I’ve been thinking a lot about how much luck can impact an FRC season. Between random match schedules, alliances that don’t always mesh, and all the little things that can go wrong on the field, it sometimes feels like we’re leaving a lot to chance. But I know some teams have ways to make their season feel more under control, so I wanted to see what’s been working for everyone.
One thing I’ve noticed some top teams doing is designing their robots to score consistent ranking points no matter who they’re with. Focusing on things like auto points, reliable climbs, or other tasks that grab guaranteed points every match seems to be huge for teams that want to avoid getting stuck in a bad ranking due to unlucky schedules. That way, no matter what the rest of the alliance is doing, you’re still contributing solid points that boost your team’s ranking. It’s putting some consistency into a game that has so many moving parts.
Other things I’ve seen teams do include tons of driver practice so they’re ready to handle unexpected defense or sudden adjustments, and really solid scouting to know what each match will look like and how to play it. And, of course, building in ways that make the robot easy to maintain and repair keeps it reliable. No one wants to lose a match because something random broke that could have been avoided with a little extra prep.
So how does your team keep “luck” in check? Do you have design tricks, strategies, or certain routines that help you stay consistent and competitive, no matter the schedule?
One big thing in FRC is balancing risk. It will always point back to the goal of the team, whether that is to get to District Champs or to win worlds. Reducing risk isnt always the best path forward. For example if the goal is to win worlds then a lower resource team may need to build the best robot of doing one small part of the game and hoping they are on the perfect alliance to mesh with them. On the other hand if the goal is to just make it to worlds as a high resource team, then building a robot that can fill any role and secure as many RP as possible will have the greatest combined chance of accomplishing the teams goal. It is all a balancing act and it is important to set goals and then take the appropriate risk to achieve them.
In terms of ranking luck, 2024 was a very good example of how having a robot that can do everything well can reduce the amount of luck needed to seed high. Teams could have built a top 1% feeding or close robot and have strong partners in all qualification matches, but they’re probably going to run into matches where they are paired with robots that can also just feed or play close zone. So, that match that looks good on Statbotics, becomes really tricky when you’re forcing robots to play in suboptimal roles. Our strategy team was blessed with a robot that could play any role at a high level, so our qualification match strategy pretty much every match was ‘what do our partners do best, let’s have them do that and we can fill in the gaps’.
That being said, building a robot that can do everything well is bad advice for the majority of teams. Teams like 3061 and 4766 found a ton of success focusing on one role. While they needed luck to seed well and thus were at mercy of alliance selection going their way, if you do get picked by a strong alliance that compliments your robot, you can play a key role in making it (at least) to division finals.
The luck factor is a slippery eel. With the compressed build season we Up North people have to factor in snow days. When our school is cancelled, no robot practice. Oh, we have on occasion sent a robot home with our wiring people to tidy things up on a boring day, but missing even a few sessions can be harsh.
And there are years where key people get sick at just the wrong time. Not totally luck ( getting a flu shot, not having booger nosed younger siblings!) but some years are just gonna be that way.
Other than that the above advice is sound. Know your probable limits based on team, resources and what week you need to rock n roll. Don’t exceed them by too much. Drive, break, fix, drive, break, fix as soon as possible.
You sure are making a lot of posts aren’t you. Nice!
I don’t exactly understand what you mean by luck. But we tend to look at the most important parts of the game and what role we want to play. Based on our ability we play that role of course. For example, at blitz, we played cleanup bot of Alliance 6 captain, while our alliance partners passed to us. We play our best role in playoffs to keep our “luck” in check, and do the thing we are consistent at instead of trying to do something we’re not consistent at. However, having the ability to be versatile better accounts for this. I’ve met amp only bots and I’ve met amp/speaker, speaker, and defense bots. The more versatile you are as a drive team/bot, the more roles you can fill and the most competitive you can be. You can’t control your schedule.
We also do a lot of scouting, collecting data in a Google Sheet / Excel to evaluate before every match that is important for us. We use this data later to make our alliance picklist based on our weaknesses. For example, we were really good amp/speaker, but our passing was very erratic. Thus, we decided "ok, if we want to beat the sheer rate of notes of the Hawaiian Tide (359-4414) (shoutout to a wonderful match there in the Lower Bracket), we need to have two very good passers, but with defense capabilities and the ability to sub in if one of our mechanisms break.
Have backup plans for your Plan A, have backup plans for your backup plan. You’ll be fine then. In QMs, especially if you went against like 359, 4414 and 7157 in the same match, you would elect to maximize your RP instead of outscoring them, focusing on scoring in your own speaker or something, and maybe getting Ensemble, because it would be very hard to outscore all three. If two of them break somehow, default to a plan B yk? Try to amp up and outscore with your three bots for example.