This isn’t a traditional YMTC based on knowledge of the rules and gameplay, but I think this a fitting forum for my (hypothetical) situation.
Team Redabot has had a rather disappointing regional. A key component of the robot’s manipulator has been malfunctioning for most of the event. It has competed in every match, mostly playing (rather good) defense. Just before the last match, the students get the manipulator working smoothly and effectively. The team has one last chance to show off their manipulator function before elimination alliance pairings, and all mentors have told the drivers and coach to score at will.
When the drivers and coach go to their alliance partners (two very strong offensive robots) to talk strategy and share their good news, the other members of Redateam compliment Redabot on their defense and ask the drivers to continue their pure defensive ways.
Here are the two options presented to the coach/drivers of Redabot:
Go against current alliance strategy and show off offensive capability, increasing their scouting stock and increasing their chances of being picked for eliminations
Stick with current alliance strategy and play pure defense, hoping that a win in this match would move one of Redateam’s bots into a captain position, but keeping other team scouts in the dark about Redabot’s scoring capabilities.
I would try to explain a little bit of the story to the alliance coaches, and agree upon. We would have 2 chances to score a tube, if scored as planned then go ahead and play offense for the remainder of the match. If the two 2 ringer attempts fail, then play the defense as prescribed in the meeting. Also watch the rack very closely, if losing by a big number, ditch the offensive mode and go play D against their best scoring robot.
Have they been winning playing defense?
I’m a ‘stick to what works’ kind of person. If they’ve been playing defense and winning matches, than there’s no reason to change.
If they want to play some offense, than you have to let the alliance know. Yeah, playing offense shows off their robot, but if they go against the gameplan the alliance has, than they’ll upset their partners and won’t get picked by them.
Redabot only has two choices. 1: Go Against Alliance or 2: Go With Alliance. A negative reputation of going against what the majority of an alliance wants to do is probably more damaging to a team than the benefits of showing off their offensive ability. Redabot should go with the alliance strategy.
We had several teams that had agreed to a certain strategy before the match and then went out and did something totally different. I.E. Bot A: play deffense - climb ramp. Bot B: play offense - climb ramp. Bot C: play offense - deploy ramp. Within 30 seconds Bot A deploys their own ramp withour ever playing deffense. Needless to say, the alliance looses. Bot C ended up in the top eight, Bot A was not on their list.
Redabot should have pointed out that the opposing alliance would be expecting the strong offensive bots to score and the previous deffensive only redabot to play deffense. As a scout, I would all ready know that the two strong offensive bots could score and that redabot was a strong deffensive bot. Assuming the redabot could score effectively, wouldn’t it better the allinace to 1: surprise the opposing alliance by switching roles 2: give redabot a chance to show they can also play offense and give one of the other strong offensive bots a chance to show that they can play deffense or 3: go on an all out offensive attack and get at least a row of seven, watch to make sure that the opposing alliance doesn’t get more than a row of three, if so, plan to switch at least one robot to deffense.
Funny, you seem to have described 1618 at Palmetto this year.
Always thinking we’d figured out the arm problems, we would tell our alliance partners we’d try and get one human-fed ring, then go with our standard defense for the rest of the match. If the arm wasn’t going, we’d just scrap it and go immediately to defense. (Then, if the arm ever did work at that one tube, we’d plan accordingly in the next match. We wouldn’t dare change strategy in the alliance station.)
I’d ask my partners to let us score one or two rings as scout fodder, then go on defense. It’s neither of the options really, but I’ve yet to find a set of partners not receptive to input from all three partners.
My personal opinion - a team’s own seasonal and robot design goals should never, ever be sacrificed to satisfy the standards or will of any other FIRST team or teams who believe they should be changed, especially when a team has been struggling all year to implement a robot function and is on the verge of seeing that function work on the playing field. The team wishing to use their arm to score and finally show off a capability their team members have collectively been working so hard all season to develop must proudly, confidently, and respectfully stand up for themselves and their right to pursue their own goals. This is not a case of being “selfish” or “un-GP” as many might be quick to label it. It’s a case of having pride in one’s own program and being free to practice any style of gameplay they choose given their robot’s capabilities and the current game and rules.
