Hello! I am part of a new strategy team for team 4509. This is our first year having an actual strategy team and we would love some pointers/criticism on the way we’ve been doing things. Additionally, this is the first year that we’ve had some preliminary data on teams due to the establishment of a working and reliable scouting system. All estimates on robot ability are based off of 2023 season’s data and are subject to change as this season’s game play progresses.
I’ve attached a few screenshots of how we’re currently working out strategy. We understand that these numbers will change and are fully aware that they are JUST estimates. I can post additional screenshots as needed. Thank you in advance!
Could you give a little more information on the goal of this exercise? To me, it looks like you are trying to piece together what you will be doing every second of every match - which is a great place to start!
My interpretation of the second screenshot is that you are trying to figure out classifications of each robot “class”, pretty much to figure out what the best of the best will do and what the weaker robots will be capable of contributing. Is that correct?
Would love to give some insight, just need some more information on what your goal is here.
Your “Elite” numbers are definitely an undercount. Crescendo will give us some of the fastest cycles in FRC history. I’d guess sub 10 seconds for “Elite” Speaker cycles.
Here’s a table I put together trying to estimate 6045’s robot performance in week 1.
Since this is a strategy thread, have you made any estimates about the effect defense might have on cycle times? It might be effective to have a bot or two switch to defense during times when the opponents’ speaker is activated. At the high level, do you think this would prevent the opponents from getting their 4 speaker shots in 10 seconds?
I just wanted to point out that not being able to score speaker, amp, or climb doesnt necessarily put a team at the bottom of the barrel in quality. A heavy robot with a good driver could (imho) easily contribute 2-4 cycles worth of value by playing defence. Also, does this chart require a team to meet the Speaker, Amp, and Trap requirements to be placed in a category, just one of them, two of them? I think that we’re definitely going to see a lot of good, and likely a few Elite, bots this season that cant trap, or can only do the speaker/amp and not the amp/speaker.
I agree. However, we are currently only making strategy without calculating defense at all. If you have any tips on how we should go about calculating defensive cycle times, we would love to hear them! Thank you for your feedback.
Depends highly on the skill level differential between the drivers. A defense driver that is more skilled than the offense bot can play shutdown defense by continuously rotating the opposing robots or staying glued to their shooter with an extended climber.
On an equal skill, I still see it being more potent than defense in 2022 and can easily see it preventing four shots from going because every shot a robot can make has a way to block or spin the driver away from the shot, which means it will take quite a while for offsenve bots to create an opening to get the shot off.
Your interpretation is right on point. Our goal is to figure out how to score the most amount of points within the 135 second time period we are given to play with the robots that were handed to us. Using our very rough estimations of cycle times and what level of robot will fit those cycle times, we are trying to devise strategies where we earn the most points possible per-second on play.
In our calculations, we have decided to ignore defense for the time being because there is truly no way (that we know) to predict how much defense will affect cycle times.
To sum it up, our goal is to create strategies that will give our alliance the most amount of points possible with all of the possible combinations of varying robot performance levels.
I hope this was clear and gives you a better idea of what we are trying to accomplish. If you need any additional information, please ask. Thank you for your offer!
We’re brand new to strategy and not fully aware of rules like this. If you could clarify what you mean by this, that would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Our cycle times are lower than what you might be expecting because of the level of competition in our district. PCH isn’t nearly as competitive as some other districts.
Additionally, we were wondering how you made the maps? Again, we’re very new to all of this.
Also, what do you think a better cycle time estimation would be? We agree that 52 seconds seems a little ridiculous.
Probably 12-8-4-2 with swerve being prominent, as mentioned above by @Liu346 .
The best teams should be scoring 12 gamepieces (or major scoring cycle actions), the next tier is 8, and so on. That’s the general idea anyway. Point is not to split hairs about 0.1 gampiece difference in averages and whatnot.
In our calculations, we have decided to ignore defense for the time being because there is truly no way (that we know) to predict how much defense will affect cycle times.
Yeah, last year any defensive analysis was really only possible after week 1 competitions occurred; even so, we had to go through each match to look at it more closely - we ended up with a pre-scouting sheet for both our comps having watched 3 matches for each team w notes on scoring + defense. I also think TBA had heat maps for some competitions, so we used those to look at playing effective defense.
Awesome stuff, maggsters. Your team is off to a good start! I think when contemplating serious serious strategy it can be really hard to remember everything. Thankfully @Karthik has a famous seminar he gives semi-frequently that’s also been published to YouTube:
It’s about 90 minutes long, and a ton of information. But it is probably the best we have in feeding strategy to teams at every level. I highly recommend you, or even your team, sit down and give this a watch at some point.
Cycling back to what you gave us so far, you’re off to a good start and are considering a variety of play. To start, it looks like your team has considered cycle times and robot abilities. However, let’s take this another step. Just because the most epic bots in this game will be able to crush at everything, that doesn’t mean they’ll just be cycling at the speaker. As you even noted in your scoring breakdown it is necessary to keep the Amp busy, either being filled with notes to build Amplification or to be performing Amplification.
Considering this and other game objectives, what will great alliances look like in qualification matches? Meaning what robot combinations will score the most points without fouls? What does this robot combination look like in eliminations? Discussing these combinations for success and finding your team’s spot in gameplay is a huge step in strategy. This also leads into the pick list combination. If you know that the roles of a great playoff alliance should meet X, X (again), and Y, then you want to be able to watch teams and discuss their performance in areas X and Y.
I think your immediate action steps are first to watch Karthik’s FIRST Strategies video. Following this, have a conversation of bot classification and what roles in the game exist. Once you’ve done that, I would urge you to repeat what you started this thread with based on those individual robot classes! See how your results have changed, and what new things about the game you might notice. You should share your updates and discoveries in this thread so the lovely people of CD can give some further insight
Thank you so much for your response. All of this information will be taken seriously and I cannot wait to see how we implement it into our strategies. We will make sure to keep you posted throughout the season about our progress. Once again, thank you very much for this information!!!
Just FYI, I am on the same team as Maggsters (4509) and work very closely with her in creating strategies.
We do have robot capabilities for considered in the tier of the robot. For instance, a bad robot can shoot speaker with the kit bot, but might now be able to score in the amp or climb.
