District Champs: What did we learn?

FIRST General Forum
#61

Absolutely!

Once an Alliance gets in the lead for their Switch and the Scale, a defensive strategy can help avoid the “Pile Power Cubes on the Scale” race…
Gaining control of the opposing Alliance’s Switch adds to the aggravation and opposing force dilution. I think we will see some of the best and some of the worst shine in this aspect of the matches.

If teams go into the “Pile Power Cubes on the Scale” mode, orchestration between Alliance robots is definitely primordial…

I don’t think we will see very many 3 robot climbs at Champs. I think everyone has understood the importance of achieving the Levitate, climbing with 2 robots, leaving a robot to wreack havock in the opposing Alliance to the very end of the game.

Yes. Zone assignments will be critical, with good communications during the match to adapt to the situation (for example, moving the Switch/Vault robot to the opponent’s Switch/Vault zone to play interference of take/maintain ownership of the opposing Switch).

No, as long as Levitate is used in time for the endgame climb.

This will make or break an Alliance in all matches. Same thing with cube delivery. A cube that drops from the scale, or even worst, takes down another cube as it falls off the Scale will be a match killer.

Crossing the Auto Run goal line will be critical to gain the Auto points, and the RP in quals. This should not be an issue in Quals, even with Rookie teams which should have their Auto Run code figured out for Champs.
Second, everyone must stick to the strategy and not try to “steal the show” from other Alliance members. But, no one will not be surprised if some teams pull that stunt off strategically in Quals.
Similarly, each robot has to execute flawessly during endgame.

#62

The “miles” difference is in the quality of the mid and bottom tier. Over 50% of teams in Ontario are at DCMP. Roughly 30% of Ontario teams make eliminations at DCMP. Compare that to just over 10% of teams making elims at DCMP in NE and 20% making elims at MSC. By all means Ontario DCMP elims should be the most watered down DCMP ever but it’s not. Seriously just watch it, we have rookie teams with consistent multi cube autos who don’t even make elims.

If you consider the size of our district it’s obvious that the** average** team in Ontario is better than the average team anywhere else.

#63

I’m really looking forward to the “Battle of the Scale Auto Run” at Champs!!!

If an Alliance can’t reliably place 3 cubes on the Scale during Auto Run, they will be severely handicaped, IMHO.

#64

It doens’t only depend on the amount of cubes placed. Where the cubes are placed, position, and time also matter.

#65

I remember when we were this cocky in Michigan… Mostly because it was Saturday…:stuck_out_tongue:

In all seriousness, you guys have a lot to be proud of. Ontario has a rich history of teams that have been very strong for many many years.

What I learned:
Its important to try to have at least 1 more cube on the scale than your opponent for most of the match, but I think that is the same lesson as most events I have been to. What was interesting is the multitudes of ways that objective was achieved.

#66

Ontario people need to chill! We have a lot to be proud of, but let’s see how Detroit goes before we make any comparisons against other regions. Then we can have some real, head-to-head data.

On topic, we learned that defence is almost required out of the third bot. I don’t think you will see an Einstein alliance with a third bot that is scoring > 50% of the time.

#67

Woo! Data! Clearly there was no significant rectal-cranial inversion. Consider my comment a virtual whack upside the head. Not gracious or professional by intent, but something designed to get your attention (you didn’t respond to anyone else’s criticisms of your post).

I would encourage you to lead with your data and assumptions in the future, this will help promote good discussion. What you did instead was to make a derogatory and inflammatory statement that appears aimed at putting others down while elevating yourself. It really felt like a slap in the face to those working to better their own regions and all of FRC.

Your conclusion of being ‘miles more competitive’ (based on one metric with extremely limited sample size) seems flimsy at best. More to the point: by your own metric there are at least two other regions and at least one other event that are just one cube behind Ontario. As lil’lavery notes, that’s 13in, not miles. If we’re talking percentages, that’s a 92% to Ontario’s 100%. A solid A- comparison.

More 3-cube auto capable teams is an interesting metric to consider. It shows a larger group of power-house teams, but it does not indicate a deep field in a particular area.

Using OPR (of arguable validity this year, but it’s an easy metric to collect) to look at the spread of the top 15 teams might give a better insight into the depth of field in each area.

