what are some good strategies to use this year

[ewankoff]

my team is a rookie team. i am the strategy sub-team leader and i am looking for ideas early. if anyone has used something that might be useful this year please let me know.

[Rickertsen2]

Theres not much you can do until the game is revealed.

[Camerzn]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Theres not much you can do until the game is revealed.

As a teammate of James' and member of a formerly rookie team, my advice is to keep it simple. Work on building a small robot that does one task (pushing is usually very good) as opposed to a large, overly complex robot that does many things (like we did: forklift arms, big wings to the sides, the thing weighed 130 pounds if we were lucky. We were about to start cutting holes in it to make it lighter.)

But yeah. Pusherbot. And to save time, it is perfectly alright to make a frame from PVC and plywood. It doesn't look as good, but it weighs less and is easier to build.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by ewankoff

my team is a rookie team. i am the strategy sub-team leader and i am looking for ideas early. if anyone has used something that might be useful this year please let me know.

Patience is a good strategy.
Wait til the game is revealed, my friend.
What I would recommend is to keep thing simple and not try to build a robot that is a Jack of all trades and a master of none.

[AmyPrib]

Yeah, you can't "strategize" too much before the game is revealed....
But, you could make a list of some general things that you want to do as soon as the game is revealed and during the season... like...
-play a mock game to see how different strategies play out...
-decide what kind of scouting you want to do throughout the season based on what regionals you're going to... you could track what other teams' robots are if the info is available... define your scouting team...
-brainstorm on all strategies possible, which could then play into design of the robot...
-anything else you come up with that will help you strategize and gather scouting data... there's tons of possibilities and all teams do it differently.

There's not much specifics you can do, but the game is only a few days away... then you'll be full of ideas...
Good Luck!

[KimT]

Originally Posted by ewankoff

my team is a rookie team. i am the strategy sub-team leader and i am looking for ideas early. if anyone has used something that might be useful this year please let me know.

Don't feel like you have to do something huge. Despite insisting every year that we're going to keep it simple, we ALWAYS pick something complicated, and we ALWAYS get our butts kicked by rookie teams who have decided to go with a simple, sturdy design.

Also, to repeat the sage advice of others, wait until the game is revealed, and build your design around the game instead of around a neat idea. *Coughtranslationaldrivecough* Ahem.

You may want to consider setting up a time with you and your team, and any local veteran or rookie teams to discuss the game right after kick-off and get some ideas flowing. Plan to use just a couple of days for strategy so you don't get hung up there and can move on to building before...erm...the third week or so. (Not that that's ever happened on our team or anything...)

Anyway, good luck to you, and feel free to PM me after kickoff if you want to talk strategy then. I'll be glad to share with you what our team has been discussing. ^_^

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by ewankoff

my team is a rookie team. i am the strategy sub-team leader and i am looking for ideas early. if anyone has used something that might be useful this year please let me know.

Wake up real early this Saturday, watch the webcast, get a good breakfast, some Starbucks if you want, then go to the rest of your team and brain storm, then some more brain storming. Understand the physics of the field, how it works, what makes it tick. Try to imagine everything people can do, then build your bot. Come back in 5 weeks and look at the pictures online and be amazed how often you say, "WE SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT!"

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

What I would recommend is to keep thing simple and not try to build a robot that is a Jack of all trades and a master of none.

I agree with this advice.

Your rookie year, it will be wise for you to decide upon a strategy/robot that completes only one simple task reliably and efficiently. DO NOT try to make your robot over complicated, and DO NOT overthink your strategy.

Pick the element of the game which seems to be the most important to getting the largest score in the simplest means possible, and focus on that ONE element; do not try to focus on every other possible task and do everything at once.

In fact, keeping your strategy simple will probably enable you to be more successful than if you were to try to do everything. My team’s rookie year, we kept our strategy and our robot simple, yet we seeded 6th at the UTC New England regional and won the highest rookie seed award.

Remember, your goal in your rookie year is not to win, so much as it is to develop yourselves as a team and get some experience under your belt; enabling you to be more competitive in your future years. Do not get caught up in the idea of being able to do everything possible; complexity in strategy and robot BY FAR does not necessarily spell out success for a team. Work hard and focus your energy on completing one task effectively and reliably every match.

If you have a robot that reliably runs every match, and completes a single, strategically significant task every time it runs, you will be doing better than half of the other rookies out there.

Good luck!

-- Jaine

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Just a few things...

*As Kim said, design your bot for what it needs to do, not for some cool feature. You will end up designing your bot around this feature that is most likely not needed for you to suceed in your strategy.

*Use desicion making matrices to help your team weigh options of different strategies.

*Come up with a solid strategy before you even START to think about possible robot designs.