The image and the title are sort of self explanatory.
Do you think we could see robots passing notes up/across the field in very synergistic alliances?
The premise would be that you could essentially play zones, with 1 robot at the feeder station tossing notes into mid-field to its 2 alliance partners.
If these robots have quick pickups and very distant shots, the theoretical cycle times get VERY short.
Consider in addition that robots in the feeder station are actually waived of the 1 note restriction, and a robot that can pipeline notes through its shooter could do this very quickly.
Passing isn’t something we’ve really seen as worth doing in any game in my memory, but those rulesets are very unique.
Rundown of previous games
These only go as far as my own memory.
Ultimate Ascent allowed carrying multiple discs, and making full court shots.
Aerial Assist, the whole point was to pass of course
Recycle Rush, no full-court piece traversal
Stronghold, no passing boulders over the defenses, but there was a TON of value in human players who could bowl the boulders as far out of the secret passage as possible.
Steamworks, I don’t think you were allowed to launch gears? Not many teams had fast floor pickups also.
Powerup, no full-court piece traversal
Deep space, no full-court piece traversal
Infinite Recharge, never saw play, but you could carry multiple game pieces
Rapid React, no full-court piece traversal
Charged Up, teams weren’t allowed to launch outside their own zone, but again just like Stronghold, there was a lot of value in human players able to launch pieces into the mid-field.
This year human players can’t even get the pieces into mid-field, so maybe this is a new niche.
Especially if you consider that a defense bot could do something like this while their opponents are going back to get game pieces.
I know a few teams are trying it, however I think that if it works, it will be at higher levels of play just due to the complexities of trying to get everything lined up, and avoid defense.
However I do think it is doable after seeing how much the notes slide, which could very easily enable another bot to pick up. Ideally you want to slide directly into another waiting bot, but defense and moving around will most likely eliminate most of that.
Maybe… I could see going just far enough, and then blasting it towards your own amp (furthest from the opponents’ source as possible to keep it away from their normal route), however it would be tempting for an opposing team could snap up the note instead, because not only could they score it, but they would also be denying your alliance the points, basically counting for double (or at least 1.5x value). Definitely high risk, high reward.
That being said, any robot with a tilting shooter should be mechanically capable of this, so if it does somehow become the meta, it would be easy to adapt.
I remember some 2017 matches that had some pretty effective passing by the 3rd alliance robot to a robot with floor intake, but I can also think of a lot of times where attempting to pass game pieces directly robot to robot has just been slow.
Robots would have to be designed around feeding and shooting from the hp station. We’ve seen this in ultimate ascent but then robots could shoot across the field.
Preventing the opposing alliance from taking the pieces. If they are at the mid-line, then it’s just as easy for the opposing alliance to capitalize on.
As long as you’re bothering to drive, you might as well drive long enough to actually make the shot yourself.
Time spent accelerating and decelerating is the killer, going fifteen feet and thirty feet are pretty similar investments if you can keep your speed up.
Well what I’m describing wouldn’t necessarily require any driving, at least for the speaker.
The feeder-station bot shoots directly from the HP station to its partners in mid-field, who then pick them up and shoot from mid-field/the back of their wing.
I’m waiting with bated breath to see if this is finally the year teams can make this work. I’m also very curious if this would come from 2 95 percentile+ teams or 2 40-80 percentile teams.
That options is a pretty risky pass though. The rules state that you can’t cause the note to “travel” into your wing. So if it slides further than expected or somehow manages to roll into the wing, penalties.
The added time from waiting for the note to settle after the first shot followed by a second bot having to intake and align to the goal is almost certainly more than any saved time from driving the extra distance, especially with the high gear ratios teams are going to be running this year. The closest thing to this strat that I could see working is having one bot making long-distance shots from the back edge of the neutral zone while a second bot does double duty on full court cycles and close-range cleanup of missed shots from the long-distance shooter. But if that long-range shooter is less than ~70% accurate from a distance, they’re gonna be better off cycling full field anyways to maximize successful shots when the speaker is amplified.
The problem is that it is not worth passing the notes down the field and potentially leaving the notes on the floor in an unsafe location. Any opposing robot is going to pick up the note you passed to the middle of the field, and there is no protection for it whatsoever.
Also, from a defense perspective, its a lot easier for me to defend your alliance if you have one robot always doing the scoring in the speaker. Then i can figure out where you like to shoot from and keep you from being there. If you have two robots cycling, it is not very easy for one robot to play excellent defense on two different robots at once.
I just don’t see a world in which it would be beneficial to voluntarily give up scoring in the hopes that it speeds up someone another robot.
Three teams would be even better than two. One bot waiting at midfield to take notes to the amp, one bot waiting at mid field to shoot the speaker, and one bot at the source passing notes to the other two. Two notes to the amp, then four notes to the speaker.
As a point of reference, we implemented the “passing” strategy during qualification matches at DCMP in 2016. We found that often the boulders would just pile up in our courtyard, and after defeating the defenses, we’d end up scoring them in the low goal ourselves.
A side effect to this strategy was our number of scored boulders went down from previous events, which we believe led to scout teams looking at our stats and underestimating our abilities, and we almost didn’t get picked for playoffs.
On the other hand, in 2010 we were the no.1 seed tournament champions at FLR without scoring more than one or two balls, because we were extremely adept at fielding balls returned to the field from both alliances and passing them forward to be scored, but due to whoopsie literally couldn’t get into the scoring zone.
That game was more than a little bit of an anomaly, though.
A key distinction for passing games is there were much lower quantities of game pieces (2010, 2012, 2016) and some gave you more points (2014). Smaller game piece counts is doubly useful, because in addition to feeding, you are also starving your opponent.
Really the only one I can think of is 2013 FCS+floor pickup alliances that saved time because you could full court (and hopefully make) all of your shots.
I don’t think “passing” is a viable strategy, but strategic stashing from long range is viable.
These replies both seem to miss the posed thought experiment. “When” doesn’t really change from this. The goal is to reduce cycle times. What you do with those NOTES once you’ve reduced the cycle times is up to you. Unless you think there’s a vastly different result based on sending a couple to the AMP vs the SPEAKER (example, the recipient robot never moves when shooting to the SPEAKER and there’s no time gained when cycling to the AMP), this doesn’t really change anything.
The second looks at the idea of a single robot cycling to center field and a single robot taking pieces to score from there. A bot that’s sitting at the SOURCE and abusing the multiple game piece restriction is clearly one intending to cycle NOTES onto the FIELD faster than a single bot could grab. As a result, they’re going to be feeding both of their other bots with the intent being to decrease their cycles to half the previous distance. You’d still need to defend both of these (or more realistically, find an easy way to mess with the transfer).
All that said, I think I’d agree the strat isn’t all that viable. It needs too many assumptions to hold true in order to be an improvement:
The opponents don’t grab the notes
The opponents don’t find an easy way to block the shots towards midfield
You don’t get foul calls for shooting into the defending bot
The cycle time is most impacted by the drive from center to source
The bot deciding to be the feeder losing their own scoring is still a net positive to the alliance based on the capabilities of the other two robots (if you’re focusing your time here, you’re sacrificing time on your own shooting. You’ll be less efficient and more reliant upon being selected and this traveling all the way to champs)
There’s so much that can go wrong that it feels like it’d need that perfect match to provide a benefit. If we average the expected gain/loss across a season of matches, I’d expect you’d evaluate it as a negative.
