My vote for the best alliance strategy is the Archimedes alliance where the team captain often replaced themselves with their third pick.
I too found it cool when 5406 swapped themselves out… oh wait nvm
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I assume you mean Carson?
Assuming you’re talking about Carson, the captain and the 2nd pick actually swapped out matches. The 1st pick and 3rd pick played every match. I want to say the fact that the opposing alliance didn’t really know who to expect on the field may have had an impact but who knows. It was certainly confusing for me…
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Whoa. You’re allowed to swap robots back and forth? Or only at CMP?
Only at Worlds, some DCMPs, and certain offseasons. Since your backup bot is picked as part of the alliance, you’re free to use and not use them whenever you want.
Just as clarification, the Championships are the only (in-season) events where backups are considered part of the alliance and can be swapped out at will.
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We tried to run a 2 + 1, but the captains played defense, and it worked better than we expected it to at worlds.
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2019: 2 offense, 1 defense
This strategy worked because if you got two good offensive robots, and one good defensive robot you could shut down any 3 offense alliance, or at least keep up with a 2 off. 1 def. alliance. The key to this strategy was having a defense bot that was good at defense and picking the right robot to defend.
2018: 3 scale bots
In 2018 most people assumed that having 2 scale bots and one exchange bot was the best strategy. However, in my opinion, having three scale bots on an alliance was the best strategy. Of course one of them could fill up the exchange, but when the battle for the scale was one you could have 3 mediocre to good scale bots vs two good scale bots. I think that’s why we saw more than usual upsets in 2018. For a good example of this strategy, look a 2018 Seven Rivers alliance 8.
I don’t know that this was always the case. For a start, 3 scale bots normally only worked on lower seeded alliances where you could get a good robot in the last time. When you have 3 robots going after the scale at the same time, it also tended to get incredibly congested. Even in that Seven Rivers alliance you sighted, only 2 of them were ever really playing the scale effectively at a time.
My team was also on the winning Darwin alliance that had 3 scale bots at world’s but we only ever tried to have 2 of them playing at once. The third would either be feeding cubes, doing defense or switch/vault. We did this because out captains were slightly slower and easier to defend but they had better and higher placement while the first pick (my team) were slightly faster but had difficulties placing past first layer on a losing scale. Any of these complimentary roles could have been filled by a switch bot but they way that our alliance shook out also worked. Our alliance worked well in our division but when we hit Einstein where there were more powerhouse 2-scale alliances, we couldn’t keep up. Having all 3 robots playing on the scale wasn’t an option in most cases because of the massive congestion.
When you look at Einstein finalist alliances, only one of them had a scale bot as a third robot and they didn’t play the scale. Ultimately, when you got back up to an alliance that could be properly considered “the best”, there weren’t capable enough scale bots to play the scale effectively. This, partnered with the fact that playing 3 on the scale became congested means that in my opinion, playing 3 robots on the scale wasn’t the best strategy in 2018.
As far as what I believe was the best strategy, I think that having 2 scale bots and one bot that did near switch, exchange and defense as necessary was the best approach in 2018.
When it comes to 2019, I think that most people will agree that 1 defense robot with the two other splitting the field was the best. Especially if you could mix in some side changing and “picks”.
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