Week 3 Impressions of Rack n' Roll

[Frenchie]

I'm surprised nobody created such a thread yet.

My analysis is based solely on the Detroit Regional (a small, but competitive regional featuring Bees, Chiefs, Chickens, Phoenix, Guerrillas, Dragons and other non-conventional animals)

If the end of Great Lakes Regional hinted at a more defensive game, where strategic ringer placement and ramp would be key to a win, Detroit achieved to convince me.

First of all, kudos to the game committee for coming up with a game where I have yet to see a really dominating robot. This alliance intensive games makes it hard for a single robot, no matter how good, to dominate the game.

Now, onto the three main components of this game:

Rack Game: Winning the rack is not so much about putting the most ringers on it anymore, but putting such ringers in an intelligent fashion in order to maximize their point value. Winning a game with the rack only is currently difficult for most robots as defense is fiercest than ever, strategic ringer placement usually prevent any 7 or 8 rows, and spoilers are starting to be used on a regular basis. All in all, only the best of the best can rely on their scoring abilities to win a game now.

Defense: Defense took a whole new dimension this week. We saw a couple very strong ramp bots such as 247 or 703 keep robots away from the rack for most of the game, and rows of 3 became way more frequent than 6's, 7's and 8's. The final matches at Detroit Regional probably exemplify this aspect of the game: 469 and 302, two decent scorers, were shut down by 903 and 247 who ended up taking the gold with their ramp points.

Ramp: Ramp is decisive. Whether or not this was the original intent of the creators of the game is up to debate, but the facts are here: all semi finals and finals at Detroit regional were won with ramp points. The best alliance partner ever? A great ramp with good defense capability and decent scoring capability. Climbing a ramp is still a challenge for many robots, but as the days go by, drivers are sharpening their skills and engineers improving upon their ramp for, I believe, a ramp dominated game in Georgia.

Overall, alliances are key to this game. I am now convinced that a winning alliance must contain at least one (1) scorer and one (1) ramp bot, and would even speculate that the ultimate alliance encompasses the following robots:
1 good scorer (1114, 25, 67, 217, 302, ...)
1 ramp bot with scoring capability (469, 27, 503, 1023, ...)
1 other scorer

The scorers MUST have the capability/ground clearance necessary to climb the ramp.

Decent scorers are usually all gone when third pick comes back, in which case a good defensive bot will make the difference. Also, an all defensive strategy, such as that pulled out by the Da Bears alliance is still valid.

I love that game . Driving was incredibly exciting. No prediction ever holds and the winner isn't set until the last second.

Excuse all the grammatical mistakes and other redundancies.

Francois.