As the season ramps up into DCMPs and Champs I want to hear from the community. From what I’ve seen low scoring robots are completely outclassed and will continue to be pushed out of favor for robots that shoot high.
Do you think there is a place for low scorers in championship alliances like in 2016 or do you think they will be fully phased out in favor of high scorers? Why was the low goal viable in 2016 and not now?
My two cents is that a low scorer could fill the niche of feeding balls to the 2 shooting robots but even that doesn’t seem like a great option since w a decent high shooter (which will probably be available in the 2nd round of picks) they could just pop those same balls in the high.
There were three things that really benefitted low goal machines heading into Championship in 2016 compared to 2020:
Qualification ranking points in 2016 gave score bonus points in the playoffs (meaning securing the breach and capturing the tower were still important elements of playoff gameplay, as opposed to 2020 where cargo bonus, quintets, and climbing bonuses are simply worth the points of scoring the objects in the playoffs)
The weakening the tower threshold was raised from 8 boulders to 10 boulders heading into CMP. Less than a handful of teams were capable of scoring 10 high goal boulders individually in a single match, and none on a consistent basis. Even most CMP playoff worthy high goal scorers were only averaging around 4-5 cargo per match. Raising the threshold to 10 cargo really opened the door for volume-oriented low goal specialists and/or 3-team offensive combinations being involved in achieving the tower capture ranking point.
Boulders were a shared resource between both alliances, and volume scoring made opposing human players return boulders into play. Teams that were good at simply acquiring and moving boulders quickly were valued, regardless of how many points per boulder was achieved. Even if the other alliance was successfully guarding their secret passage to stop your alliance from poaching their human player bolder returns, controlling the flow of boulders would actively lengthen opposing cycles and grabbing the mid-field boulders at the start of the game was a crucial race.
That being said, I do think the death knell for low goal machines in 2022 is somewhat overstated. They can still be highly effective ranking point gathering machines, especially now that cargo bonuses will become more commonplace at DCMP and CMP-levels. And the scoring they can contribute can be meaningful, especially if they augment it with multi-cargo autonomous routines and/or climbing above the mid-rung (or, minimally, climbs that are highly compatible with other climbers). They can also be effective role players in elimination alliances if they are capable of playing solid defense, and knowing how to manage cargo.
I agree with you in the fact that a 2022 low scorer can get RP but a decent high scorer can get 2 just by winning and by extension any great high scorer gets 3 for winning. Furthermore, in elims a high ranking low scorer doesnt get picked and end up drowning in the point deficit generated by teams that can effectively score high. A low scorer can rank but will never win or offer any meaningful points, this coming from a team that has a primarily low scoring robot.
I am curious however, if you and others think a low scorer has more strategic benefit over a robot that just plays defense for one of those top tier alliances?
A very solid analysis. There is one thing that I think adds to this as a difference from 2016 to 2022: targeting. In 2016, there were still relatively few teams that could effectively use vision targeting to hit the (relatively) small upper goals on the tower and this they necessarily had to do much more slowly than what is now possible. The proliferation of good vision targeting solutions (Limelights, Photonvision, etc.) and a relatively large upper goal have made the low goal robot less competitive because they’ve made the effective high goal shooter easier to achieve.
I think Low Goal will have a place at Champs levels but only as a secondary approach if a team is having active defense being played on it where their high goal shot would get affected. No Defense = Shoot High, Active Defense = Shoot Low
What others seem to be forgetting is that you got points for crossing defenses. So your first several cycles as a low vs high goal scorer were 7 vs 10 points plus as many have said most teams were not as accurate as we are now and you could only carry 1 boulder as opposed to 2 cargo.
Do you think that the single game piece control in 2016 lead to more balance between low and high or were the defenses more of an enabler for low scoring strategies to work as they served as an equalizer of sorts for scoring?
I am aware but since most people only crossed 4 of the 5 defenses anyway that was 8 cycles worth of crossing.
According to TBA at champs:
Match Statistics
Average Low Goals
3.92
Average High Goals
4.81
This means in your average match pretty much every goal scored except 1 was accompanied by a crossing. If the crossing happened in auto that is actually even better for the low goaler since it is 15 points to the high goals 20
Single game piece helped because it led to more cycles necessary to get the RP.
The defenses were more of the equalizer because you needed to cross them for points and for RP.
Put a giant hunk of metal in the middle of the field this year and say we can only score the game piece after we crossed from one side to the other and low goals suddenly become much more effective since everyone has to get to roughly the same spot.
Generally speaking, low goal scorers go up against the hub to score, which generally lowers their cycle time, but also means they can consistently get balls in, and is harder(?) to play defense on. Going up to the hub also means that the low scorer will be closer to the hub, not being in the way of the high scorer, who is generally shooting at a distance.
I believe low goal robots will start to adjust their strategies to become defense bots.
This year on 5613 has been one of the most complex strategies I’ve ever run with a robot. We’ve played defense, offense, rank-point secure + defense, and a host of other strategies.
I actually quite like it, it brings a fun strategical depth to the game that I very much enjoy.
I have seen no low goal scorers who would be just as fast if they had a shooting geared towards hitting the high goal from the fender. They all line up to the same place and take the same amount of time to wind up.
Our (1675) experience as a low goaler at 2016 champs is that we were somewhat of a “force multiplier”. We could knock out defenses while knocking down the tower pretty quickly. Also feeding to your shooters was more of a tactic in Stronghold because you had a much more defined shooting zone, I think.
Having a good human player so that you could do VERY fast cycles from lane-lowbar-lowgoal was also a big part of our strategy. Ours was a football center who could basically hike the ball to midfield/lowbar flap if no obstructions.
In the elims, at least for the alliance we were able to pick, against who we were up against, low goal wasn’t good enough to hang anymore unfortunately. But it was very good for quals.
Edit: I looked for video of the one big “feeding” match I remember us doing, where we fed 1690, but it must have been a practice match or something.
Replying to Sean since I was his student at the time and our experience is informed by much of the same experiences.
Another relevant part of the 2016 game that advantaged volume oriented low goalers was the breach points. You got points simply for playing the game and making a bunch of cycles. The vast majority of alliances breached so this wasn’t a big differential in favor of low goalers, but that essentially flat increase to both alliance’s scores made the difference between a high goal and a low goal in points less punishing.
(Put better and more simply: when scores are high, 3 additional points for a high goal aren’t as big a deal.)
In all honesty, I think a 2 point low goal and a 2 point high goal, would have been pretty cool for this game just because I think there are still advantages to going for the high goal, but it gives lower resource teams a chance to be competitive. I think without it, low goal scorers just aren’t as efficient, even in volume the best low goal scorers are outcompeted by decent high goal shots.
Coming from a team that did lower hub shooting succesfully at our first event and switched to upper hub shooting for our second event. Lower hubs main advantage outside of it obviously being a bit easier to consistantly hit is that the cycles are faster because the cargo is reintroduced on the field faster.