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#16
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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Imagine this, you are on a team that has two lap bots and one launcher. You just happen to be on the field against 1114, 217, and 27. The only chance you have of winning, guaranteed, is to pin both of their balls, and to never let them hurdle, ever. It is a tenacious form of play in the face of an overwhelmingly superior offensive team, and I doubt a single one of those teams would fault you for such a strategy, and would instead congratulate you on a game well played. Moreover it is absolutely inspiring to me to see a team do this because it shows a tenacity and willingness to compete that is essential to gracious professionalism. Being gracious means following the rules, but being a professional means attempting to win while following those rules. We in FIRST often seem to forget the professionalism part of GP. Losing a match you could have won because some people decided they didn't like your entirely legal and nondestructive strategy is downright unprofessional. |
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#17
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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Chester is AWOL! ![]() |
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#18
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
... ouch
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#19
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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#20
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
[
66 found their way to the #1 spot after qualifications, but were declined by 33, 27, and 67 before selecting 217 (who was outside of the top eight). This caused the break-up of the major superpowers, which made the eliminations very interesting and unpredictable. 217 carried the scoring weight of the #1 alliance, although they often used 910 to supply them with balls or protect them from defense, and managed to get their alliance to the finals. ] When 910 was feeding 217 balls was in the quarter finals because we were having problems with our launcher. Before the semi finals we fixed our launcher in code and did four hurdles while 217 was being defended by 201. This is a bit more than just handing off balls and running interference.Meanwhile 66 was playing great defense on 33 so it took a team to make it to the finals . Last edited by mark johnson : 31-03-2008 at 22:48. |
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#21
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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The agreed upon "best" robot(s) dont always win. Its always the best alliance that plays as a team with great strategy, with either outstanding or good robots. |
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#22
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
In an effort to make this game more "crowd friendly", I think the game designers wanted to reduce or nearly eliminate defense as a strategy and make it look more like NASCAR where there are bots just zooming around the field racing across the finish lines. I believe this concept is flawed for several reasons...
1) Basically, if it's "the team with the most firepower/speed wins" - which is what a purely offensive game really is, then I can tell you who will win before the match starts. The score will just show the faster / more-hurdling team getting farther and farther ahead until the two minutes of "fun" is over and one team has 100+ points while the other has oh, maybe 20 or so. Yahoo. Not a lot of crowd appeal there! You would hardly need to watch any match with say 3 hurdlers against 1 or even two good ones against one good one. It's like a basketball game where two guys on one team get to shoot baskets with each having their own ball, and only one on guy on the other does - oh, and there's no defense allowed! Just grab the balls and keep pumping them in. No suspense, not much strategy, and not much fun to watch. 2) Because there are so many rookie teams who can't hurdle, they have to do something. Without doing defense what are they left with? Lapping. Okay, it takes 5 laps to equal 1 hurdle. Even a basic hurdler that does it twice forces his counterpart to make 10 laps to tie him. If he places at the end, you can forget it. Where does that leave all the rookies and teams that can't hurdle? What do you want them to do? 3) If they really wanted it to be only speed and offense, then they needed to make the hurdles worth 4 and laps worth 2. Then you'd see an entirely different game. I'm glad they didn't because it wouldnt' reward the effort of making a hurdler, but it would eliminate the need for ball pinning, or anything else - it would just be a race. 4) The crowd appreciates defense! Imagine ANY game or sport with multiple players without defense. Basketball, football, hockey, baseball, even NASCAR has defense (people don't always politely move aside and let the faster car just go by). That's what makes the offense worthwhile! Heck if there's no defense, then you just run down the field and score a touchdown every play, right? That's not football, that's track and field! 5) Defense = strategy. It's a real challenge figuring out how to "counter" an offensive superpower, or how to team up maybe 2 on 1 (like Basketball or Football) to try and win. It makes even a slow lapbot feel worthwhile. We played with a team last weekend that could not hurdle or knock, and could only do two or three laps per match! It was tough trying to make that work for us, but we had them pin a ball and they slowed down our opponents and made a real significant contribution to the alliance! Take away their ability to defend, and you might as well tell them to go home and come back next year. Bottom line is that you need both: offense - to be appreciated for the beauty and speed of racing around the track, or grabbing the ball effortlessly and hurdling so fast they hardly have to slow down, and defense to counter the scorers and make them WORK for their points and have to dodge traffic and race or even fight for the balls. I think that's what makes the game really exciting. Last edited by FoleyEngineer : 01-04-2008 at 01:57. |
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#23
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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#24
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
I completely agree with what has been said about some teams not being able to hurdle, or other teams being so good at hurdling that offensively there is no way to beat them. This means defense must come into play, but it needs to be clean defense. Pinning the ball against the wall may technically be legal, but why give such a low blow and be so unsportsmanlike. Instead, chase after that offensive bot and get in their way so they can't possess, hurdle, or maneuver as well. Even better: when that team tries to possess the ball, knock the ball out of the way so they can't possess it. These are completely practical defensive strategies which are not "cheap" or "low-blows". Taking away the scoring game piece in an offensive game is really quite blasphemous.
