In short, is anybody interested in reading an analysis of either Round Up or Clean Sweep? I haven’t actually written anything, but if people are interested in it I could post something.
(In long,) This is mostly for people to see what sort of level of strategy can exist around a game, and adapt their own ideas for Gateway and future games. Strategy does not stop at “Score everything,” or “Dump all of the tubes in the ladder and score everything.” We’re talking about field positioning, game element analysis (hang or no hang?), and eventually about how to simply win the game (The Game). When a game is played with 4 robots optimized for efficiency, it seems like winning is a matter of luck, but it turns out the luck comes from accidentally enacting a strategy without knowing it. Want inspiration on how to win Gateway?
I believe TooMuchStrategy of AURA has developed a few analysis documents very similar to this. He may be persuaded to share them.
If yours are anything like his, then I personally would be very interested in reading them. Evaluation is a useful process to undergo and it is interesting to see what other people’s thoughts are. Furthermore, it would help to increase the general level of skill in the Vex program. I totally support this idea.
I think each of the past three years have each included a singular strategy that has separated the elite from the many efficient robots at World Championships.
For Elevation: Scoring from auto-loaders.
For Clean Sweep: Scoring locking up green balls.
For Round Up: Putting Goals Under the ladder.
What will it be this year?
Yup that’s a bit over simplified.
In short: Yes I would be interested in reading your analysis.
I’ll probably write up something in the next week.
I will be very interested in what you have to say, TooMuchStrategy, and to see how your ideas compare.
These are what I call mechanical strategies, things a robot is designed to do specifically. They will be mentioned, but this isn’t the level of strategy I’m talking about. Think along the lines of, “What can an alliance of equal skill do to gain an advantage over the other alliance?”
Last year we stumbled across our Round Up strategy quite by accident while watching a replay of a match. This year I analyzed the game some time in June and we’ve already used a strategy in a competition (It was super effective!).
Would love to hear what you have to say! I didn’t get a chance to see your strategies from last year so I’m really curious. This year the game is really complex with the radical difference in circumstances and objectives in each zone. Add in the variable of gate-lifting time and reasoning as well as the abilities of each individual robot and your head starts hurting. My teammate (Kennenth on the forums) had a 1.5 hour talk about strategy in the most general way we could and ended up with a 19 page word document of our conversation in regular font.
Finally done, 12 pages in length or so. That took way longer than I thought it would. Hopefully I’ve said something useful in there somewhere instead of repeating what everybody already knows.
Honestly, we are not very fond of Gateway, because it’s a very simple game. Without going into further detail yet, it’s about 3 phases: Scoring bonus points, scoring more objects than them, doubling and negating.
If Gateway is discussed in the perspective of phases, you are correct. The phases are laid out much clearer when compared to Round Up where the different phases are mixed together and it becomes a matter of the teams’ judgement to decide when a phase start / end.
Strategy wise, there’s not as much variant of strategies that are in terms of scoring since there’s only one way to score. However, in other perspective it can be just as complex due to the nature of the challenge as the season goes on.
Nice job laying out different types of strategy in the document. Well done!
P.S. The “territory theory” was actually utilized by my team’s alliance in the finals to beat the 1st seeded of a regional that qualified us for the WC. The “pinched” strategy was especially effective due to the amount of objects (not so much tubes but mostly movable goals) around the ladder.
That is true but this game requires you to read the field in real time more i know as coach i am constantly looking around the field to see what the other robot are currently doing and figuring out where to put our elements to make them most effective. there is still a lot of strategy involved just its hard to plan it before the competition. this competition we found out one of our members is extremely good at getting real time scores she calls out the score every 15 seconds or so and using that info we decide our next moves and decide when curtsy score in the qualification rounds it worked exceptionally well for us last competition we were undefeated and had the highest sp of anyone
Well, not exactly. The game element analysis is pretty important, so you can’t really make any strategy in a game without going over that first. However, it is true that the field analysis and strategies are the most interesting part.
I have worked out the winning strategy for the last 2 years before worlds/nationals though…