Tempo is like the beat of a song. Four notes in a song with a slow tempo takes longer to play than four notes in a faster tempo song.
Such is the way of this year’s game. A robot that can travel around the field at its highest capability will have more points than a slower robot traveling around at its highest capability. This is relativity known and basic.
But what about other types of tempo. Hurdle the ball is a tempo. The faster you can get your mechanism to pass the ball over and retain it will make a very fast tempo than robots that fumble around.
Here is the discussion I wish to pose to deep thinkers on the eve of battle…What do you think will become the deciding factor for the majority of the games: Being able to increase tempo by working with alliances to do things faster or being able to disrupt tempo by playing defense and preventing opponents from doing things faster?
Here is what I think: I believe Defense will play a much bigger role in this game than it did in Rn’R. To disrupt a team from making even one hurdle can cost them the game. No matter what happens, if you keep scoring repeatedly without incident and your opponents miss one, you have the red carpet.
Red alliance with two hurdlers and Blue with one, Blue could pose to have the advantage over Red. Blue’s other two robots go for broke and play smart defense preventing hurdles by getting the red track balls out of red’s hands/grips and keeping the red blocker at bay while the Blue Hurdler takes his/her merry time making good hurdles at a decent speed.
I think you hit the nail on the head, at least with the tempo part. It’s a lot easier to do some things if you have a “rhythm” going. The tempo will probably be the deciding factor in the games. It is a little hard to recover if you lose your tempo, so that will be a factor.
Do you think that many teams will get frustrated when their tempo is broken and do something illegal like drive clockwise? Ie cross back in the previous quadrant.
I don’t know I’d say it will be out of frustration, but if you can knock the other team’s ball so that it goes behind them, odds are decent that they might try to chase it, and in the process break the plane of the line behind them. This may take a bit of finesse, a la tube-on-the-ramp on Einstein last year, but I’d guess that a lot of drivers, in the heat of the moment, will take the bait.
Very great analogy on the game. Defense is whats going to disrupt the tempo, and win more matches I think. You will see alliances with good tempo in the early elimination matches and then defense will start coming into play later as the elimination rounds progress. It will also get better as the year goes on. Teams will know what they can and can’t do, and what their partners can and can’t do.
Most winning alliances I think will impose their tempo on the game. Either by slowing down the other alliances tempo or by picking up their tempo and making the other alliance try and catch up. It’s going to be a key this year. Because you either work together (high tempo) or you don’t (low tempo).
Very interesting concept. I think that we’ll get plenty of both fast and slow tempo matches. Like Jherbie53 said, a good alliance should be able to impose their own tempo on the match.
What I think will be interesting is what happens when 2 good alliances try to impose their preferred tempo on each other. I think a match where one alliance wants a fast tempo and the other wants a slower one could be the most exciting.
I agree totally! Matches will be based on how people can move, whether it be in the way on purpose, or moving around people quickly.
I noticed in the pre ship games that traffic jams happened a lot, and this caused low scoring matches, because as was said the “Tempo” almost stopped completely.
It will be the best use of speed, not nessacary the fastest bots that will win these competitions. Those who can stop the fast bots from being fast and avoid the slow bots so they are not slow.
I love the theory, and agree completely, you nailed it man!
Well, if you think about it, Tempo has been the standard of play. However since this year both time and scoring are even bigger and more important, the concept has become more apparent.
I don’t think illegal moves will be implemented just to keep tempo. There are other ways to save your tempo by coordinating a motion with your alliance partners to evenly follow the track. And most players and teams would rather avoid penalties even if the optimal solution was to take it.
I also don’t think Tempo even will become an issue until teams start to see it’s effect. I give it to Week 3 before Tempo becomes the big discussion.
however i feel that you will be surprised how hard it is to disrupt the “tempo” of some of the stronger teams out there. while i feel it most certainly can be done, i think once you experience a match you will see how hard it is to try and get someones way only to have you cross a line and not be able to go back, or to not get in front of them and impede.
teh refs at suffield were calling impeding without warning and often. you cant impede someone and wait for the warning from the refs like you could with pinning. if you impede, you impede, and thats a 10 point penalty.
I also believe defense is being underated in this game. So much is made of the ability to hurdle and such. You can’t hurdle if you can’t get a ball. Period. And with the physical properties of the ball, the high bounce etc., you don’t automatically get to aquire the ball you hurdled. Knocking the ball backward, once you are on the “other” alliences side of the field means they will have to go all the way around the field before they can play that ball…at least that’s my theory!!!
Put, it is always hard to “plan” an attack with so many unknowns in First robotics competition.
