Ideal Alliance Structure

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

What do you think the ideal alliance structure is?
imho, it would be a rapid fire shooter, a perimeter shooter (aka, a shooter that can fire consistantly with enough range that they don’t have to be right in front of the ramp. Preferably with a turret of some sort and the ability to be off to one side), and a bot with excellent storage (20+ easily), the ability to score corner goals quickly, and can pick up off the ground easily (note that this doesnt mean they can’t also shoot the center goal). Additionally all 3 robots can get on the ramp.
During autonomous, the herder would run to the corner goal and dump 10 balls in the corner. The perimeter shooter would sit in position 2 and fire the 10 shots it has into the center goal. The rapid fire shooter would move from the back position and fire at the center goal (preferably with camera aim). By having the rapid fire shooter take this path, it would also serve to intercept any bots tryin to hit the perimeter shooter and possibly an opposing robot going for their center goal.

If you won auto, if either shooter (preferably rapid fire) can load from the floor it would be backbot (in order to be in position to fire immediately). Otherwise the herder would start as backbot while the rapid fire shooter got loaded, then they would switch. The defense would stop opposing shooters primarily, and corner shots only as necessary (need to have ammo to replenish shooters later). If the opposing shooters depleted their ammo early in the period, the shooters would assume offensive positions during the defensive period in order to begin to score ASAP.
During the offensive period, the rapid fire shooter would fire as soon as it was in position, attempting to hit as many shots as possible before being dislocated from its shooting spot. After it depletes its ammo, it moved to reload, and intereferes with any defense being played on the other bots on the way out. The perimeter shooter would fire when the rapid fire isn’t shooting (don’t want balls colliding in the center goal do we? :stuck_out_tongue: ). The herder would run interferance for the perimeter shooter and gather balls. If the defense on the rapid fire shooter was too intense, it would go for the corner goal in an attempt to pull defense away (or score a whole bunch of points really fast, either way :smiley: ). If the defense is really light for whatever reason, and the herder also had a shooter, it would fire some shots at the center goal (this is unless, the opponent is getting in position to begin to fire, then it would get in defensive position, but preferably dumping the balls in corner first. If the rapid fire shooter needed to re-load at the HP station, it could instead also play defense on the opponent’s shooter if needed).

If you lose autonomous; bots will quickly get what ammo they can. Taking up scoring positions, then they play the offensive period like they would in the other situation. The exception being the herder could try to “lock” any hp loading bots into the hp loading area.
The defensive period they would play very much like the other period, but they would have to be more careful becaue the opponents will likely have more ammo. If the herder “locked” a bot into the loading area, it will play backbot while holding it back there, but would switch with the ground loading shooter once the defended bot crosses mid-court.

During the final period, the shooters will resume shooting with new ammo, and continue until it is depleted once. The herder will play defense (if it still has balls, it should hopefully find an oppurtunity to dump them sometime during the period). After ammo is depleted, the bots return to play defense then get on the ramp.

2

Well, at GLR I saw 2 shooters and a defense machine work well.

I think that 2 offensive robots in any form (shooters or good 1-pointers) would be pretty ideal!

3

i want someone that can shoot and not be pushed while shooting.

shaun

4

My easy answer to this question is this: 1 human loader, 2 auto loaders. No place for a defensive robot because scorers can often play defense very well. I am not convinced of the necessity of a corner dumper, but if necessary, one or two teams like 56 that can score both corner and center goals might be considered. There should be two teams that can prficiently score on the center goal.

The more interesting question is how strong alliances might be formed in alliance selection.

5

Lavery I’ll agree with you on parts of it. Here is my 2 cents.

I think the winning alliance at the Championship will consist of 3 strong shooters. 1 “vomit” shooter and 2 parimeter shooters. In my own opinion the “vomit” shooter would have to be able to play defense because I think they could load faster from the HP than off the floor (however it depends on how the ball collector is done) the 2 parimeter shooters should both be able to pick up off the floor but if one can’t its not that big of a deal, since one has to be back bot that could be the one that picks up balls from your offensive side of the field. If you have 3 good shooting robots and 2 that can play defense good, I think you really have a great shot at winning it this year. Because how many combinations of 2 robots can take on 3 robots?

Thats just my 2 cents.

