Taking risks @ Nat's: Will your team do it?

[archiver]

Posted by Kevin Sevcik at 03/26/2001 2:15 PM EST


Other on team #57, Leopards, from BT Washington and the High School for Engineering Professions and Exxon, Kellog Brown & Root, Powell Electrical.


In Reply to: Couldn't disagree more!!
Posted by Matt Berube on 03/26/2001 11:31 AM EST:



While going for a more modest score with a single goal balanced may seem a better strategy because it's easier to do, I think that in the long run, it will hurt a team's QP average.

Look at it this way. Chances are, there's gonna be a couple of rounds where you get teamed with a bunch of bots that just can't do anything, or a bot falls over in front of the bridge, or something bad happens that nets you a two digit score. No matter what you do, it's bound to happen eventually. That being the case, if you go for more conservative scores, and always get them, these bad rounds will knock you down till you're averaging about 170-180 or so.

If you go for big scores, you'll probably end up with the bad rounds, plus some slightly worse than conservative rounds, plus some really spectacular matches. So on the whole, you'll probably average about the same. But, if you have just one or two more spectacular matches, you'll be doing much better than the more conservative teams.

So what it really comes down to is if you want to be sure you're in the middle of the pack, or if you want to give yourself a shot at being a really high seed. Personally, my strategy is to develop a good scouting database that will suggest a good strategy for the teams that are in your alliance. That way, you'll know if you should go for a high score or not.