Prediction: Veterans take off the gloves in Week 3

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Cory

I agree. In Atlanta things will be different. You will need two strong scorers, one of whom has good ramps/lifts, and a third partner that can cap some/play defense.

Until then, at events where the top tube scorers don't have ramps, and there aren't any real good ones available in the second round, I'd expect to see what I've described happening.

How about two fast, agile, efficient scorers and one torque-y ramp bot? That seems like a working combination to me -- Leave each bot to focus on one task as opposed to trying to both defend and score simultaneously.

Having two ramp-bots is a good idea, though, in case one is more effective, that one could be used mainly, but if all else fails, the backup one could deploy.


It'll be interesting to watch the games at Atlanta, to say the least. If 675 doesn't go, I'll definitely watch it on the web-feed and probably cheer for some team that I've seen at San Jose or Davis.

[Steve Kaneb]

The way our alliance won SVR was consistency. Every match, 1280 and 190 would score on the sides of the rack to start, and 1516 would play defense and blocker. Essentially the idea is defensive tube scoring. If you limit the other team to a row of fewer than 5, they're limited to beating you on bonus points. We were not the best tube scorers at SVR, far from it, but by the end our driver got into the zone a bit, and we did a bit better on the rack. We presented the teams on the opposing alliance a significant problem: they would have to beat our 60 points plus tubes. The fact that 1280 and 1516 were able to get on our ramps for 60 points in all but two matches in the eliminations (first match of the finals, the main battery cable popped out of our distribution block, and the final match we jiggled our way to two 15 point bonuses) made it very tough for our opponents to beat us there.
If you're confident in your ramp bot and your drivers, I'm convinced that you can win any competition by effective tube scoring to limit the opponent. When you match them on the rack, you challenge your opponents to have a better ramp bot and two better drivers.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Cory

I think you're misreading what I said.

If you're on an alliance that has two robots that can score well, but has no ramps, or ramps that don't work very well, you will almost always lose to an alliance that has one solid scoring robot, good defenders, and a good ramp bot.

It doesn't matter how good the tube scoring bots are. Two robots bashing the heck out of both will be able to hold an alliance to less than 60 tube points. At which point it comes down to the ramps, in which case the first alliance loses.

I know what you were saying, but it does not always prove true. In New Jersey, 25, 103, and 1302 won by being the last teams at the rack. Once the other alliance had gone back to ramp up, they would score the last few ringers to push their alliance over the top of the 60 point threshold. On occasion 103 would ramp on 1302 as well, but it very rarely happened. 75 and 293 saw some similar results in some elimination matches at Chesapeake, but eventually teams stopped trying to ramp against them altogether, and played against them on the rack (with no better results however). 75 and 293 exposed something that hadn't been exploited heavily in most of the earlier week action (148 and 217 did it some during St. Louis). Most teams (at the regional level) aren't very good at scoring on the top spider. When 75 and 293 got together, they essentially monopolized the two fastest top spider scoring teams, and used it to dominate where most other alliance couldn't touch them. No alliance managed to get more than 1 or 2 tubes on the top against them, and they had a row of at least 5 every match (besides their first QF match, where they attempted to score middle instead of top).
Many people view this game too much in terms of one dimension. While the easiest and quickest way to overcome a "double-bonus" is a row of 6, it is not the only way. The next shortest configuration (a row of 5 and a row of 4 with 4 columns of 2 forming) does require 9 tubes though, but given the ~25-30 seconds of free scoring an alliance can get while the other alliance ramps, it is by no means out of the question.
Granted, I'd still rather have the option to ramp than not.

[AdamHeard]

The quality of defense at the regionals determines the dominant strategies as mentioned above.

At LA, they were not very many good defensive robots/drivers. They were a lot of teams that played defense because they had no choice (I'll admit my team did that for a while; but atleast we had a nice enough drivetrain to back it up, and a sense of defensive play). Most teams would go out and try to play defense, but they just couldn't do it. We were a good defender in comparison to most, when we should not have been at all (2 small CIMs geared @10 fps, no pushing power).

Pretty off topic by now, but if you are a veteran team... please explain to your partners what effective defense is and how to play it. Many teams had capable defensive robots, but just didn't use them correctly.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

The quality of defense at the regionals determines the dominant strategies as mentioned above.

At LA, they were not very many good defensive robots/drivers. They were a lot of teams that played defense because they had no choice (I'll admit my team did that for a while; but atleast we had a nice enough drivetrain to back it up, and a sense of defensive play). Most teams would go out and try to play defense, but they just couldn't do it. We were a good defender in comparison to most, when we should not have been at all (2 small CIMs geared @10 fps, no pushing power).

Pretty off topic by now, but if you are a veteran team... please explain to your partners what effective defense is and how to play it. Many teams had capable defensive robots, but just didn't use them correctly.

4 doesn't fall into this category. Taking off the arm to play defense in the finals was a good move (lower CG and lower profile--the "What hit the robot?" effect). Plus, they know how to play smart defense. Given a target, they will give that target a hard time scoring. Ask 188 about that (SF2, matches 2 and 3).

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by EricH

4 doesn't fall into this category. Taking off the arm to play defense in the finals was a good move (lower CG and lower profile--the "What hit the robot?" effect). Plus, they know how to play smart defense. Given a target, they will give that target a hard time scoring. Ask 188 about that (SF2, matches 2 and 3).

I probably should of acknowledged the good as well, but 4 was definitely one of the best defenders at the regional.

[petek]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I know what you were saying, but it does not always prove true. In New Jersey, 25, 103, and 1302 won by being the last teams at the rack. Once the other alliance had gone back to ramp up, they would score the last few ringers to push their alliance over the top of the 60 point threshold. On occasion 103 would ramp on 1302 as well, but it very rarely happened.

Though I'm a fan of the strategy used by the NJ winners, part of the reason that they didn't score many bonus points was that it wasn't easy to get up 1302's ramp - not that they didn't try.

On the other hand the Finalists had one good scoring robot, a defensive robot and a ramp, but got outscored 140-49 & 140-32. Even if they had gotten both of their robots up 12", they would still have lost to 25 & 103's ringers.

What I've seen and read about the events so far leads me to believe that we haven't seen many cases where there was a large number of good scoring robots and good ramps, but that should change by Atlanta. My prediction is that to win in Atlanta will take two solid scoring robots and a strong ramp robot that can run interference for a scorer for the first half of the game.