One would hope that when politely confronted by the other team asking to use their arm and play offense, the two successful offensive teams would ultimately respect this right, understand how much this means to that team, and would do their best to work with the alliance to readjust their strategy around an all-offensive mindset. Just consider it another opportunity to rise to the dynamic challenges a FIRST competition presents to its participants. No amount of rankings glory is worth the disappointment of an entire team when they don’t receive the opportunity to prove the effectiveness of their design.
Too often, I feel we all default to taking the perspective of the veteran teams’ viewpoint when evaluating these situations. How can we humor the struggling team’s wishes while still maximizing our chances of maintaining a high rank, etc.? We call it a compromise and move on. But are we asking the struggling team to sacrifice too much? It is really a fair compromise? I need to ask myself these questions more often. Being a member of a veteran team, I don’t know if we’ve ever been placed in the position the two offensive teams are in here - I typically don’t follow the pre-match scouting conversations of the countless matches we’ve prepared for; all I can say is that if we ever have been faced with this situation, I hope we made the right choice. I’d venture a guess that at some point(s) in time, however, we did not. I’m thinking that perhaps many veterans have fallen into that trap from time to time. For those teams struggling to achieve their own “little” victories at an event, victories that may get lost in the hype of other teams’ pursuit of ranking stats and competitive elimination glory, don’t let those teams lose sight of the big picture of why we’re all truly there together. Help keep everyone tethered to reality. Just stick up for what you believe in. Communicate your conviction honestly and gracefully, and be persistent. No one team or person is above the need for a little “re-educational reminder” every so often. No one team or person is perfect, but that’s ok. Good luck to all teams as you pursue your individual dreams.
I’m going to go with “do what works to win”. Sometimes the goals that you set out for your robot to do originally just don’t pan out. Example: Our original plan was to be a 2 robot, 12 inch ramps and platforms. We went 2 regionals before we could get that to happen in Atlanta. But we took our lemons and made lemonade. We used our arm for 2 regionals, seeding 9th (#8 alliance captain) and 6th respectively. Sometimes, you just have to go with what works.
In the case of this, I would suggest that, given the options, the team do what it needs to in order to contribute to the alliance as much as possible. While I don’t condone forceful defense, I think that the “get in the way and prevent a score” strategy grately contributes to an alliance this year.
I feel like I see/ am involved in this situation every year and it never gets easier. Fortunately for the sake of this discussion you pin pointed 1 detail that makes it very easy.
You need to do what will make you win the match! IMO most of the final picking decisions are finished before that point which you speak of, infact most are 90% done on Friday night with some small adjustments on Saturday based on the rankings and any changes that might happen. Which brings me to my advise to do what will win. I am assuming that from your description the team has been winning matches by playing defense then keep your ranking high because many teams won’t rank enough robots and will turn to the rankings and some teams may want you for your defense ability. While I think every person on every team can identify with your situation the example that is given here is one of those “to little to late” ones. The best thing to do is to go to the top team and tell them that you are working and try to draw them over to the practice field to show them in order to gain one of those valuable late 2nd round pick spots.
I’ve seen several situations where a veteran team will TELL my rookie team what to do in the strategy session. It’s not a democratic discussion but rather a dictatorial decree. In those cases I tell my students to do what they want. If however, it has been discussed and everyone is on the same page, I expect my students to try to do what they agreed to do.
This is the exact reason that we will always have an adult at the strategy session and in most cases on the drive team.[/quote]
and since, at least during my observations of the process, it is usually an adult coach from a team that tells their allaince partners what to do (rather than discuss it), this is the exact reason that we always allow only students on our drive team.
Defense doesn’t have to be just pushing other robots around. I’d give Redabot a ringer right away and play “offensive defense”. Better yet, make it a spoiler - nothing gets everyone’s attention like a robot with a black ring (and Redabot does want attention, right?)!
Also, if you’re gonna get between opponents and the rack, you might as well put something up when you can. If the manipulator does work, your drivers may have the opportunity to show that they can keep the opposition from scoring and put some points up themselves.
I agree with this 100% and we have also seen that most students will just lay down to whatever the adult says. This also goes farther then match strategy as I have witnessed other adult coaches yelling at kids from other teams during the matches, having an adult on the drive teams makes this less likely to occur Until there is a rule that it is just students allowed on the drive team we will put an adult in there as a “defense” and then it is just up to us to make sure that adult is not doing the same thing.
