This year, the finals match will be decided by ONLY the autonomous. Heres why:
Skyrise will be very safe to score: most robots sit in the protective zone. Most will be able to build 7 high, and pile 8 cubes on. No problem. This will be tied by the other team. Autonomous winner most likely has a head start on this. (Strategic advantage, as now more cubes can be scored on outside poles by this team)
With only 10 poles around the field, only 10 points bonus can be gained from capping every goal (assuming only ownership points). This is only possible by bar lifts, who can reach to score onto the protected cheater post.
10 pts ownership = 10 pts auto (points advantage)
22 cubes per team on field. 8 per team on skyrise. 14 cubes left for poles, per team. Auto winner will have more scored objects, giving them an advantage to get every cube scored. (strategic advantage)
End result? Minimum of a tie. Anything else will result in a win for the auto winner. And that’s only assuming that auto winner doesn’t cap even one goal.
Closest games will be with 2 pts. most probably within 16-18 points.
TLDR;
Get a high cube and skyrise auto. Or you will lose. Autonomous points = win.
Assuming that no other issues arise for either team, I definitely agree. Autonomous is a huge part of the game this year. However, I think that in the elimination matches at worlds, there will be a lot more de-scoring going on than we have seen in most matches this season. That could lead to less than 28 cubes being scored on the posts. If you combine that with a majority of the post ownership points, the autonomous winners could lose.
Also, a robot might tip or start having a problem.
That being said though, the autonomous winner will generally be favored to win in the elimination matches.
If you win auton, you should make sure no cube ever sits higher than the post. You only need to score every cube, so de scoring won’t be a large part of the game, imo.
I disagree. Defense will most likely play a very important role in finals matches this year due to the surge in robots that can essentially clear the field by themselves, creating this opening for defense, which will probably result in scores of 80-83 for finals instead of 100+ in match.
I have seen teams with no autonomous catch up with the 10-point gap and sometimes even winning the game.
However, I do agree with a certain extent that autonomous will be the deciding factor in the game. It’s not just how hard it is to catch up with the 10-points. It is also how much you can make use of that 15 seconds to assist you in the rest of the match.
For example, teams which score 5-6 skyrises in the autonomous can just have to focus on scoring cubes (and that one or two last skyrises) during the driver controlled period. That means once the skyrise is filled up (in which half of it is already completed during the autonomous) 2 robots can start scoring on the poles.
I would predict that the situation in the qualifying matches and the finals would be different. Not all robots can score 5 skyrises in autonomous in the qualifying matches, so I would say it would be more of a battle of autonomous during those matches.
However, during the finals where the top teams have already pushed their robot to the limits for autonomous (5-6 skyrises in autonomous), descoring would actually be an important role in deciding who wins the game, and I would have to agree what the finals would have a score of 80+ instead of 100+
It also depends on where the cubes are scored. In a single match, you can have as many as 26 cubes in positions that would be undescorable. This makes it quite difficult to beat a team that wins autonomous and spreads out their cube scoring among the 9 posts available to them. If they can get every cube in a spot where it cannot be descored, the match is basically over.
It’s 30 undescorable on posts, with 16 undescorable on skyrise. with 44 cubes on the field, it is possible to not have any cubes capable of being descored.
I disagree with Jason32A, because of the varying speed of robots and relatively open field. Defense will definilty happen, but finals teams can score so quickly and so cleanly that their cubes would never be descorable. I don’t think seeing cleaned fields will be uncommon. I do think, however, that score gaps will be in excess of 16-20 points, with high scores of 100+ pts every so often, with at least 95+ being the winning norm. Just my two cents:)
Where are you getting 30 undescorable for the posts from? Standard capacities are 1 on low, 3 on medium, 4 on high. At 4 low, 4 medium and 2 high posts, that adds up to 24. 2 low posts are protected, so add 2 to that number, totaling 26. Add 16 from the skyrise, and you have 42.
Oops, sorry, you are right. I wasn’t paying attention. it is 42. Let me amend that to:
one team will most probably have almost all cubes being undescorable.
In all seriousness, having all cubes in undescoreable positions would be division quarterfinals, division semifinals at best, because there are going to be competent cubers on both sides division finals and up that won’t passively sit by and watch the other teams take all the posts near their side. Instead they’d fill their side up, and as a result, we have a few cubes above normal capacity that would decide games. In which case, autonomous is very important. So I digress.
It seems pretty clear that a purely offensive team gets a huge advantage by winning the autonomous bonus, but I’m pretty curious how defensive robots that can control a majority of their opponents cubes will affect that, especially when paired with a strong skyrise team.
Now all of this is purely offensive talk… What if people actually played some defence, some teams are going to take wall bots. I mean,like what is stopping a team from showing up with a giant flip out spear panel, an then is autonomous just driving over and spreading all of the enemy cubes… No one can really block them, and if the dedicate all of their motors to like a drive super selective train… Nothing can stop them from stealing at least 12 or the enemy cubes. But who knows, with a 2 foot long harpoon anything many things are possible. Just imagine, you are in autonomous and some spear thing steals like 15 of your cubes or so. And then drives around with a ten motor drive blocking posts. You may win the autonomous, but then you have like no cubes left on the field for scoring on posts. And the few cubes that are left are blocked by a wall of steal and your cubes. That would be sad… But kinda funny too.