6

Three decent shooters, all with strong drive trains.
It’s simple. Two robots cannot shutdown three robots. With three decent shooters, you can’t defend them all. While they’re on offense, they all shoot. The two defensive robots can only guard against 2 others, leaving the third open to score. When the balls start filling up the goal, the defensive robots slide, leaving a different robot open to score.
It’s just like playing man-down in lacrosse, except everyone has the ball.
One team starts scoring, slide, another teams scores…repeat for 40 seconds or until the match is finished.

The strong drive trains comes into play during their defensive period. Each robot has to be versatile so that they can play solid defense.
I’ve seen this tactic win at least three regionals so far.

7

That’s not exactly true. 116 had defended multiple robots on multiple occasions, and even once stopped all 3 for couple seconds while a second defender got re-positioned. 116 and 1371 shut down 3 shooters (1261, which finished as the #1 seed, 1415, which was the #4 seed, and 281, which was selected into the #2 alliance at the Peachtree regional). We only allowed a single 3 point shot to be scored during their offensive period, and none in the final period. They won the match 42-30 based on a 12-10 autonomous victory and having all 3 robots on the ramp (12 auto points+10 auto bonus+3 offensive+25 ramp points-5 backbot penalty=42). 1261 misses one more shot in auto, and it is a 29-40 match, favoring the other side. This is the best example I have seen personally of this defensive scheme, but I know of many others.
You use a “man-to-man” example, but you can very easily play zone defense and shut down multiple shooters with one robot. This is especially magnified because of the relatively small area that most shooters have to fire from. Un-turreted shooters have to reposition after almost every time they are shoved, so they are especially easy to defend, because you can shove them, defend someone else, and return to them as they are about to get repositioned. Short-range (base of ramp area) shooters can be taken out by clogging up the front of the ramp, especially when multiple opposing shooters are “short-range”.
The zone defensive scheme fails when you have points that can be scored outside of your defensive zone (typically the base of the ramp). This can typically be acheived one of 3 ways. A strong corner goal threat (like I said, many shooters can shoot and/or dump into the corner goal as well as the center, it does not have to be a dedicated herding bot), a high-ranged shooter that can fire from one of the sides of the field (perimeter shooter), or a ramp top shooter. The corner goal threat requires the defense to break away and stop the corner goal threat or else take 10-20 (or sometimes more) points in a very short amount of time. The perimeter shooter is obvious, it requires a bot to travel outside of the zone in order to defend it. If the ramp top bot can get into shooting position on the ramp, it almost always requires a dedicated bot to get it, and keep it, out of scoring position.
My reasoning behind taking a herder over a ramp top bot or a 2nd perimeter shooter is as follows. Ramp top shooters can be shut down if they are denied the ability to get on the ramp (a zone defense at the base of the ramp can often do this, or even offensive congestion from other alliance partners at the base of the ramp). The herder also allows you to get the most underrated 10 point in the game, the 10 point corner autonomous dump. It is the hardest 10 points to defend (as it provides the shortest path, and therefore the least amount of time to intercept. Additionally, once it is in position, hitting it just pushes it into the wall, and will not stop the scoring process of most robots) in the game as well. The herder can also be a shooter (ie 56 and 1002) as necessary, but it is not essential.
The issues with a 2nd perimeter shooter is travel time and availability. If both perimeter shooters are firing from the same side of the field, the defense just adjusts its zone to the perimeter shooting area, so therefore they would have to fire from opposite ends of the field (red starting positions and blue starting positions). That is the first, although rather not damaging, of the travel issues. The second arises when they deplete their ball supply. A majority of the balls are going to be either near the goals or at the HP stations themselves. Because of their ranged firing positions, the shooters are at approximately the longest position from any significant source of balls (if they are short range, they are near to the balls on the ground near the goal). The second more significant issue, is availability of these shooters. Quality perimeter shooters are few and far between. Most regionals only have 2 or 3 of them, if any at all.
Another possibility of a herder bot is reloading other bots. While I have yet to see this tactic used, it may come into play. Have your herder gather up balls of the field, and then dump them in the immediate area of a ground loading shooter, for rapid reloading of balls. A more complicated, yet possibly successful method, may actually having a ground loading shooter fire low speed shots into another shooters HP-loading hopper. I highly doubt that will ever happen, but you never know.

8

I’d say two speedy shooter/pick-up teams and a strong defender/lower goal robot. Within that mould, I’d choose for reliability, you could have a team of three insane high scorers all with speedy ball pickup methods (1 second floor to shooter) and four motor CVTs (5 ft/s to 17 ft/s) coupled to high traction swerve drives, but if they fall over/have electrical faults/jam/etc. you’re going to be in a rough spot.

