III. Regional awards and strategy
CONGRADULATION to the winners and finalist of each of the regional competition!!!
Kennedy space center regional- Winners: 186, 343, 180 Finalists: 945, 312, 665
VCU regional: Winner: 422, 643, and 316 Finalists: ???, ???, ???
Cleveland regional- Winners: 859, 469, 201 Finalists: 67, 68, 302
Lone Star regional- Winners: 34, 457, 192 Finalists: 16, 118, 609
Long Island regional- Winners: 467, 173, 28 Finalist: 195, 224, 545
These teams went through intense matches against many great machines, and came out victorious because they are best alliances at their regional. With a little of luck, and good scouting done by their students, these robots came together and compliment each other on the playing field, and played the game really well. These teams really deserve their winners/finalists award because of all their hard work on the robot and strategy planning. Very cool!
Check out this post for the awards at Buckeye Cleveland regional and Lone Star regional @ http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3073
And the rest of the awards at FIRST’s website @ http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/rgevents.htm
The 2002 Competition Strategies
With head to head competition between two alliances on the field, the strategies are a lot more diverse this year. Different combinations of robots call for different strategy at every match, so prepare your scouting team because you are going to need them. 
There are two distinct strategies this year that you will definitely use, and they are the strategies for qualifying rounds and elimination rounds. They are completely different games this year, so you might want to pay attention to the differences.
Qualifying vs. Elimination
In qualifying rounds, you:
Play to get as much Qualifying Points as possible, try to get as many 1 point balls as possible, try to win matches while allowing opponents score as much as they can, play the match a little less aggressively to keep your robot in good condition, and implement different strategy on the fly because of different partners and opponents.
Turns out qualifying rounds seeding depend on a lot of luck… There are many factors that determine how well you can do. For example: conditions of all 4 machines, which machine is paired up with who, the different moves the driver decided to perform, and the accidents that happened. A wrong move in strategy could mean getting a QP of 20 instead 90… But a right move can score you a 132 QP .
Mean while, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work really hard in the qualifying rounds. It is possible to get #1 seed if you play every match right, and have a really good machine for the game. Just look at how some of the regional winners/finalists are #1 seed teams. Team 67, 16, and 945 are all #1 seed of the regionals that are also regional finalists. However… there are others that didn’t seed all that high at all, while doing really well in eliminations. Check out this thread for qualifying rounds strategies @ http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3085
“This is a great question and it also brings to light how important scouting could be when selecting a partner. Teams in seeding matches could just decide to show what they are good at, knowing or coming to the conclusion they will not make the top 8.” -meaubry
“I think play hard, do your best, don’t get fancy or tricky and be
a gracious proffesional is the way to go.” -Dr. Bot
“If your like us you get lucky and get a team like HOT BOT on your alliance, you get one goal, you put 26 balls in that goal, you get both robots in the end zone, and you get a score of 56 to 44 giving you a QP of 132!!!” -John Prather
Take a look at this thread about average qualifying points…
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2915
Where as in elimination rounds, you:
Play to win every match, try to get as many goals as possible, throw out everything you got to win, play the game really aggressively thinking “it’s now or never”, and implement your unique strategy that fit your alliance the best.
Elimination rounds are what everyone expected. Plenty of great machines paired up with their best partner to try to defeat other alliances. Everyone fought aggressively to “stay alive” and advance to the next level. Machines were pushed to their limit to out-maneuver out-power out-wit out-speed their opponents. It was intense actions where robots speed toward the goals as fast as they could, and battle with each other for the right to put the goals in scoring position.
From watching all the webcasts of regionals, the winning strategy (that won the regionals) is to control as least two goal with one of your machine, while the partner go out to do defense or score the third goal. If your alliance got all three goals, then you are all set. Because of that, most of the time the game ended up pushing matches where all 4 robots bunched up together fighting for all the goals.
Check out a thread about Finals strategy @ http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3098
“Well, I do not know if grabbing three goals is the best strategy, but it definitely worked for us. We won six out of seven elimination matches in Cleveland with our wonderful partners, 469 and 859, and didn’t have too much trouble achieving that.” -Jeff Waegelin
“To ward off the “tug o war” double goal handlers, the Single goal grabbers must be faster to the goal and also more manueverable with it once it has it - two minutes is an eternity when a relentless slower machine is uninhibited in its progress.” -meaubry
However, don’t be so certain that this is the best strategy… After seeing a great numbers of ball robots’ performance, and talking to teams with ball machines, it is possible for teams to win with enough balls. As long as you have one goal in your procession, you could put enough balls in that goal, enough to win… It’s always the argument between “if you can’t control any goals you can’t score any balls” and “you can win if you get one goal with enough balls”… But that’s really up to what’s going to happen on the field. From what I heard, the 173/467/28 alliance won the Long island regional because of balls. Share with us what you think about scoring balls @ http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3111
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3098
“If you get one goal, 21+ balls, and a robot in the end zone, you most likely won.” -Joel J.
“After seeing several of the teams ( 173 especially) in the SBPLI regional I changed my mind. They and phenominal speed and hit the goal in seconds, locked on and proceeded to suck up every ball on their side.” -Kevin Ray
Check out this thread about “Kamikaze Robot Strategy…”
“Suppose that you are playing against a team with a bullet proof 3 goal grabber/lifter/dragger (GLD) robot. Suppose that this 3 goal GLD Robot is very fast at getting all 3 goals and that once this it gets a hold of all three goals it can lift them or whatever so that it gets enough traction and that it has a low enough gear that it can basically to go wherever it pleases despite the best efforts of the opposing alliance robots.
Of course, this means that the match will effectively be over once this GLD Robot gets the 3 goals.
What do you think about using a Kamikaze Robot in order to match up against such a GLD robot?” -Joe J.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2840
). At the end, FIRST made their final ruling by allowing teams to pick each other at each of the regionals.