NO, I'm not just reviving a dead forum

Competition Rules/Strategy
#1

Yes, the season is over. So who would care about strategy anymore?
WELL I DO!!! (so you be quiet Steve :mad: , you know who you are)

Through off-season competition as well as official competition, were there any strategies deployed that seemed ‘un-answered’ or ‘un-countered’. Were there any strategies that just popped into your head after the competition was done? I want to keep the ideas flowing. There is still off-season competition. Please post your ideas here… because I care about strategy :smiley:
~Hubicki~

#2

I had always thought to just have some really long cords then on you control board have on big button on it that said WIN in big letters. Then using the cords drive the robot from the crowd wile the entire drive team puts there hands on the glass. hehehe
I know it’s not possible becasue of the rules but would’nt that be funny;)

#3

One thing I always thought about doing that my team never let me attempt was the “playing dead” strategy. This would involve your robot moving like it was broken (maybe just one side of the drive train would be driving around, or some such), or even using the giant red emergency buttons to trigger your robot to shut off and reset (or just pressing the reset button on the robot controller).

It might not be in the spirit of FIRST, exactly, and it also wouldn’t work more than once or twice, but when it would fool your opponents it would really be worth something. Of course, our robot is so battered by this point that we don’t quite have to fake being slightly disabled…

#4

I cannot take credit for this one, my coach actually devised this plan at Nationals. Friday night we were discussing how to beat a very tough alliance we had to take on during our last qualifying match Saturday. With our greatly engineered ‘Moose’, we were going to play the match the same as we always had by going and retrieving two goals. Then after we were parked, and 45 seconds were left (when I usually deploy Moose from its cage), I would bring Moose off the cage to the floor, and then Moose would just stop. Then I would start flipping out and yelling at Moose, and the other alliance would think that we were unable to get back to the home zone! Then with 4-5 seconds left I would drive Moose home!

#5

You could build a robot that drove to the opponent’s home zone and deployed a huge piece of plastic or something to block the entire glass panel so they couldn’t see. It could also be on a tether, so you could drop a base piece, and the base would unfold the blocker so they could drive away.

#6

dead robot strategies are good, ad they provide a good insurance also. god forbid, your robot has a major malfuction, and it can’t move, or move much, and you’ve already done the play dead strategy, you can pretend to play dead. then, the other team will be very wary of you, and it may distract them, so your partner can go and do things. it would be interesting to see how long the other team believes you’re just playing dead, and not really dead. :smiley:

#7

We actually did that in a match at Nats this year. I can’t remember who was in it, but we were with a goal bot and against two hybrids (I think). We started the match, moved two inches, and then stopped. The drive team looked puzzled, then dejected, and all the while, we were waiting for the other teams to fill their goals while our partner grabbed one goal. When the other alliance had filled one goal, we took off, grabbed one of their goals, grabbed the goal from our partner, sent our partner and our tether back, and won the match. It worked OK, but I don’t know if I’d try it again.