FUNalysis will analyze some of the best matches in FRC history and using a telestrator (you know those things you can live draw on a video). Our hosts will break down what went on in a match and formulate new strategies reflecting back on the match, and provide tips and tricks that your team can use to be situational ready on the playing field.
Weather you are interested in drive coaching, strategy, or just love great matches in FRC this show is for you!
Hosts: Karthik Kanagasabapathy, Mason Myles Markee, and Nick Lawrence.
Join this all star cast for this pilot. We will be covering three matches. One includes Semi-final 1 match 3 of the 2017 Ontario McMaster University where the #1 alliance of 2056, 188, and 6725 were defeated by 4039, 4939, 2386 leading that alliance to win the district.
We’ll also field your questions about the match in chat so make sure you tag @firstupdatesnow in chat.
This will be an awesomely helpful series. Any plan for additional guests in the future? Would love to hear from a variety of top tier strategists and coaches. Karthik, Mason, and Nick are a great start, can’t wait to watch!
The additional guest question is TBD. The software we are currently using requires some training and will honestly take us a couple shows to really got a hang of the flow.
For sure we will be taking suggestions on what other matches to give breakdowns on. The plan is to have this be a monthly show throughout the year so that’s 36 matches a year we got to select :).
Oh my gosh, this is such a fun idea. I love re-watching and analyzing each part of “big name” matches like this. The all-star lineup of hosts is going to make this a ton of fun. Great work putting this together. I am looking forward to it.
Here’s an idea for a challenge for a future episode:
So at NC champs this year, our alliance (4561, 900, 3229) employed a tactic we called 3-and-D, wherein 900 (the only team in NC that hit 40 kPa and the only to seriously attempt to reach it in NC) did what they did best and shot fuel, while the rest of us got 3-rotors and then starting playing defense to prevent the other alliance from reaching four rotors. This is semis 1 match 3, in which the strategy was executed perfectly: https://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2017nccmp_sf1m3. My challenge to you: come up with a way to beat this strategy with a gear-only alliance.
This strategy was frequently used throughout events this year, especially once shooters started getting competitive. 195 did a similar strategy at Tech Valley; 125 used it at events as well. 4613 won New York (and other events) with this strategy.
The way to beat it is simply to be good enough at gears that you can fight through whatever defense is thrown at you. Not a lot of teams and alliances were up to the task, but alliances with elite gear scorers, or three well balanced above average gear scorers, could certainly do it. One of many examples (not a great example, just one I have on-hand): Semis 1 Match 1 - New York City Regional 2017 - The Blue Alliance
Or inadvertently pull a “3-and-B” strategy, where the defense is played in such a way that G10 is violated. (That’s called “shooting yourself in the foot”, though.) I agree that the “3-and-D” strategy was quite common.
Easiest way to beat an opponent using this strategy netting them 365 points (or slightly higher depending on how far above 40KPA they get) is to score four rotors and have two robots on the Touchpad which gets you 395.
Other than that you are hoping for a combination of them missing a few climbs, penalties, or missing their 1st Rotor in Autonomous.
You could try to play defense to stop two of their machines from climbing, but that would be difficult to consistently pull off.
More bold strategies could include any two of the following:
Prevent 40KPA (If most KPA is scored in teleop)
Prevent their 3rd Rotor (Would work if one robot is scoring KPA all match and one robot is mostly responsible for gears)
Prevent one of their robots from climbing
1058, 2084, & 5556 faced this predicament at Battlecry when we played 133, 319, & 839. We noticed the 40KPA was mostly scored in teleop by 133 and 319 was the primary gear scorer so we had a chance to prevent their 40KPA and 3rd Rotor if we played a perfect match. Plan was 2084 played constant defense on 319 while 1058 & 5556 got our third rotor spinning (two gears from each robot) and then transition to playing defense on 133 & 839. We knew it would end up extremely close and ran the risk that once our three robots transitioned to climb we needed them to abandon the third rotor or one climb.
Unfortunately we failed to communicate properly with our new drive team on 1058 so the first part of the match was all out defense instead of getting our 3rd Rotor spinning and then we missed our climb. :o We did succeed at preventing 40KPA and their 3rd Rotor, but each alliance was one gear away and they needed two KPA so it ended extremely close.
I would argue the bold strategies are only good for one match. Had we won and gone to a tiebreaker, we had a strong feeling 133, 319, and 839 would cycle immediately to get their third rotor spinning before focusing on KPA to break a tie. Those three teams play smart so we knew they would react to our odd strategy choice.
The match that they will be talking about, 2056/188/6725 vs 4039/4939/2386, had the 1 alliance going for 4rotors/40+kpa/3hangs vs. the 4 alliance going for 4rotors/0kpa/3hangs and defense. Although 1 didn’t play much defense on 4, I don’t think it would have affected the 4 alliance’s four rotors very much. At the Victoria Park event, where 4039 and 4939 were teamed up previously, 4939 was able to achieve 3 rotors alone. Both 4039 and 4939 could do an auto gear, as well as ~5 gears in tele. That’s 12 gears between the two of them, which is 4 rotors already. If you throw in 2386, who could do ~4 rotors in a match, that’s easily 4 rotors even with one defensive bot against them (in my opinion). That being said, beating number 1 at McMaster was not easy, was not guaranteed due to strategy/robots/execution alone, and definitely required a good amount of luck. They were all fantastic teams, and deserved to be on the 1 alliance.
I’ll let Karthik & Crew discuss everything that went on in the match in more detail and speculate on what each alliance could have done differently (more or less D, etc.), but I think that the McMaster 4 alliance defeats your NC Champs alliance on gears alone. You guys finished 3 rotors and started on D at around 65secs left in the match you linked, we were 3 gears short of 4 rotors at 65secs left in ONHAM-SF1M1.
Disclaimer: I am on 4039, so this post may be biased.
I’m wondering - will all analysis be directed towards the most recent game played (2017 until 2018 has games under its belt)? Or will there be pre-2017 matches as well?
A very strong gear alliance could have beaten us if they managed to get 4 rotors through our defense. We were confidant that no other alliance that would form after we picked 900 was going to be able to do that at NC, but there were 2 that really had us sweating. Of course, our climbs had to be perfect as well and we were also confident (to our cost) that they would be.
Technically the strategy was conceived of more as a “2 rotor + 40kPa” than a 3 and D. If executed properly we only needed 2 rotors as the 40kPa score of 60 points would beat the 3rd rotor that the other alliance got. We went for the 3rd rotor if possible in the end. Partly because we managed to pick up a better gear scorer than we anticipated with 3229.
Great question! Most likely we will have 1-2 of the matches current and then take one from the past. Issue is that the further back we go, the less likely we can find video and especially HD video of it. We are definitely up for suggestions of matches of past and present.
I would love to see an analysis of 900’s “Secret Sauce” in 2014. Why it wasn’t more commonly utilized, how effective it was at various levels of play, and things like that. My team tried to implement that same strategy throughout 2014 to lesser degrees of success.
Some pretty cool matches to analyse would be any of the finals matches of IRI 2014, or Quarterfinal 1 match 2 of IRI 2014.
Also, the Einstein matches in 2016 would be pretty cool since I remember there was some discussion on whether the winning alliance should have done defense against 1690 and 2056.