pic: 230 pt. celebration

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

And nobody wins the bet cause we were both wrong....

But I wanna see someone sing!

Seriously, though. I missed the part of the conversation in which the thumb was defined as a defender of the bar. All I heard is that the thumb played good defense. Sorry about stirring this whole thing up (okay, I'm not that sorry).

[Paul Copioli]

If we both lost the bet, doesn't that mean we have to sing a duet?

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

If we both lost the bet, doesn't that mean we have to sing a duet?

As long as it's something like "Islands in the Stream".

[Andy Grady]

Originally Posted by JVN

Okay for your consideration,
45 + 33 vs. 494 + 60.

494 plays big D on those pesky technokittens. Shuts them down. 33 goes nuts on offense. 60 does the same. 494 and 60 both hang.

Who wins?
Finger + Thumb.

I gotta agree with Ken on this one Paul.
A more versatile alliance can take down a strictly offensive alliance. Especially if they have the magic hanging capability.

The defensive robot doesn't have to stop both offensive robots. Just one of them. They only need to slow the offensive alliance down enough so that their partner can outscore them.

John

I would say that the chances of beating a 33 and 45 aliance are not very good. Two offensive robots of that caliber are hard to offset by defense no matter who you have as a partner. However...it is very possible. Instead of focusing on a robot in particular, your best bet more than likely would be to sit yourself in front of the goal to prevent one of those robots from scoring. Of course that is a difficult task to do with the 45 arm, but it is your best bet. If you are successful in stopping a doubler, and your partner goes unscathed on the other side, scoring, capping, and hanging...you should be able to walk away from the contest with a victory. Of course, there are alot of variables, and there are alot of counter defenses to what I just said....thats what made this years game so great.

[Paul Copioli]

Hey Andy,

Welcome to the debate. I'm glad there is someone on my side of the argument. I thought I was all alone.

A little history: Ken and I were on the MidWest team for the game design committee this year (we had no idea what the game was, we just came up with our ideal game and submitted it along with rules, etc.). Our big discussion was designing a game that a finger and a thumb could not dominate (the nomenclature came from Verbrugge .. picture a thumb squeezing the life out of the game). We felt that the 2003 game could be dominated by a finger and a thumb and wanted to avoid that at all costs.

It came as no surprise when the game was revealed Ken and I started debating if the thumb could dominate. His idea was that a bar dominator, aka thumb, along with a good offensive robot would win it all. The story grows from there, but that is how it all started.

[Andy Grady]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

It came as no surprise when the game was revealed Ken and I started debating if the thumb could dominate. His idea was that a bar dominator, aka thumb, along with a good offensive robot would win it all. The story grows from there, but that is how it all started.

I think in the case of what you state here, the bar dominator and offensive bot could do well...but, as we found out there was an extreme flaw to that idea of strategy. What ended up happening in the case of bar domination / offensive bot, is that the offensive bot would end up getting picked on by a good defensive robot. Good case would be with WPI. WPI could hang in autonomous mode...which in itself was quite impressive. However, everytime they did so, they left their partner high and dry with no bodyguard for protection. Any robot that hung from the outset, would leave its partner to get tooled by a good defensive robot, thus resulting in a loss if the defenders partner was a high caliber offensive robot. I dont necessarily think two offensive robots was the answer either. I feel that actually the answer was machine specific. Some robots would work perfect with others, and probably be close to unbeatable. This year, more than any other...there was no "Beatty move", which is kinda ironic considering Beatty won.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

A little history: Ken and I were on the MidWest team for the game design committee this year (we had no idea what the game was, we just came up with our ideal game and submitted it along with rules, etc.). Our big discussion was designing a game that a finger and a thumb could not dominate (the nomenclature came from Verbrugge .. picture a thumb squeezing the life out of the game). We felt that the 2003 game could be dominated by a finger and a thumb and wanted to avoid that at all costs.

It came as no surprise when the game was revealed Ken and I started debating if the thumb could dominate. His idea was that a bar dominator, aka thumb, along with a good offensive robot would win it all. The story grows from there, but that is how it all started.

Given that background, maybe we should all keep this in mind for next year's game...





