Calling All Drivers

[cziggy343]

speaking to your alliance beforehand is of the utmost importance. without any team chemistry whatsoever, your chances of succeeding are slim to none.

stay in your alliance's "safe zones." this refers to the areas where your alliance's payload specialists are located. this is especially important if you are facing an alliance with robots that are not large scorers b/c the PS is the only way that they will be able to score in bunches.

this is more to the programmers... but please PLEASE move your robot in autonomous... it is very difficult to get up a strategy knowing that as soon as you gain control of your robot, you may already be down by 20+ points.

super cells are important! if you can pick up off of the floor, but you are not a very reliable scorer, you may want to seriously consider becoming an empty cell runner. a robot that specializes in running empty cells is a very hot commodity to a winning alliance... b/c i know that scoring teams like ours do not want to have to mess with the empty cells b/c it slows us down and messes up our groove.

the obvious: keep moving. the longer you sit, the more you are a sitting duck for good robots and for good PS.

[Matt382]

Deliver empty cells when its convenient. Usually, the outpost is open to go pick one up right after autonomous ends, but if it isn't, don't go for it. Go play defense or score moonrocks and come back later.

Don't pin a robot in front of the opposing team's human player. I've seen plenty of robots do this and a human player will just load up your trailer and it usually isn't worth having their robot pinned.

Keep moving, but remember that turning all the way around is hard and it takes longer than you would think to stop.

Stay smart. This is probably the most important thing. You need a smart drive team, one that can strategize well before hand and handle strategy changes based on field conditions.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by gorrilla

dont give up if the odd's are'nt good

This is one of the best pieces of advice posted in this thread.

Never, Ever say a match is won or lost until the final score is posted. I've seen too many teams say we're going up against (XXX) and they're awesome and we're going to get owned. If you take that mentality then of course you're going to lose. Go out to every match and do your best, a wise man once told me "A Robot can Always be fixed but a Match can never be Replayed."

Also, Keep a level head. (I suffer from this) Don't ever get too big of an Ego. No matter how awesome you were in the last match, your last regional, last year, last decade you could still lose. A battery could come unplugged, your robot could reset, the field could drop you, your robot could throw a chain, you could get triple teamed by the opposing alliance, you could get pinned in a corner for 2 minutes anything can happen. Always be ready to work your butt off and play each match as if it were your last.

And something I've found out in the last few weeks, Stay away from drama at a competition. If you know there's someone on your team who stresses you out then try to stay away from them. I've seen first hand what team Drama can do to a Drive Team's performance and it's not pretty.

[its da PAT!!!]

before the match the coach, button monkey and me look at the field and look where we wanna go and where not to. We call it the "triangle" stay in your triangle drive towards your human players. Also if a dumper has to dump all there balls at once, play possum once they start to dump get out of there and snap, they lose all the balls and have to go pick up.

[bigbeezy]

im not a driver this year, but from experience of driving for the past 4 years I would say one of the most important things is to keep your cool. Getting frustrated when things arn't going your way only causes you to make mistakes, thus making you more frustrated.

from watching teams you could tell some drivers have bad tunnel vision. they get so locked onto one robot they miss the robot stopped in the corner a little ways away. This is solved mostly with practice.

when your alliance has a supercell you should "go fishing." you need to get your opponent to your corner so if u act as "bait" you may be able to "reel in" another team then when they get close you strike back pinning them into the corner making a easy shot for your HP.

[Greg Peshek]

Originally Posted by bigbeezy

from watching teams you could tell some drivers have bad tunnel vision. they get so locked onto one robot they miss the robot stopped in the corner a little ways away. This is solved mostly with practice.

when your alliance has a supercell you should "go fishing." you need to get your opponent to your corner so if u act as "bait" you may be able to "reel in" another team then when they get close you strike back pinning them into the corner making a easy shot for your HP.

A good coach generally solves the first problem, you want your base driver to be able to lock onto a target and go after it and look for other options, but you also want a driver that will listen to a coach that lets them know if there is a much more open robot. A good coach is a nice redundancy system for a good driver.

I don't like playing the bait game.. because it can end up very badly. I have planned with my alliances in the past to corrall the opponnent into the corner. You just get two or three robots to drive them over there and then you have a wall setup so they can't get out and your HP can get a nice shot.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but something we found useful was coming up with hand signals between the coach and HP if you're on different sides of the field. We had signals for "get me the empty cell", "partner is tied up, we need to get the empty cell", "start throwing balls onto the field for our robot", among more. They are really handy for communication.

-Greg

[robostangs548]

Don't try to figure out what the score is, and better yet don't worry about it until the match is over, even if one super cell is taken away, its better then loosing the match because of underscoring...

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by robostangs548

Don't try to figure out what the score is, and better yet don't worry about it until the match is over, even if one super cell is taken away, its better then loosing the match because of underscoring...

Absolutely yes worry about the score. How else will you know whether or not to convert / fire a supercell?

However, don't worry about penalties at all, really. You'll at most lose an empty cell or two, unless you have awesome teammates in the next match, and if you have awesome teammates then you don't need the supercells.

STRATEGY is absolutely vital to everything ever. The strategist needs to be well-versed in the rules and have some practice in. Play every match as if it's your hardest.

