Cap'n John's Strategy/Driver Forum...Post your thoughts!

[archiver]

Posted by JVN at 03/14/2001 11:23 PM EST


Student on team #250, Dynamos - Capital District Robotics Team, from Shenendehowa High School and General Electric and Verizon.



This post is a responce to a post originally posted in the Rumor Mill by Bill Whitley of Team 70. I felt this topic needed to be discussed more prevalently.

The more we talk about strategy now, the better we can all work together at Nationals!

I urge everyone to speak their minds on this, what is the best way to do it???


: What do you think about teams who have one person just for strategy & another to drive. Shouldnt the driver be the one to decide on the strategy so (s)he knows it inside and out? The driver knows the robot better than anyone else, shouldnt (s)he come up with the strategy? What do you think?

: Bill
: Team #70

It is important for all this to happen. A strong drive team that is well rounded and works well together is the secret to victory. A robot only does HALF the work.

I'm just gonna rant about our drive team, and it's various merits, cuz I think we finally got it together in this respect. We all worked together and brought hom the gold in LI.

We have one coach who worries about the robot, and it's general performance. He is there to help the driver's however he can, but the real strategies come from the other coach. This coach is a veteran, someone who has been part of FIRST for a long time. He is there to share his experience and help the rest of the group. It's also good if he can fix a robot on the fly.

We have another coach who's primary job is strategy. He is a senior at RPI and has studied the game in detail as part of his senior design project. He knows EVERYTHING there is to know about it. It's intricacies and peculiarities. He knows those elusive rules about when to extend a game, and when to hit those magic red buttons. Every team should try to find (or make) someone like him. He is the difference between a 300 point match, and a 30 point match.

We determined early on that the human players would have a greatly reduced role in this game. (all they do is load the "near" goal, and maybe make some miraculous game winning shots :-)
So we decided that our human player would also have to be a coach. Someone who knows the game inside and out, and has driving experience. Someone who knows a lot about the robot. As team captain and a former driver, (and being kinda tall) I was chosen to be our HP. I highly recommend this to other teams. Being an ex driver, he can help share important insights with the current drivers, maybe prevent them from making the same mistakes he originally made. We also found it worked best if the HP is the ONLY team member allowed to push the BIGRED button. He/She is responsible for it, that way no DQ's can occur. Plus toward the end of the match the HP usually doesn't have much to do anyways. The human player doesn't have to be especially skilled at throwing in balls, it is much better to have another (student) coach in the booth. And hey, if it turns out he can make a nice shot every now and again, so much the better. (gotta love the hail mary right? I know my friends on Clarkson - 229 loved it)

Amazing drivers round out the drive team. They should know all of the aspects of the game. They should be cool under pressure and smart enough to improvise plays on the fly. And they should be TRAINED... incredibly trained. Practice wins alliances. They should work well together, almost creepily well. We're talking telepathically well.

So now here comes the next big question. Now that you've got this AMAZING drive team, how do you utilize it? How can you work with the other teams and put humongous scores up?

We created a master playbook (Anton called it the Bible). As many of you have heard (maybe seen in LI) we have the mother of all playbooks. It has every combination of robots possible and all the different strategies possible therein. It was designed by a group of RPI seniors as their final project. You have to learn how to speak a whole new language to use it.
but anyways, i digress... We use this playbook as a base for strategies. Together with our binder of scouting-sheets it is the ultimate tool. When we come to a match, we quickly figure out who were working with and determine the play needed. From there it is just a matter of talking to the other drivers/coaches. Usually this entire process is done by the HP and Strategy Coach. The drivers and other coach get set up for the match. Then it is just a matter of quickly telling the drivers the play for the match.
Ex. "Cross the bridge behind team 229, then grab the far goal, come back across the bridge and balance with the goal using 263 as a shock-absorber"

We found this worked pretty well in Long Island. Although in the finals the WPI guys basically took charge (and did a darn good job of it too!).

Our drivers just learned to trust the coaches. They help come up with the plan too, but when it comes down to it. They follow it. The only problems we had came when an ally blindly followed the play, even after "obvious catastrophic failure" (isn't that the FIRST term for it?)
Woodie always talked about a 'Plan B'. Unfortunately we found there is often little time for formulating such a plan. Usually plan b entails "get to the endzone and HIT THE BUTTONS!!!"

But yeah, I just hope we become part of as great as an alliance in Nats as we had in Long Island (thanks again 190, 263, 353, 533!)

If you've read this far, I thank you, this stuff has been on my mind, and I had to rant...

~John Vielkind-Neun Team #250
"Captain, Strategy Guy, and Decent Human Player"

PS You wanna see the new improved RPI playbook, come to our pits at nats. Team 250 - Dynamos!