Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.
Posted on 3/31/99 3:47 PM MST
As I’ve been reading these messages I’ve heard talk of ‘powerhouse’ alliances of two (or three) really high-scoring robots. These teams have been called ‘unbeatable’. Have we started to overlook something here? Isn’t an ideal alliance made up of two teams that best complement one other, not supplement? Wouldn’t the ideal team be made up of one high scoring robot and one that maybe plays a fairly defensive game? Or maybe two that are somewhere in between?
Just remember that the capability to get all the points doesn’t get you everything in the elimination rounds. You hafta be able to keep them. Or am I all alone on this…?
-Daniel
Posted by Reuben Hintz, Student on team #53 from Eleanor Roosevelt HS.
Posted on 3/31/99 7:11 PM MST
In Reply to: Value of Defense posted by Daniel on 3/31/99 3:47 PM MST:
True to a point. But remember, if you put all your floppies in one basket and have your teammate chase down the puck, a slight glitch in your lifting mechanism can really screw you up. Besides, the teams that win are the ones that have the human players who have the best sense of the game and adapt the fastest.
Posted by Reuben Hintz, Student on team #53 from Eleanor Roosevelt HS.
Posted on 3/31/99 7:12 PM MST
In Reply to: Value of Defense posted by Daniel on 3/31/99 3:47 PM MST:
True to a point. But remember, if you put all your floppies in one basket and have your teammate chase down the puck, a slight glitch in your lifting mechanism can really screw you up. Besides, the teams that win are the ones that have the human players who have the best sense of the game and adapt the fastest.
Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.
Posted on 4/1/99 2:33 AM MST
In Reply to: Re: Value of Defense posted by Reuben Hintz on 3/31/99 7:12 PM MST:
Not only are the teams who win ‘the ones that have the human players who have the best sense of the game and adapt the fastest’, they also tend to be the ones who never have that ‘small glitch’ in their lifting mechanism.
Reliability is key. And even so, the elimination matches have three rounds aimed at just that sort of unlucky glitch.
-Daniel
: True to a point. But remember, if you put all your floppies in one basket and have your teammate chase down the puck, a slight glitch in your lifting mechanism can really screw you up. Besides, the teams that win are the ones that have the human players who have the best sense of the game and adapt the fastest.
Posted by Jeff Burch, Engineer on team #45, TechnoKats, from Kokomo High School and Delphi Delco Electronics Systems.
Posted on 4/1/99 9:37 AM MST
In Reply to: Value of Defense posted by Daniel on 3/31/99 3:47 PM MST:
Daniel,
You make a very good point. Our team (#45, Delphi Kokomo High School) specializes in puck control and defense. If one team on the alliance can push the puck to the opponents side for the doubler, get on the puck for the tripler, and prevent either of the opponents robots from getting on the puck, the most your opponent can score is 30 points. With the 6x, your team only needs 5 points from floppies to win (by tie-breaker).
This isn’t just theoretically possible. In our alliances quarter final matches in Ypsilanti we held our opponent to 20 and 27 points in successive wins. In the semi-finals, our alliance held the Beatty/ ITW Drawform/ DaimlerChrysler-OSM Tech alliance to a maximum of 75 points (and that was a match we won). This is equal to that alliances lowest winning score from any other elimination match.
So I’m doing a little marketing for our team here, but the point is good defense can beat even the highest scoring teams. The points you can get from floppies alone are a drop in the bucket compared to what you can get with good puck control!
Jeff Burch