Let’s talk about Match Strategy
It’s the middle of the season, and the game’s strategy is shifting from “shoot all of your match loads over and then push them into the goal” to “matchload 1 or 2 triballs into your robot, push them into your goal, repeat”.
For example, watch the Haunted finals matches:
- Matchloads were launched
- Most (if not all) of the match loads were used
- Teams mostly used their match loads closer to the beginning of matches
- Matchloads were used in “short spurts”
- Scores seemed to be mostly over 100 points per team
- More aggressive; No defense
However, if you look at the more recent Sugar Rush Finals:
- Matchloads were placed into intakes and then scored
- Not all match loads were utilized
- There was a slight trend of increased matchload usage near the end of matches
- Match loads’ use was constant throughout the match
- Scores seemed to be lower on average
- More defensive, a lot more back-and-forth
Essentially, the initial “early season” strategy was to try to outscore the other team, while this newer strategy seems to be “gain an early advantage and quit while you’re ahead.”
I also want to talk about how this alters the value of certain mechanisms. For instance…
Elevation 
: If scores are lower, elevation’s 20 points suddenly become a more significant portion of the final score, which might encourage more teams to push towards higher tiers of elevation
Launcher 
: The reason for this is apparent. If no one is using a launcher, then the draw that a launcher would have, perhaps to be a potential alliance partner, is diminished. However, I still think that launchers will continue to be useful, primarily for skills, but lift launchers (Like 9364C/2775V/9364A) might lose prevalence as the lift is used solely for matches.
Intake : In the Sugar Rush Finals, intakes seemed to be very important. Specifically, the intake’s abilities to a) quickly and efficiently intake triballs and b) maintain triballs in the intake (even when going over the barrier) seemed to be very important.
Higher power drives : There seems to be a lot more back-and-forth, so a higher torque/higher motor count drive might come in handy.
Wedged Wings : Having wedges on wings was initially very appealing, as it’s a very good defensive strategy against the other team launching their triballs. However, as I’ve detailed in this post, I don’t see launching triballs as a major strategy. I still do think these are important, as wedged wings are one of the major reasons for the decrease in launching and a team can simply launch if they realize you can’t do much about it, but not nearly as important as they once were.
Of course, this is all speculation, and the initial strategy of trying to outscore the other team is probably still going to maintain prevalence throughout the year, but it does offer an interesting perspective for higher-level matches.
Furthermore, I want to talk about the leading causes of this change in match strategy to see if we can utilize this to try to predict further Match Strategy changes:
In my opinion, it’s the idea that as launchers get higher, blockers get higher until the launchers are too high to matchload onto. In addition, I also think that the increase in wedged wings plays a factor.
Last, I just want to talk about how this emerging strategy affects the autonomous period. I think that because of the decrease in matchload utilization, the autonomous period becomes much more vital. In my opinion, Gremlin’s 6-triball auton (or something crazy like that) was a leading factor in them winning Sugar Rush.
Do you guys think that this strategy will become more prevalent as the season continues? I’d like to hear different opinions on this strategy evolution; all opinions are appreciated 
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