9

My admitedly MAVERICK-biased recipe:

  1. Place one part RoBBE Xtreme (combination corner dumper/center shooter, floor sweeping robot) in the starting position nearest your corner goal;
  2. Add one Raider Robotix (powerful, high traction, fast shooting top loader) in position two;
  3. Complete with a Cybersonics (agile, fast, floor sweeping long range shooter) in position three;
  4. Turn on Autonomous and watch them score. 56 fills the corner goal in a very hard to defend straight line run, 25 races to the ramp and unloads a string into the center and 103 moves to center field and shoots over 25’s shoulder.

This alliance has speed, manuverability, power and the ability to unleash a torrent of balls on the center goal. Note that all three have pretty low CG and moment of inertia, and 25’s chassis is very hard to deflect, making them able to keep a their opponents reacting rather than ruling. RoBBE’s versatility makes it especially hard to defend. All of them climb the ramp easily, with tip overs pretty rare.

We saw two-thirds of this alliance in NJ, with a very good center shooter (1279) instead of 56, and they rolled to victory with an average score of 96.5 pts across all their matches. I wonder what this alliance would average?

10

How about this:

One super shooter (like 254) with two low corner, one pick-up-from-floor-and -dump bots with great drive trains. The shooter robot and one low goal robot with autonomous modes that score 10 into their respective goals and the second low goal bot that effectively disrupts opposing robots in autonomous. Why only ONE shooter? If you have a good enough shooter, you don’t want other robots to be taking away its ammunition from the human players. With two great defensive bots, the other alliance should not be able to score much and therefore not have a lot of extra balls to go around.

This is how the ideal match with the ideal robots would work. Autonomous mode easily won (~40 points and 10 point bonus). Defensive mode starts and the two non-shooters stay back and ensure there is little to no scoring. During their first offensive match, the shooter bot collects balls from the human player (shouldn’t be much more than ten) and the other two robots protect the shooter robot as it scores its balls. Fourth period… pure defence and, in the last three seconds, all three robots make the ramp.

11

Looking for a repeat Champion alliance of PARC 2005, huh Pete? As far as I know, PARC 2006 is probably the soonest opportunity for such an alliance to occur. Maybe, if for some reason all the other teams are crazy and let this alliance take place again, we’ll see just how high this average (and high score) could be… haha that would be AMAZING. :slight_smile:

12

I think one corner scorer is useful. However, I don’t think that human-loading is rather time consuming compared to a bot that very efficiently picks balls up off the floor. I like two shooters, one of which might be defensive, then a seriously defensive dumper; stocky, stable, and powerful. The two shooters might have the ability to dump, but it’s not at all a priority. During the kickoff broadcast, they said that “good defense is key this year,” but don’t they every year? One defensive robot that can also score points is sufficient to two other big scorers.

13

My prediction on the Championship Alliance:
3 Shooters.
Shooter 1 powerful turret style shooter with awesome Autonomous.
Shooter 2 positional puke-em-out shooter 30pts in less than 10 seconds - also awesome autonomous shooter.
Shooter 3 strong floor gathering shooter with defensive power.
At most, only 1 is human loading!

Heres how they play out.
S1 starts in position 2 in auton, moves & shoots.
S2 has multiple positions for auton shooting
S3 goes Maverick - take out at least one of the other teams shooters.

The reason you can’t have all 3 shoot is, nice to have 1 team able to have balls & go straight on to defense plus if all 3 shoot many balls will bounce out of the goal or off each other. (I have seen 3 shooters all aiming at the same target at the same time)

Win auton win the match, catch-up is a hard game to play.

There is much more to this strategy but I can’t reveal all of my cards at once.

14

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again

1 Super effective at shooting at center goal (laod from either ground of HP)
2 Utilzes corner corral (can load from floor or HP)
3 Mainly used as defender but can use corner or center goal, but not as well as other two.

During the match the center goal robot would obviously shoot for the center goal, the corner robot would shoot for the corner goal, and the defender would defend. I know that sounds obvious, but it works. During the defensive phase, the corner ball bot and the defender would play defense, and the center goal bot would play back bot reloading with balls and getting into position to score, once the free for all happens, the defender continues to defend, the center bot would already unleash their hoard of balls through the center ring, and the corner bot could either a) score through corner or b) keep opponents off of center goal bot. then as time is winding down, the three make a dash for the platform.

15

yeah - people would have to be crazy to let that happen again!

