Because autonomous has become so important (because of APs), I’d like to discuss strategies for the new game. This year, it isn’t as simple as scoring points, it’s a good idea to descore from your far zone as well, while your opponents are knocking stars into your area. It gets quite confusing once you think about it.
Makes the great wall strategy even more tempting at this point… even if it means trapping your partner in front of it and throwing them under the bus.
a good idea would to have a really fast drive and knock all the stars off the wall into the opposing alliances zone, then to hang on the pvc pipe for 12 more points- will give you a lot of AP points and guarantee a win if you are faster then them at scoring and you can lift in auto.
Yes, they’d just be scoring for you if they tried to drop them on your wall, but in many cases, that will have just moved them from their far zone to their close zone, and since you have some in your far zone, they will com out on top.
@SamuelC (7842D) I need to clarify here. By great wall I mean building a wall bot that is both tall and filled in. Hence, trapping your partner in front while moving all stars from far zone into near zone if not outright moving stars into your near zone.
Oh, sorry.
When you said great wall, all I could think of was a big wall above the fence.
I gotta say some stuff about starstruck. So starstuck is basically a modern version of clean sweep. It will be a very back and forth game and a lot of offense and defense. It will also be a lower scoring game this year. Everyone is obsesed about auton, but auton will not be worth 10 points this year, it will only be worth 4. That can easily be made up by a cube or 2 stars in the far zone. It will definitely be match deciding at some points, but it wont always decide the match. Hanging I think will be interesting. I think that in the beginning of the season, hanging wont be that common, but by the time of state/nationals and worlds, we will see several hangs. Kinda like this year, it wasnt common in the beginning, but later more and more teams used it. It is gonna be more challenging than clean sweep beacuse there are less objects and lower scores, but the objects are much bigger, weirder (*cough stars cough) and heavier (*cough cubes cough). I definitely think that this is a good challenge and will be interesting what to see from the other teams. Its ultimately gonna come down to the team that has the faster drive so that alliance will get the stars off the PVC and onto the other side before the other alliance can get to it. Thats what I believe it will all come down to.
Correction - AP (autonomus points) are the 2nd highest thing for ranking. This year it was WP (win points), then SP (stregnth points) now its WP, AP, SP. Auton is now even more key for rankings now…
The advantage of auton isn’t only in the points gained, or even AP points. I think the advantage the actual game play. If you can knock all 10 onto their side, they now have 17 stars on your side, while you only have 7. I think the start is crucial.
@Chet Not as much as it was before. Starstruck is more about balance than sheer points racked up. Allowing objects to fall on your side uncontested may be a perfectly valid strategy because no object matters until the match is over. Hoarding is a perfectly viable way to gain the time advantage in being able to constantly score due to the density of objects while simultaneously slowing down the pace of their scoring. Those 10 more game objects on one side mean very little. The lost Auton bonus and APs are what I think are really valuable here.
Good point, I think it goes down to your team’s strategy. I’m leaning towards a strong offense for just putting more and more on the other teams side, but it is possible to hoard and do very well. If you lose auton, and can get 12 stars on their far side, and one high hang, you are garunteed a tie, with the assumption that you push all of the cubes on your side into your near side.
I think the main strategy will be an extremely offensive robot that overwhelms the opposing alliance.
I have to agree with what a lot of people have said here - For at least until the mid season (at least in autonomous) then I think a robot with a monster base and a fun looking hitting mechanism will win the autonomous every time by simply knocking the middle stars into the opponent’s near zone. Or a wall that deploys very quickly that prevents the opponent from doing such a thing and even possibly knocks the stars over.
In terms of overall strategy, I think once we have bots with efficient intakes and a little more ‘fierce’ competition, the strategy is going to get more interesting. As has already been pointed out, hoarding stars on your side (and possibly losing the autonomous bonus) with the low amount of scoring objects, just to dump them all onto the opponent’s side with 10 seconds left could be a very strong strategy if played well. This strategy leans mostly on the defensive side, while becoming more offensive during the last few seconds of play and could easily come crashing down if not played correctly (for instance if you fail to actually score the stars).
I think in this game, a well played defensive strategy could easily be as effective, if not more than a purely offensive strategy, which I think is how this game is designed. Some have compared this game to previous games (notably clean sweep) and although I agree in terms of their layout and design, I think the strategies that will be in play will be vastly different, if not only because of the very different scoring objects :).
Well, thats my 3 1/2 cents at least.
Throw your star from opponent far zone, hit and knock off stars on the wall, intake stars from far zone, repeat, come back and hang. That’s a much greater margin than just knocking stars off.
It kind of is about the same compared to the NBN game.
But since there is much less objects, logically autonomous is worth much more, about 3-4x more…
I also agree that auton is more important in this game, MUCH MORE. It can seriously give you a start advantage. If you were able to have an auton that atleast pushes 3 stars to the enemy’s side, that’s 3 less points you gotta worry about.
What if we create a shooting mechanism that shoots over a wall-bot, so you and your wall-bot ally can make and defend, while others can’t even reach your side.
Well, yeah, you can do that, but pretty soon everyone has a shooting mechanism that can go over a wallbot, and then wallbots become taller, so old launchers are useless.
I think that auton will turn into a drag race to the fence to knock stars to the opposing side. If you can get that initial advantage of having less stars on your side will turn it into an up hill battle for the opposing alliance.
As a question does hanging count for points during autonomous ?