Look for a clawbot that can score cubes and stars efficiently. Suck up to them and get the alliance, with something along the lines of “I can get the stars while you get the cubes and the wall.” Play the match and win. All of them.
Results:
Was it a 2 team alliance tournament?
As the season has progressed I am not sure that a pushbot is going to win very often, Here in Wisconsin, you will not see a pushbot make the finals as there are two many robots that can easily outscore even our state’s best robot when paired with a pushbot.
In our 2nd state final match our team was matched with a push bot that could high hang, and we beat out the number 1 seed.
For the last 3 competitions that my team has attended, we have seen pushbots do very well, whether it be ours or another team’s pushbot.
I do agree that this is easy to do if you are lower down, but the last competition 2 pushbots made it into the top 8. Both picking below them and both making it to the finals. But that is just the one time a pushbot worked. We will have to make friends with people in the top 8 at out State Comp. Doing exactly what you said, actually.
I completely agree with this. We have had full confidence in our pushbot before. But we are about to go against some of the best bots at our State Comp. So at this point in the season, pushbots are starting to seem to be alright instead of really good.
Below I attached a graph showing how well I think pushbots did/will do in the upcoming months.
Agreed. Pushbots won’t be able to keep up with competition for long at states, and especially at worlds. Maybe some teams with amazing pushbots like 8000H might be able to keep up at states, but definitely not at worlds. Some teams are really really good, especially in California, so the pushbot superiority that we saw earlier in the season is going to decline quite rapidly, as you posted in your graph. I bet at least 5 pushbots will make it to worlds, but maybe one pushbot will make it to quarterfinals if they’re extremely lucky.
As much as it would please me to see a couple of pushbots make it to Worlds, I am in doubt that we will see many. It is a possibility if they do what you had stated:
If a pushbot did qualify for Worlds, it would have to be able to put in some major work to be able to make it to the Round Robin. I don’t expect to see any pushbots be Alliance Captains at worlds, though. They are going to be 1st or 2nd picks most definitely.
8000H does have a nice pushbot. The only thing with pushbots is they group everything up when pushing under. And we are now starting to see claw bots that can pick up and toss over 5 stars at a time ( or more). Before, the pushbots could out score most of the claw bots/dump bots, but now it seems that the claw bots/dump bots are reclaiming the throne as the “VEX Meta” for Starstruck.
Depending on where you live, you could very well dominate State with a pushbot, but as @536Mentor stated:
The bigger states with many more teams that have been doing Vex for a long time will almost guaranteed have a bot that can triple the score a pushbot could get. Or, in states that are still new to Vex, you could very well win with a pushbot.
There are many robots in our state anyway, that can throw 5 or more stars into their far zone as well as cubes into their far zone. Even the best push-bot I have seen just cannot score enough or fast enough to counter that. They are largely just pushing stars into their near zone and they might, if their opponents don’t take them away, be able to get a few stars in the far zone.
As an alliance partner, they become a liability when faced with fast high scoring robots with the above capabilities even if they can high hang. Some may make it to Worlds, but I don’t see them being terribly successful. But that is just my opinion.
I don’t want to come across as anti-push-bot as I believe the GDC will always try to have some aspect of the game that will allow push-bots to score. This is an encouragement to new or young teams to be able to build a robot that is somewhat successful. There might be games that an extremely good push-bot might actually be very successful, but I think that is unlikely.
@7110A Fired Up! I saw this a while back and thought you guys were gods for that dank reveal video. I love the 14 motor anti gravity passive hang. How long did it take you to make it?
@SMHSRobotics a couple days lmao. Was a pain for only 1 minute of video, but it was totally worth it.