It may be a little early to accurately be able to predict this with any accuracy, but I was wondering what the general consensus of the top robots at a regional will be. What will the alliance captains look like/be capable of. What will 1st and 2nd round picks be capable of (obviously dependent upon what the alliance captain can do)? What will the robots be able to do? Will they specialize in assisting, shooting, catching etc.?
In my opinion the top 8 robots will mostly be composed of the robots that are the most proficient at putting the ball in the 10pt goal. However, I think a few of the top assisters will sneak in if they are able to overcome weaker alliance members in quals (assist points are the top tiebreaker after all) .
The top picks will most likely be a robots that are the fastest at transitioning the ball to the next robot. The top pick for an alliance captain that isn’t a great shooter will likely be the best shooter available. Depending on what strategy the top teams want to go with the second pick will be the best remaining assister or best defensive robot that can still pass.
Just my ideas but I want to hear everybody else’s opinion:D
Applies for every year but I definitely think it will be more prevalent this year:
Teams will have to make up for their own weaknesses through their picks to create the best alliance, which is not necessarily the best 3 offensive bots at the regional.
I think this game more than any other can play out very differently than a lot of teams seem to be expecting.
There have been numerous shooters shown over the past three weeks. We all know it’s possible to be accurate into the high goal and a lot of teams will build robots to do this. What we haven’t seen is a robot to robot pass and catch over the truss. That extra 10 points could easily be what separates great alliances.
I think the 10 point goal may become an orphan this year.
The completion of a cycle with three assists, and the potential time cost of a missed 10 point goal with “Doggie Go Fetch”, will make the 1 point goals very popular this year.
That is, if you are actually concerned about missing your 10 point shot. From what I’ve seen, a confident 10 point shot is not something only the elites will be doing. If its just as quick to shoot it into the 10 points as it is to… push it into the 1, why not?
Top seeded teams will likely have three major qualities: an awesome intake, the ability to decently shoot for 10 and the truss, and luck with alliance pairings.
The teams that will be picked very early in alliance selection will have the ability to catch or pass over the truss.
All successful teams need to have a high level of strategic, alliance orientated play.
Because, if you miss, you have to waste time retrieving the bouncing ball.
A goalie bot can create all sorts of trouble for the 10 point goal.
Most balls will be launched from a low height, so any robot in front of your shooter becomes a time vampire. No assist points until a goal is scored. No new cycle until that goal is scored.
Well that’s the point, don’t shoot if you’re know you’ll miss. Same goes for the low goal. Defense can be played for any goal, so you better get around it if you’d like those assist points. I might even argue that the low goal may be easier to defend to since they are a very specific spot where the ball must enter as opposed to a whole wall of goal area that a defender would have to stop you from alining with, possibly within a quite large range of distances from the goal too.
Shooting from a large distance into the low goal seems more difficult than shooting large distance to the high goal, so you would probably be driving up to it. The defender knows where you’re going (one you choose a goal), so they just have to plain get in your way.
Bottom line, defense will be there for any goal. Get around it if you want to score.
On another note, I think the coach will be much more critical this year too. This year as apposed to last year, just an OK match would be hard without good communication throughout the alliances (pre-match too).
I think the best teams are the ones who not only can assist well during a match, but has a coach that communicates with the other coaches and drivers on their alliance so assists are done efficiently, so there is no time wasted chasing the ball on the field. The best teams will pre-plan their strategies clearly, either verbally or by drawings, and will stick to that strategy the entire match.
A team that can consistently rack up points by accurately scoring in the top goal and can do assists will do very well in the competition. A team that regularly scores in the bottom goal can do just as well, but they should make sure that as many assists possible were made before scoring, in order to compete with a team that does lots of assists AND high goal scoring.
Unless an alliance works really well together, I can’t see catching being done too often, just like scoring the pyramid goal in 2013. It’s a difficult bonus that isn’t really worth the difficulty, especially when there are other things to do in a match that yield more points reliably and in less time.
I disagree, you already have to truss, how does catching waste time. The best alliances will without a doubt be catching the ball this year and it will be much less rare then the pyramid goal. It’s too big of advantage to both save time and get points.
You have to retrieve the ball in some way after a truss shot anyways, so catching doesn’t really add time if your partner and you are in sync. What have you discovered in the game that gives you more than 10 points in 0 seconds?
Agree on this, but until a pecking order is established through the rankings, I don’t think you will find this working well. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians.
The top teams will be the ones who accurately know their strengths and weaknesses. If you think that you’re great at picking up, then you waste an alliances time because your pickup doesn’t work very well, then you won’t be successful. If you do everything that you do very well, (maybe just catching from human player, herding into one point goal) you’ll be picked, because your alliance partners know that they won’t have to wait for you during an assist cycle.
If you truss the ball and don’t catch it, you have to spend time chasing it down. The alternative is to catch the ball, as a result, you save time. Basically he means 0 seconds relative to the time you spend chasing down the ball (i.e if you spend 5 seconds trying to regather the ball when you could’ve just plucked it out of he air, effectively in net “0” seconds).
I count four times in a cycle when a ball is loose, starting with the inbound from the human player, and ending with a score shot. Even having a quick, close pass will only happen when there is little to no defense in a game with no protected zones. This doesn’t count possible missed passes, missed shots, balls jostled free, and truss shots that aren’t immediately caught or picked up.
I think the top teams will be the ones the ones that plan for loose balls and can quickly react with the fastest and most secure pickup.
Almost all the shooters I’ve seen are very built low and could be blocked by a 5 ’ tall robot. Our team decided to concentrate on maneuverability, ball handling and catching. With a 5’ tall “glove” blocking short shooters should be easy.
When an alliance wins a regional without consistently trussing during cycles, I’ll happily admit I was wrong. Nothing in the rules said you had to hang at the end of last years game, but there wasn’t a single winning alliance that didn’t have at least one robot consistently on the pyramid at the end of the match last year.
This sort of plan on defense works well to a point. A well organized alliance will realize that they only get points once that ball is scored. The other two robots won’t be just sitting around, they’ll be playing counter-defense. I see each alliance at any one point in time having one robot with the ball, one robot playing counter-defense, and one robot on defense (switching to counter-defense at a moment’s notice). This means that defenders will almost always be 1v2 or worse.
The part that will separate the good alliances from the bad will be how well they handle trading off these roles. Whoever is playing defense might need to go and possess the ball for an assist, leaving the other alliance with a free path to score. Good teams will minimize how much movement between zones they need to do.
This is the concern I have with a catcher/shot blocker. Those tasks would take place in different zones. Instead, I could see there being more value in blocking truss shots, since you wouldn’t need to move zones and it still prevents a lot of points (at least delaying the 10 points from the Truss Score as well as delaying the whole cycle).
Still, I think the ideal catcher is the robot that also scores the ball after catching it, being the last assist in the cycle. Having an exchange in your scoring zone will probably be more dangerous than on the other side of the Truss since for most teams the scoring zone is the ‘obvious’ place to play defense.
