Hello! After watching a bunch of matches, it seems like in ~90% of the matches, the winner is clearly visible with a minute to go and there is next to no come backs. I think this is largely to do with how stars clump up along the fence, making them harder to pick up and get to a section of the fence that is clear enough to dump if you are a dumper. Assuming the match is decided With one minute to go, the driver should train the hardest for the first 45 seconds of driver control of the match and almost ignore training for the last minute. Also, autonomous is more important than we otherwise may have thought and finally, a robot that is built to be better early game is usually stronger than a robot that specializes at the end of the match. So my questions are: what percentage of matches are won or lost in the first minute? How does this effect your strategy for preparing for a match?
Well, I wouldn’t say that the matches are decided in the first 45 seconds, because my team has had dozens of comebacks, simply by pulling off a high hang, and multiple times without even hanging. I definitely agree that the beginning of the match is the most important, but I disagree with the fact that the first 45 seconds of the match can determine the winner.
I would say that from my experience, 50% of the matches are won or lost by the first minute.
I think that this puts a great focus on autonomous, but not necessarily more practice for the first part of the match than the second part of the match.
I believe this is almost entirely because many drivers are unskilled, or the bots aren’t up to par. This gap becomes very apparent. At least, that’s my thought.
I definitely agree with that in statement in the qualification rounds, but it seems to be just the opposite during eliminations. I think that it’s because of the higher level of skill on average in the elimination matches. Teams may start out strong by having a great autonomous, but have a very slightly lower rate of scoring which will lead to them losing out in the end.
That’s my experience anyway.
This may also be due to the specific tournaments you have gone to…
I have seen matches where the first minute does not decide much… in fact I’ve had robots that sit still for the first minute but are still able to catch up real fast at the end of the match. This is really dependent on your drivers and teams
I second this opinion. Once you get to states, if it’s not already happening by February, matches should be much more of a tug of war.
Not necessarily. We’ve had matches when our partner was down until about the one minute mark and we still took it. It’s probably due to the lack of practice most drivers (With a few exceptions) have currently. I would say that most qualifying matches are decided at the 30-45 minute mark while you can’t really tell with the elimination matches (at least, you can’t where I am).
High hang is not something I’ve seen very often and even then usually their only function is to push and hang but I could see how it could cause a lot of come backs…
Our robot can high hang (80% of the time) and score stars and cubes. All of the robots that can pull off high hangs here in WA can also score stars and cubes very efficiently, yet I have only seen three robots including my team’s that can pull off a high hang.
I think hanging is mostly useless tbh, ive never seen it affect the outcome of the match, only widen the gap between winning and losing, all matches that hang were x>10 point victories
What do you recommend as a design for a good hanging mechanism? I’d like to see what you guys came up with!
I think that’s because at this point in the year, only the best robots have gotten a chance to get a hang working. It really depends on the region though.
I agree with this. Once you get robots at worlds(or maybe just later in the season) that can have a lot of intense back and forth action going on I think hanging fast and efficiently will be very important because in Starstruck 12 points can be enough to sway a lot of close matches. Just my point of view 
I think the last 30 seconds are actually really important if the robots playing are pretty capable. We were able to come back from a pretty large deficit because while the other team was cleaning up the remaining single stars, we were doing dumps of 3-5 stars. Also, getting in a last second dump can swing the match since the other team won’t have time to throw it back.
This is definitely due to it being Arizona… Usually there is one good team on each alliance, and they just dominate.
Based on videos of competitions in other states, I second that.
The issue I’ve seen is when one team gains an early edge in terms of stars&cubes and that severely limits the maneuverability of the other alliance, causing even good robots to be overwhelmed. Every second that you have to drive around a star or cube, is a second that the other team can use to add to your misery.
Ayy AZ best state 
I used to think we were bad, but I think you see this in pretty much every region anyway. The world championship gives the wrong impression for the skill level of each individual region - you only see the best from everywhere.