In order to win this year, your alliance will have to have the best of the best of all aspects of the game. You can’t win by doing one thing, unless you’re against stealth bots. Its been pretty much proven that you can counter most strategys…some robots can keep others of the bar, but if you get enough balls in and double it, you can beat them (i never said it was easy)
This year’s game is a good one, encorporating most/all of the aspects of the game if you really want to win, thus robots that do all (well) or alliances that can do it all (well) are the winners. There is no most important aspect of this game, everything matters, one thing can change a whole match. Whether it be a robot caping a goal or a robot hanging, there are many last second swing aspects of this game. FIRST wanted a spectator friendly game, they got a one (assuming the spectators know how to score)
Sorry to say that there is no most important part of this years game. The most important part of this game is knowing what it takes to beat the team you playing.
If team A can beat team B and team B can beat team C, does that mean that team A can beat team C? Not this year!
Small balls will not be the key because it is easy enough to stop teams from getting them. Hanging won’t be key because it’s too easy to overcome with small balls. Capping won’t be most important because you need little balls to cap.
It’s all going to come down to the what was said by John in the defense thread: Picking a strategy to beat the team you are playing. There is no “one” strategy that can win this year, they can all be beat. Be smart!
If you can’t hang you can’t win… That’s my theory but still… Thats 50 points… Our team can hang so good now… Just wait and see… In one regional we couldnt hang… We didn’t get picked… In the next regional we could, we got picked and made it to the semi finals but our alliance tipped in both matches and we lost… Not by much but enough… Hanging is key…
Actually seeing this years competition really made me relize what “the most important” part of this years game was. and i think the answer to this would have to be, that there truly isn’t one, though i feel hanging is arguably VERY inmportant. At the reginal, there was only one instance where a robot hung and thier aliance didn’t win, but that only because the opposing aliance had bot thier robots hanging. :ahh:
When we got to quarter finals it was almost imposable for us to predict how the match would go. In one instance we had an aliance partner that could open a net and catch almost all the 5point balls during auto. mode while our robot could go and knock off the 10pt ball during auto. We shot almost every ball in the goals and then our robot hung. Surprisingly, both times we did this stratigy, we didn’t win 
. But it sure mad for an amazing round to watch. :yikes: We still ended up in 4th place and had a great year.
Originally posted by Lil’ Lavery
ummm, in your example, the blue alliance(with the hanging robots), won. Note that in your example both alliances were performing flawlessly…
I was being generous with the blue alliance’s points. I have seen a mobile goal under the ball dump catch anywhere from 1 to 6 balls. I have seen human players miss shots on a mobile goal when it was right next to the players’ station. I tried to make the blue alliance’s performance a best case scenario, while I based the red alliance’s performance on what I have seen our bot do, and the fact that there are teams that can cap reliably.
I guess my point was that small ball bots get high scores more reliably than hangers.
I definitely think that the most important aspects of the game are:
Scouting
Hanging
If you don’t scout right, how will your team do well? By knowing exactly what every other robot can do, its strategy, driving techniques, human player accuracy, things like that, you will do well. Also scouting is key to knowing exactly what strategy to use in a match. Scouting definitely has a positive effect on the results of the matches.
Hanging is also an incredibly important part of the game. I do agree that sometimes the small balls can determine a match, but if your robot can hang really well, then your robot will do great. Unless, you are against a fantastic ball collector. That’s where scouting comes back into play.
Scouting is key! 
as a scout I can tell you that our role isn’t as pivotal as one may think. the teams we pick are generally the teams we were paired with at one point or another. after watching many matches, I have come to the conclusion that too few people respect the power of the balls. Though they are only 5 points each, cap them, and they are 10 each. thats only 5 capped balls to tie a hang, and that is not as hard as one would imagine given the abilities of the robots this year.
keep in mind that a well-rounded alliance is the best alliance to keep. Defense is important to have for the win, but it is useless without an offensively strong robot… the basic premise of my scouting white paper that I have provided.
good luck all!
[quote=Pin Man]If you can’t hang you can’t win… That’s my theory but still… Thats 50 points… QUOTE]
I would edit that quote to say “If your strategy is to hang, and you can’t, then you won’t win” You are right in saying that the 50 hanging points are important, however keeping an opponent from hanging and not hanging yourself has the same effect as going to hang yourself, but also letting your opponent hang… just ask all of the people who saw the finals in Philly. I agree with the people who say that scouting is one of the keys, because if you know that you are going up against 2 robots that can hang, and only one of your robots can hang, you can let a hanging robot from the other alliance be cancelled out by the hanging bot on your alliance, then after you have done whatever else you planned on doing in the match (small balls for us) you can just prevent the second team from hanging, because instead of hanging at the beginning of the match they were forced to defend against you.
There is a thread about teams with the most alliance points (points that their alliance actually scored, not opponents) averages, at least 5 of the top ten were from philly… we were not one of them, yet we still won… so how important can hanging really be?[/quote]
Not if you catch them
Well it is legal to keep some from catching or to keep their nets closed.
I can’t think of any rule that it would be violating. At Philly, our opponents did everything that they could to keep us from catching the ball dump. But we were only denied the catch a few times. The only rule that I can think of that might come into play is the one saying that you can’t pin a robot for more than 10 seconds.
To get back on subject, I would have to agree with a few other people on here by saying that any strategy can win.
Even a team like us who catches the balls, we still modify out strategy each match to both fit our alliance partner and our opponets.
Something I haven’t seen as much as i would like to, is good defence. Keeping a bot from hanging, corraling, or capping (or decapping) can be the best way to win (also decapping our opponets goal).
I think its pretty simple…
Hanging gets you a high seed…
Ball manipulation wins championships.
If you can do both well…look out world!
I also agree that its extremely important for teams to do more than one thing. Just hanging is not going to cut it against the Technokats, Cheesy Poofs, Baxters, and Paragons of the world. Paragon at UTC is a great example. They were so efficient at scoring the small and large ball, that they would just storm out of the gate, fill the goal, and cap it with time to spare. Double hanging alliances couldn’t really do anything because the most they usually would score was 130. Paragon, on the other hand, had about 130 points waiting in the goal alone by the time the match was over. Add a hanger in there…game over.
My prediction, the most dangerous robots will be the do-everything bots.
Good Luck,
Andy Grady
And if you cant cap then keep them from capping then hang that is a win. Also your HP’s have to be ok.
if you watch match 62 from midwest, purdue was an awesome, awesome small ball/2x robot, but things happen, and at the end of the game, they didnt’ corral almost at all. luck is very imprtant this year.
Something I haven’t seen as much as i would like to, is good defence. Keeping a bot from hanging, corraling, or capping (or decapping) can be the best way to win (also decapping our opponets goal).
This is what wins Good defence. A robot that stops someone from hanging is big. and if you stop a ball robot from getting ball is also big.
One observation I made: If one alliance is hanging more robots than the other, it will probably win. By this logic, hanging is most important.
Not so! if both sides are hanging equal numbers of bots, it will come down to the balls and who doubled what.
So if you can hang, but probably won’t make it, shove as many balls around as you can. cap and decap goals. grab bonuses if you can. whatever scores points