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#25
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
so what your saying is that a slow robot from a low budget team has to keep try and keep up with the souped up motors and gear boxes of a team with A LOT of money..... I say you are dead wrong and pinning a ball in the corner s no "low blow" it is a fair and legal way to sut down a alliance. Besides would you as a team rather risk drawing a penalty for impeding, while trying to chase/block an opponent or just pack a ball in the corner and park, what sounds more logcal?
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#26
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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I never said that nor did I imply it. I simply suggested that there are much better defensive strategies than pinning the scoring piece against a wall and defeating the purpose of this game. I'm sure if you were to call up Dean or Woodie or anyone on the game planning committee and ask them if they designed the game to see teams pin the ball against the wall and cause the game to come to a crawl or a halt, they would say no. I can only hope to see a match where all four balls are pinned and the other two robots are just cruising around running laps -- then what would be said. |
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#27
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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Unfortunately, the maneuver of pinning the ball is NOT illegal. Telling people that their actions are shady and it's blasphemy is foolish. If FIRST doesn't condone these types of actions, they would change the rules or come out with updates. If judges think that your actions are unsportsmanlike, they give you a yellow card or DQ you. And this perspective comes from a team who built a purely offensive robot. My reaction to the defensive teams and their maneuvers, "bring it on". The alliance that wins should be the one that reacts best to the ever changing strategy of the game. I saw completely different strategy in Atlanta last year than what I saw in a regional, that was cool. Since everyone else is giving professional sports analogies I will too :-) I hate watching basketball teams slow the game by going to four corners. This IMHO this is boring, but I totally understand why they do it. I would never tell these teams that they were shady and it's blasphemy nor would I tell them that they were unprofessional. Last edited by Sunshine : 01-04-2008 at 06:59. |
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#28
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
I am not sure where people got the idea that this was a "no-defense" game. It is a game with a different kind of defense. In past games, robots often played defense by keeping the opponents away from the target - the Rack, the Tetra goals, etc. In this game, we've been told we can only keep robots away from their "target" of moving around the Track for 6 seconds, and cannot hinder them at all in their pursuit of the "target" of a hurdle. There has been no limitation on keeping robots away from the trackballs.
Quotes from the Q&A which show the GDC has reiterated this:
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#29
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
Rules are written to be followed. FIRST went over the rules numerous times and I'm sure accounted for many defensive manuevers that teams would come up with. They debated this before us. Don't think we came up with a strategy they didn't. THERE ARE ONLY TWO TRACKBALLS! What does that tell you? They expect a team not to be able to or have to hurdle. What can a team do to be most effective without hurdling? Defense. Pure and simple, defense was expected and written into the rules. It is not against GP. In fact I'd argue that if a team has a strategy that can win, and they chose not to follow that perfectly legal strategy that is against GP. It is unfair to their alliance partners to not follow the most effective strategy. If FIRST didn't want defense, they would have the two alliances play on seperate fields and see which alliance scored more points at the end. It would be completely boring but it would stop these supposedly unfair practices.
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#30
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Re: Look Back: Week 5
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As for teams with hurdling robots getting mad a teams who play a defensive/pinning type game - no way. We are a hurdling robot and had a ton of defense play on us at GLR. Did I get frustrated with it? Yes. Did I get mad at the other team for doing it? Heck, no! I congratulate them for a strategy that worked for them. It's called competition - do what you can within the rules (and without trying to harm another robot) to gain an advantage. I would say there is nothing ungracious or unprofessional about playing a defensive strategy - this coming from an offensively minded team. |
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