I think we’ll see cubes becoming scarce early in the season and see it less at later, more competitive events as teams start to learn and develop strategy as to when to use the cubes effectively rather than waste an extra cube or 2 to maintain control of the switch or scale.
Actually if you do control both switches and the scale you are effectively earning three points. Two points actually go on the score board but you are preventing the opposing alliance from scoring on their switch earning you a virtual point. Each second that passes makes it that much harder to overcome a deficit in the score.
Yeah I know. Preventing the opposing Alliance from earning a point is exactly equal to earning a point for your own alliance. Really it should be from -4 (they score 2 and deny 2) to +2 (you score 2 and deny 1, they score 1), since I should be accounting for denying the Scale. I was a little conflicted about that part earlier because it’s mutually exclusive by nature, but I’m pretty convinced I was wrong about that and what I have here is how it should be valued.
This makes me even more nervous about ramp-bots. Since they will earn bonus RPs in quals they will rank highly, so we might see some scorched earth at Champs if other teams think they can get 3 “real” climbs instead (e.g. they can cheesecake two partners to be carried).
This sort of thing will be highly situational. Like in my example, when you own your two platforms and know that they won’t be contested, another cube on either platform is worthless, while Boost + 5/each is at least something that could make up for a deficit from earlier in the match. There’s a time and a place to use them, but some matches will definitely not see them used.