[Josh Goodman]

Don't be afraid to change your strategy on the fly. You only have 2 minutes to win a match. If something isn't working, CHANGE IT.

As said many times before, don't stop moving. Pinning is always an important part of the game, but waiting on the field is definitely NOT okay.

COMMUNICATE! Communicate with your alliance partners. The key to this game is cooperation. 3 powerhouses may win without communication. But it is very possible for 3 okay teams to beat them with communication.

Look at the score but don't obsess over it. The game can change extremely quickly with very many points. If making a supercell shot will give you the 2x penalty, depending on the score, you may want to make the shot as a safety. Remember. One game at a time.

Positive attitudes. I can't emphasize this enough. Everyone gets stressed on the field but keep a positive attitude with the feeling of "we can totally win this, I'm going to give it my all".

At about 30 seconds left, watch for what HP have empty cells and stay away from those areas. Let your alliance know the same thing. On a different note, keep an eye out for those who don't possess any moon rocks because that is now a safe zone you can drive in.

Play the zones. Stay away from enemy HP who can score big on your trailer. This is how alliances are scoring many points. Pinning in front of HPs.

[Brad Voracek]

I drive a four wheel, wide drive base robot. We have no sensors for traction control. Our sticks were converted to a cubic function in programming, besides that, it's straight drive. 12.5 to 1 reduction from the kitbox, straight geared to the wheels.

I received compliments all weekend long in LA for my driving, one person even came over to us and asked us what we did chemically to our wheels to accelerate so fast. In qualifying matches I was only scored on once by 599 after getting in a bad position. The only other time I had more than 5 balls in my trailer was because we were dead for half the match in front of an enemy human player. (match 13)

Ramp the sticks up slightly if you dont have traction control. Unless you're turning, then just gun it.

It's easy as sin to make a complete 180 with the trailer, keep that in mind. Just start soon enough so you don't run into a wall.

Always move, unless you're homing in on a trailer, then slow down. If you ram into a trailer too fast it'll bump away from you and you can't score. Unless the trailer is against a wall of course.

I drive this game just like overdrive. I drive circles around the court until we have enough balls (the balls collect along the edges) then go for the kill.

It's easy to get pinned in corners, avoid them. Driving against walls its easy to avoid pins and "juke" someone. Just have your coach paying attention to if someone if coming towards you. Then stop moving, accelerate past them, or go backwards and flip around using the trailer.

Human players are deadly. Our autonomous mode collided with 207 in the semifinals, and we kind of got stuck over there. Their human player was loading our trailer, and by the time i got out of the pin, we were full. Sadly, our human player was loading our robot because thats what we usually do (968 style) but we told him if that ever happens again, score on the enemy trailer. Points in their basket are better than you scoring them later.

Elimination and qualifying matches play COMPLETELY different. At least in LA, we had 60 teams there and only got 7 matches. It's a completely new ball game when all of the robots can at least maneuver a little.
To Elaborate:
There will -not- be as many balls on the field to gather up.
There will -not- be "nonmoving" trailers as much.
The human players will know what they are doing
Super cells are probably more useful. In LA, there were no super cells in the finals. However, they could have changed matches. We made a mistake in our matches and never went for empty cell delivery. However, this would have been better for us. There were not enough balls to collect and score. The only qualifying match we lost was because we delivered an empty cell instead of scoring more moon rocks, and thus, we figured they would be equally as useless in eliminations. Looking back at our matches, we could have delivered an empty cell and won with the super cell if we prepared for this. Keep it in mind. Eliminations and qualifying are completely different games, this year more then ever.

Not related to driving, but alliance selection is super important. Have scouts. The most important statistic (imo) is how full their trailer is at the end of the match. If your trailer is near empty, you're pretty decent. If it's full, you must have been doing something wrong.

DON'T GET SCORED ON. That's the biggest thing. If one robot can score on you you're out of luck. to get scored on, it should take one robot pinning you and the second scoring. If it doesn't, you're doing something wrong.



I hope some of this was useful. *shrug*

[jamie_1930]

You know you have the match in the bag if your alliance partners are counting money before hand, in place of strategizing.

[rockbga]

Learn to drive backwards with the trailer attached.
This helps with pins and helps you be more agile.

[roboraven15]

definatly consider baiting dumpers if you cant normally outrun them or such. like one team with traction control twice only scored a few balls on us when we obviously couldn't run away faster than them, so we'd slow down, wait for the moment they should dump, and drive off. and get far enough away before they could react and follow. they wasted atleast 3/4 of there balls easy.

[ShadowNinja]

1) watch tokyo drift for about a week
2) read your physics book...especially over momentum and power...
3)practice..practice...practice...
4)Do not forget to attach ur trailer onto the robot (if you forget...hope ur team has a good sense of humor)
5) Do not trip while walking with controller box
6) Do not eat anything spicy or round before competiton...nightmares!
7) Learn to intimidate other robots with your evil stare
8)Learn to use the force to your advantage (Starwars)
9) Have fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gorrilla]

[quote=ShadowNinja;841143]
8)Learn to use the force to your advantage (Starwars)
QUOTE]

ah-ha

the perfect stratagy.....