Ontario Sci: 215-116, spread of 99
Ontario Tech: 223-131, spread of 92
NECMP: 205-141, spread of 64
Israel: 185-124, spread of 61
MAR: 225-132, spread of 93
PNW: 213-130, spread of 83

Consider that a strong depth of field takes away OPR points from the best teams and spreads them out among the rest of the teams. By this measure Ontario has some great top-tier teams with dominant OPRs, but that the performance level drops more sharply from the top compared to other regions. By this measure the top teams in regions like NE and Israel are not as dramatically better than their peers as the top teams in Ontario, indicating a more competitive region (internally, at least).

As for determining which top-tier-teams are better in an absolute sense, well, let’s see what happens in Detroit! I’m sure the play will be great no matter who wins.

#68

In finals match 1 our alliance (blue) realized early on in the match that we were not going to be taking back the scale. At 100 seconds left red had a 5-2 advantage with 3 robots attacking the scale. Our strategy at that point shifted to trying to kill their switch while protecting ours and filling portal. Why waste cubes on a battle you aren’t going to win?

In match 2 the losing alliance (red) actually had more cubes on the scale at the end than the winners. You can see at 70 seconds the blue strategy changed from scale to killing the switch and loading the vault as we already had all the scale points we would need and their switch was vulnerable.

While I understand that looking at the # of cubes on the losers’ scale could make you think that those teams are better, it’s not always the case. The Ontario match you linked sees almost no portal or platform zone defense being played against blue, while that was very much a strategy for our alliance in Michigan.

of cubes doesn’t win a match, time of ownership does. Play smart.

#69

I think any discussion about which district is better can be moved to a different thread.

From a strategic perspective, I learned a ton about the different ways to play Power-Up from watching these past few weekends.

There are things we already knew, like neat placement being really important, autonomous being really important, and the importance of the center 12 cubes.

But also this weekend saw alliances use the third robot in a multitude of different ways, where previously they had mostly been used in very limited capacities (see: filling the vault).

  • Lane defense on portal cyclers was huge
    , and so was getting between robots and their platform zone cubes. Forcing opponents to take longer, slower paths, or to dig into their vault cubes to keep the scale is a pretty important tactic if you’re the weaker scale scoring alliance.
  • Third robot scale scorers, either as a backup scale scorer or as a way to rapidly close the gap at the beginning of a match
  • Everybot cycles were already common, but there were a lot of them happening this weekend
  • Feeding alliance scale robots was an interesting one, which tried to get around the switch chokeholds by feeding the good placement scale robots with cubes. Sometimes these were fed from the vault cubes, which seemed odd to me, but anything to cut down mid-match cycle times is a big win
#70

I feel like this isn’t a great year for OPR. To add on to what Marcus said, last year, Ontario District Championships only had 60 teams, 24 of which made it to the playoffs. That’s 40% of the teams. Again, these playoff matches should have been watered down like crazy, but nope, there were upsets, and matches were really competitive! (see the losing alliance in finals only needed 3 more fuel in the high-boiler to win the match)

34 teams from Ontario went on to compete at the World Championships last year. Here’s some numbers, and some reasoning as to why I said Ontario is “miles” ahead in terms of all round competitiveness and why I feel your point about the lack of competitiveness based on OPR assumptions isn’t entirely valid.

At Championships last year, over 73% of Ontario teams made elimations, compared to the global baseline of just 48%. 41% of Ontario teams made Semi-finals at the championship last year, again greater than the global average of 24%. 32.35% of Ontario teams at the World Championship made finals, compared to the baseline of 12%. 8.82% of Ontario teams made Einstein, compared to the cumulative baseline of 6%.

35.29% of Ontario teams ranked within the top 10 in their division, the baseline being 15.00%.

Ontario averaged 0.53 awards per team, compared to the baseline of 0.37 awards per team.

Now, this shows, that (at least last year) at Championships, Ontario teams systematically, comprehensively out performed the baseline, and did so even more at the middle tier level. (see Ontario teams that made play offs)

Other regions are welcome to compile data for their teams to see how they compare, but I hypothesize they will not get anywhere close to Ontario.

We’ll see how Detroit goes for Ontario teams this year…

#71

*Losing

#72

Side-stepping 2017 data (not relevant to this thread) in a scramble to try to prove your original point…

What did you hope to accomplish by posting what you did? How was it relevant to the topic of useful things teams learned at their various CMPs?

#73