Thinking about high game piece autos and the trade offs.
Obivously if you could just score 3 high thats your answer, but most teams can’t.
I am currious how teams think when designing those. I saw some teams opt to go 3 mid in auto rather than 2 high etc.
Interesting trade off, equivalent auto points but technically more because you then have a link complete.
On the other hand, 2 high means your 1 link away in teleop.
How do you think about this and whats your strategy behind it?
It probably makes sense to consider the point differential between a piece scored in teleop and a piece scored in auto. Especially as teams start filling the grid and will need to score on lower levels anyways, if they can score at these points faster it will make much more sense to score a 3rd piece low and get that extra bonus point when you’ll end up filling the top two rows anyway and needing to score some in the low row.
At lower levels of play, level. You’re not filling the grid up a ton, so every game piece you do put on it matters.
At higher levels of play, quantity. The grid will fill up all or most of the way, so the auto points will really start mattering as a decider unless we end up going into penalty-decided everything hell.
Important to have both. Always value leveling in quals if partner isn’t consistent. Multiples if they are. We ran a mix of 3 and 2 with level.
Trust of level comes from scouting data as event goes on. Elims you are building an alliance around your auto capabilities because those with good autos generally score fast and well
If you also wanted to dock on the charg station, 2 high would be your best bet, because 3 low would take up more time due to you needing to move and get 2 pieces past the community. If you dock, you need to balance yourself out, and that takes time, especially since you need to take it slow or else you tip off. Take my team as an example of that lol. Also, you would still get mobility for picking up that extra piece for 2 high.
I think it comes down to a couple things. Starting position and quantity vs quality.
Variety makes you a versatile alliance member. A good cable side and solid open side are a great start. Then, for us, we went quantity. More pieces scored or in community is less for the opposing alliance to grab for shorter cycles. Plus, the point bonus is only one point per node in auto. Doesn’t really matter where you put it as long as you are confident your alliance can fill what you pass on in tele.
The best auto isn’t necessarily the one that scores the most game pieces, it’s the auto that moves the most game pieces. If you can clear your 4 pre-sets in auto, get them in your community for safe keeping, and then start telep avoiding the clustercluck in the middle of the field you are off on a huge lead with 4 shortened cycles in your future.
Absolutely. I saw 5414’s 4 cube auto the other day and I’m now sure that a 5-cube auto (clearing every pre-staged game piece into your community) would be feasible. Getting to cycle immediately from t=135 is OP.
This is something I would love tracked at Worlds as you will see the top of the top with multiple auto programs for different scenarios. The justification of seeing a 2 or even three piece auto in a one or two matches doesn’t justify quantity of quality.
Our team was able to dump 1 piece and park near piece two for a majority of Miami Valley and compensated with low cycle times. To me that helps balance out a low auto score in the long run, but the season is still young.
As with lots of strategic things, it really depends where you’re playing, imo. At champs, consistent autos will be essential to get the max number of auto points and multiple robots will be able to do 2-3 pieces, so it’d be feasible to get all 4 staged pieces together as an alliance. At districts and regionals, you won’t get super tight nearly-full-grid matches as much, so it’s more important to get more game pieces into your community than it is to maximise how many auto points you get. Having one robot that can solo chuck 4 (or even 5) cubes into the community is great because it cuts down on cycle times and leads to a fuller grid faster.