defense/ramp bot. You are not going to see rings of 5-7 in a finals match. The teams are just to good. The Defense has too much of an advantage in this game.

you know what's great about predictions? in 4 days we will see who's right. Enjoy your weekend.

[Jay Trzaskos]

Very simply put, we all have our own opinions of what constitutes a decent match, a good robot, and a great alliance. I just don't want this to turn into a heated debate over which is better.

I am going ot be honest with you James, I totally forgot the Rocketeers are at UTC this weekend, I'm looking for another strong robot from their team this year. One small thing though, 45's debut was week one at St. Louis. They won.

All in all, I really like what I'm seeing as far as predictions go. I know this thread is just for predictions about veteran teams, but I am looking forward to seeing what some of the newer team's have up there sleeves. Most notably those teams that did not compete in 2005.