16

Earlier I wrote:

And here is what I mean by that:

Suppose at Championships in Newton Division we get the following rankings for alliance selection (assume all of these are center goal shooters):

  1. FRC2001 (#3 Human Loaded Robot)
  2. FRC2002 (#1 Ground Loaded Robot)
  3. FRC2003 (Ground Loaded Robot)
  4. FRC2004 (#2 Human Loaded Robot)
  5. FRC2005 (Ground Loaded Robot)
  6. FRC2006 (Ground Loded Robot)
  7. FRC2007 (#1 Human Loaded Robot)
  8. FRC2008 (Ground Loaded Robot)

I submit that each alliance has room for only one human-loaded robot.

FRC2001 wants to pick FRC2002 (best ground-loaded robot). FRC2002 would rather be allied with FRC2007 or FRC2004, who have better human-loaded robots. FRC2002 knows that FRC2001 is probably not going to pick FRC2007 because their robots are incompatible (both human-loaded robots), and even if that selection is made, FRC2004 will still be available (still a better human-loaded robot than FRC2001). Therefore, when FRC2001 picks FRC2002, FRC2002 should decline, right?

But what happens if FRC2001 then picks FRC2007? FRC2007 ought to decline, because an FRC2001/FRC2007 alliance would have two human-loaded robots (=inefficient). So then FRC2001 picks FRC2004, who declines for the same reason. In this scenario, FRC2002 is worse off for having declined FRC2001’s offer of alliance. So by declining FRC2001’s offer of alliance, FRC2002 is taking a gamble.

However, if FRC2001 were smart, they would have picked pick FRC2007 and FRC2004 first, and after they had declined (as expected), FRC2002 would have accepted FRC2001’s subsequent offer of alliance because their two top teams would no longer be available.

The flaw in my argument is the assumption that all teams will make rational decisions in accepting or declining alliance offers.

I hope that was intelligible. Please tell me if it’s not and I’ll try to clarify it.

17

VCU’s winning alliances and high scorers typically had two shooters and the third varied. The third was a shooter but also had strong blocking and distracting capabilities.

VCU Winning Alliance
1610- Strong autonomous and shooter
343- Good shooter and turreted capabilities, heavy ball holding capabilities
1598- Shooter capacity and mobile blocking capability

Just a good alliance example. Shooters win, imho.

18

Everyone is talking about a defense specific robot, but in the championship divisions there will be enough depth of talent that you should be able to get defense bots that can score as well. Take a look at 818 - The Steel Armadillos. The were among the top 5 shooters at Detroit and were arguably the strongest defense bot as well.

I guess my point is that at Nats we will be able to have our cake and eat it too.

19

aaa, but comes the argument of which is better offense or defense?

Well when i’m thinking of alliance this year you can look at it 2 ways.

1 - 3 great shooting robots. for example match up FRC2001, FRC2002 and FRC2003 (I’m just picking these teams because they were the first shooters that came to mind) They all have good drive trains, and great shooting ability. Now you have only 2 robots that are playing defense of these guys, so thier should be one that is left open to do as they please with the center goal. And then on defense since thier drive trains are all good they can cleanly play defense. Now a quick break down from what I have seen.

FRC2001 - Human Player Loaded. Good solid shooter.
FRC2002 - Ground Loaded. Good solid shooter.
FRC2003 - Ground Loaded. - Good solid shooter.

2 - 2 great shooting robots and a great defensive bot. Once again take FRC2001, FRC2002 and FRC2004 (Yeah they play offense but they are still a great defensive team in my book no matter what). Now since only 2 robots can play defense you have FRC2004 (the defensive bot in this case) play defense on your opponents best defensive bot (making it so that 1 robot is still free to shoot).

FRC2001 - Human Player Loaded. Good solid shooter.
FRC2002 - Ground Loaded. Good solid shooter.
FRC2004 - Great Defensive Robot.

Now I only listed what these teams are good at. Some teams may be able to play defense and offense really well, but in my opinion one of those 2 setups are what you are going to see win all the divisions in Atlanta, because as much as defense is great, I don’t see it winning by itself like it could in previous years.

20

Though I understand how this thread is the “Ideal” alliance structure, I wonder how people are taking into account the new picking system in their planning, going 1-8 then 8-1.

It seems that seed #1 really could get another good shooter on its side, but after teams 7-8 have picked TWICE (so 23 robots gone) do you really think another uber bot will be available?

So, to partcialy re-phrase the question:

What is your ideal but feasable alliance structure?