I think the whole “adult on the drive team” thing is for a different thread.
Getting back to Mike’s original question…
At that point in time the scouts have made up their minds about what you are. If they are considering you for a pick it won’t be for your offensive ability so an offensive show will be much less important than showing them more strong defense and getting a win. That’s what they will be scouting you for.
As a coach, it’s my job to see what tools our alliance has to play with and what obstacles the opponents will be throwing at us. I’d have to honestly assess how well I think my team could cap with little to no drive practice on this newly upgraded arm. This is how I would probably approach my partners:
“You guys are capping juggernauts. That’s what we need you to do. We’ll play our match on the other side of the field and try to draw attention away from you guys. While we’re there, you know we can play some hard defense, but my pit crew just told me we finally got our capper functional. If we get the chance to make a few defensive caps and maybe a spoiler cap towards the end, we’ll try it. Basically, you two throw up lots of tubes, and we’ll make their two minutes very difficult.”
This seems like a reasonable proposal. Smart cappers will love to be able to play on their own side all match.
Under no circumstances would I abandon the plan just to fulfill our own personal goals. If our goals are that important, it’s my responsibility to work them into the game strategy somehow.
Personally, I think you should go with your alliance if they can provide solid reasoning for you to play defence (which they seem to have done) and if they aren’t dictating it to you and not listening to your opinion. Being a main strategy person on my team, one of the most frustrating things I’ve run up against is when we come up with a strategy with one of our alliance mates and the other alliance mate refuses to cooperate without providing good reason (ex: they don’t cooperate just because they don’t like it). I believe in making sacrifices for the good of the team. If I can provide something my alliancemates want, I’ll do it even if it is less favorable to me (ex: playing defence with a scoring bot). It is a hard decision to make (especially if you just got it working). Who knows, mid-match the oppertunity may come where you need to put one up or change strategies.
You go with the discussed strategy. If you settled on playing defense, then play defense. This is very important because if you follow the strategy, the teams you are partnered up with might be in the top 8 and may feel like picking you even if it is second round. However, if you broke the strategy, you are off their list. At least our list. If during the course of the match there is no defense to be played, then of course you should take a ringer/spoiler and cap it.
If the team really wants to play offense(in this scenario), they should let their alliance partners know that is what they are going to do. This way, at least they can compensate/change/play along with that strategy. I think it’s all simple enough.
George knows what he is talking about… this is exactly right.
I am always amazed by the abrubtness of people in a pre-match strategy session. It’s not a student or adult thing, either… I’ve seen an equal number of forceful students and adults.
If I am involved in a strategy session, the first thing I ALWAYS say to the other alliance partners is this:
“what do you want to do in this match”
Our drive team has an idea of what we want them to do, but it’s more important to know what they want to do initially. From there, we try to meld what they want to do into what we want them to do, and meet for a comprimise.
In this case, if I were the team that Mike’s team was approaching, I would recommend that they start with scoring 1 or 2*. If they do well, then they could keep scoring. As the coach, I would monitor their progress and still coach our drivers. We could switch our plan and go play defense, if needed.
Just how much freedom this team would have would greatly depend on just how much the teams in the alliance needs this win. Unless we would be in the top 16-20, this match may not mean much to us. The other teams in the alliance may agree. However, if one of these teams are in the top 10, there is no way they can afford a loss. So, this team would be hard pressed for any risky moves. If that was the case and we were in the top 10, I would suggest that this team score 1 only and then go play defense for a while… then get back to scoring 1 at the end if the situation allowed.
it needs to be an “alliance strategy”, not one teams strategy pushed onto the others.
I would have the discussions and see what works best for the group. Like AB said, how critical is the win for all three teams, and how much risk is the alliance willing to take. Ideally, the team can show off their scoring capability for the first 30 seconds then switch to another mode of play to assure a win.
Once the strategy is agree, then everyone needs to play what was agreed. the worst possible solution is saying YES and then doing your own thing.
I am usually part of these discussions for 234, and work hard to avoid pushing any particular plan, but instead makeing sure all teams input is heard and evaluated. I try to summarize and be sure we all agree and understand, then review it again just before the match.
I have seen ‘bully’ leads that were students and mentors - we just have to manage around it.
Good luck to all teams as you pursue your individual dreams.