What does everyone think the optimal alliance will consist of? What abilities do you think each team would have? Anything about defense should (probably) be posted under will this year’s game lack defense?
3 shooter bots
20 Likes
IMO 3 offensive. Hopefully the second pick could cross the bridge in auto and then balance.
If you play defense in this game in the playoffs you are going to lose 99% of the time IMO.
4 Likes
My current thought is that one ‘runner’ (someone with fast cycle times) would pick up a piece from the loading zone and bring it to the community. The second would play normally, as a jack-of-all-trades. The last one would pick up a piece from the community that the runner brought to them and score it. In my opinion, it would be faster. There would also be fewer robots in the middle of the field, resulting in less collisions.
3 Likes
Given that the majority of the time loss will be spent lining up picking up or scoring game pieces, I don’t think that a feeder strategy will be useful for taking advantage of one team’s fast drivetrain. An exceptionally fast scorer & ground pickup, on the other hand, might be worth using the two other bots to feed.
2 Likes
I’m very confident that many alliances will successfully play with 2 offense and 1 defense. I actually think it will be the dominant strategy for most of the early weeks of the competition season.
Cycling with 3 robots in this game is a logistical challenge. Some playoff alliances will solve this challenge… but it’s a lot harder to solve when your third robot is significantly slower at scoring than your first two robots (which will be the case for almost all high seeded alliances).
25 Likes
This. I initial thought triple O was going to be a good strategy, but it’s very hard to get a consistent cycle going with three robots if their individual cycle times vary significantly (plus it takes a ton of effort from coaches and drivers to stay out of each other’s way). However, an alliance securely playing a sort of “triangle” triple O is going to be very scary.
O+O+D is looking better, especially since a well-driven defense bot could steal entire cycles off of the opponent alliance if it’s able to get in the way of multiple robots at once. I’m a bit wary of gridlock if both alliances are attempting this, but that’s going to be a key thing to plan for at the start of the match.
The key point is that if a team can lower the other alliances cycles more efficiently than it can raise it own alliance’s cycle, defense is better and will really make a difference.
1 Like
Bet?
18 Likes
If a speedy third bot could just stay out of the way traffic wise and shoot cubes into all levels, that would be pretty valuable to an alliance.
5 Likes
What do you want to bet the world champion alliance is 3 offensive robots.
4 Likes
Feels like every year we have those who say triple offense will be meta XD
Almost every single year people say “this is the yea 3 offense is the meta” and are wrong.
This year is no exception. We run driver on driver practice. Seeing how much slower you become when someone puppy guards the human player station this year.
Based on my observations I am confident defense is more effective this year than last year.
8 Likes
Eat a shoe.
4 Likes
I’d sooner bet that Adam has 2 teams on the world champion alliance
5 Likes
I see a lot of congestion potential for this year. Therefore I see potential to use “picks” and counter defense to great success if you have an alliance member who is skilled and stable enough to do this.
Alternatively, I see delivery robots potentially having benefit, if that robot has a really fast intake but maybe a slower scoring/alignment.
I would also be very scared of an alliance with 3 small swerve robots who can squeeze through the congestion.
Most likely a 2+1 strategy will be dominant, especially pre-champs. It is worth noting that at many events the 2+1 strat prevails because the second pick is difficult to find a prolific scorer, especially once the draft gets back to the upper half of the bracket. When you are trying to select 24 teams out of a sub-30 team field week 1 or 2 the last couple of picks will likely be decided by drive reliability much more than scoring potential.
Guess we’ll find out for you at week 0. I’m having my driver run defense at least once…
We have a pretty good defense track record, and I would argue defense is always viable.
1 Like
I have never been a person to say 3 offensive robots are the way to go. I believe my history of game play speaks for itself. IMO this year if you have a dedicated defensive robot you will lose far more than you will win.
I want to be clear this is for playoffs not regular matches. Regular matches you have no control of your alliance partners.
I would be intrigued to see the strategy of a an 8th or 7th alliance with a 3 offense where one goes and plays defense but changing it up each round works out. Or even swapping that role mid match since the field may be open.
I see this like going from zone to man in basketball. Coordinate a 3 bot cycle offense and then suddenly switch one to defense. I know it take coordination, and more than a 2 offense does.
I get the thought process but if you are behind how do you make up the difference if you limit yourself to 2 bots scoring?
The feild is wide open aka no choke points
Protected zones are huge