National Competition Reactions & Opinions

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Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 4/26/99 7:32 PM MST


In Reply to: i'd agree with tom posted by colleen on 4/26/99 6:43 PM MST:



Great points Colleen, but I'd hafta disagree with a few of your conclusions. Although I wholeheartedly agree that usage of variable strategies is dependent not only on the game but also on the team itself, I still maintain that this particular competition left much more room for the strategic brand of play. This year, strategy was key in deciding which robots perform which tasks and if one robot plays defense, etc.

In the past, there has been one robot against two, so defense (although an option) is much less plausible. While you're guarding one team, the third could be happily wandering about scoring all the points. Offence was pretty much the way to go. And with offence, teams tend to find one strategy and go with it (small alterations aside). This year, because your partner always had different capabilities and the opponents similarly had different capabilities, the method of play became much more instance-based than it ever has been. My team's strategy, for example, ranged everywhere from playing pure defense (i.e. holding baskets down, etc) to playing pure offence (raising multiple floppies above 8 feet while securing a place on the puck). We covered the whole spectrum. And our changing strategy was to our benefit. Our QM record shows it.

Of course, a lot of this could also be attributed to the many methods of scoring this year, but I think that was only possible with the added alliance partner. That way, despite the huge amount of scoring possibilities, teams were still able to obtain a good amount of the points.

Anyway, my basic point is that this game allowed for much more flexibility, and in order to do well, a team really needed to take advantage of that flexibility.

...if that makes sense ;-)


-Daniel