-dave

[Jay Lundy]

I was thinking a lot about how to beat 45 + 33 vs us + another team before nationals. I came to the conclusion that playing defense to stop them from herding wouldn't work very well. It might slow them down a little but if 494 is over there harassing 45 + 33, the two of them together can still herd faster than 60/254 alone on their side of the field.

I thought about blocking the ball chutes with mobile goals, but it's a risky strategy. At the beginning of the match the 60/254 + 494 alliance blocks both corralls with the 2 mobile goals. Then they spend the rest of the match preventing 45 and 33 from latching onto the goals to move them out of the way so they can dump. Then with 20 seconds left 254/60 runs to hang. I didn't have a lot of confindence in this strategy though.

I thought about capping 45's stationary goal at the beginning then keeping their mobile goal away from their human players, but I was pretty sure 45's arm could pull the ball out.

The strategy that I determined was the best was to try to control all the 2x balls for the entire match. In the beginning of the match 254 starts on the same side as 45 and we run our 1 ball and turn autonomous, triggering only our ball drop and placing ourselves between 45 and the mobile goal at the end of autonomous. Once autonomous is over, we grab the 2x ball and run to our side of the field, where we drop it on the ground. Then we run over and grab the 2x ball off the other mobile goal and hold on to it. Then we poke the 2x ball in the center of the field towards our side of the field.

From there, I am pretty confident we could prevent 45 from picking a 2x ball off the ground. Those balls get knocked around very easily and as soon as we see 45 going for a 2x ball we just play keep-away with them by repeatedly running into whatever 2x ball they are going for. Once all the 2x balls are on our side, we either herd unguarded while 45 and 33 herd with 494 harassing, or 45 spends the whole match going for a 2x ball while we defend and 33 herds with 494 playing defense on them. Either way the 45+33 alliance would end up with more small balls, but I doubt they could get more than twice as many as 254+494. At the end of the match 254 caps their goal and holds on until the last second. 33 tries to hang but is defended by 494.

A bonus is if our partner can block 33 from tripping their balls in autonomous, since I'm confident we could stop 45 from tripping.

End result:
No robots hanging
254/60 + 494: 7 balls + cap = 70 points
45 + 33: 13 balls = 65 points

It would definately not be an easy match, but that's the strategy I would have tried had we needed to play 45 + 33.

[Ken Patton]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Given that background, maybe we should all keep this in mind for next year's game...

THATS not in the kit of parts! Maybe on Mars.

Hmmm, lots of thumbs on Mars....

Ken

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

THATS not in the kit of parts! Maybe on Mars.

Hmmm, lots of thumbs on Mars....

Ken

You doin okay Ken?
*eyes Patton warily*

Hang in there man, whatever happens, we'll all get through it together.

John

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

THATS not in the kit of parts! Maybe on Mars.

Hmmm, lots of thumbs on Mars....

Ken

Who says they wont clone me, chop off my hands, stitch on 4 extra thumbs, and put them in the kit of parts for next year?

[Zzyzx]

Congratulations to the winning teams. A very impressive score to get in this year's challenging game. Maybe next year there will be a game were the points actually given are similar to those shown on the animated instructional video. Well...probubly that will never happen, but congatulations none the less!

[Ryan F.]

So we can count on 9 team alliances next year....eight fingers and a thumb

I'll throw my two cents in here...with agreeing that two offensive robots will beat out a half/half offense/defense pair. As stated before...one defensive robot can not watch two offensive robots. Also, a lot of the offensive functions are going to be great for defense. Take for instance those this year who could cap....that was as good of defense as anything with being able to un-cap your opponents goals.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by rforystek

So we can count on 9 team alliances next year....eight fingers and a thumb

I think he meant 4 vs 4 vs 1 thumb. Depending on the size of your regional, you would get one or two matches as the thumb, and the rest as fingers. For the elims, each alliance would also have a thumb.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by JVN

Okay for your consideration,
45 + 33 vs. 494 + 60.

494 plays big D on those pesky technokittens. Shuts them down. 33 goes nuts on offense. 60 does the same. 494 and 60 both hang.

Who wins?
Finger + Thumb.

What happens when 494 and 60 go to hang? 45 either caps their own goal, or uncaps 60's (depending on what was more adventageous) and 33 hangs.