What do you think will be important this year?

[kirtar]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

That is true, and I expect a lot of robots to incorporate this kind of thing into their designs. Without direction, it seems having a ball consistently land in a place close enough to a robot that it would not need to move in order to score would be impossible.

The "metal on carpet" was referring to locking into the carpet.

I am aware of what "metal on carpet" was referring to (as an example 71 used filecards one year IIRC). I meant was that its illegality is not able to be argued against because it is specifically stated in the rules.

[Uberbots]

Zone-Zone mobility and ball passing (if mobility is too much of an issue)

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

Neither the tunnel or bump will be an effective mode of traveling from one zone to another. How do we move from zone to zone? You don't, at least, once you get your robot where you want it - you keep it there, and let your mechanisms do the scoring for you. One robot moves balls from the midzone to the alliance zone, and a second moves balls of the alliance zone to the goal. It's that simple.

Why you would need extra robots in a zone is, currently, beyond me.

Seconded, mostly.

Unless you're constantly moving from one zone to another, at risk of getting blocked or tipped, I can only see a few strategies where this works in your favor.

• Pull your far bot to midfield - This could work for ball starvation, if your 2 on 1 can consistently shutdown your opponent's midfielder. I think this is probably the best argument for changing zones.
• Pull your near bot to midfield - This also depends on your 2 on 1 dominating in midfield AND being able to score from midfield.
• Pull midfield to your near zone - This mostly makes sense as a short term strategy, as you're shifting your ball supply to your far bot. But it could be effective for a scoring burst before the endgame.

So, I can see situations where moving around the field can help you, but only to a point. And only if you can capitalize on the situation. If you have to sacrifice robot performance to make the tunnel or bump, then it might not be worth it. At any rate, I think you can be an effective alliance mate without focusing on changing zones.
Also, I think the tunnel will still be an effective means for getting between zones. Sure it can be blocked, but a blocking robot is extremely stationary for obvious reasons. Pulling a robot off-task to block a tunnel can be nearly as useful as a second robot in that zone anyways.

[RookieWookiez]

Not sure how much people have already beat this to death, but one of my ideas for something important for this year (though I am a rookie, so if I'm wrong please correct me) is to make a decision at the final twenty seconds of the match to see if a team should go up into the tower and risk damaging their robot if another team gets up there, or go and try to score at the final moments of the match to get some points while the other team may be letting up their defenses.

Most teams are going to try and go for the tower points there at the end, eventually letting up their defense for the last twenty seconds. If a team has a lot of balls down on their side, and they're ahead of the game at that point in the game, then I think it'd be more efficient for them to go and score those balls at the end in order to get those points.

Not saying that strategy would work every single time, but still it may work every once in a while. It'd have to be a move that'd be decided at the end of a match, but it's just something to consider for the matches you're in.

Just throwing it out there.

[kjolana1124]

Originally Posted by RMiller

I wouldn't be too worried about opponents strategies during autonomous. I would more worry about being able to cooperate with your alliance partners.

Right, but if you notice a team always puts the balls in a certain way in auto and gets them from point A to point B in a repeated amount of time, you may be able to figure out a legal way to counter it.

[kirtar]

Originally Posted by kjolana1124

Right, but if you notice a team always puts the balls in a certain way in auto and gets them from point A to point B in a repeated amount of time, you may be able to figure out a legal way to counter it.

Only if your strategy involved hitting a ball over there or if they partially cross the line (or at least get somewhat close to the line). You can't fully cross the center line in autonomous. You can however, observe where a team tends to end up and make it so that you may be in an advantageous position after autonomous (excluding the above statements).

[kjolana1124]

Right, I guess I worded my point wrong. On that note, I guess the key thing here is flexibility. Any amount of repetition will probably get spotted here and used against you.