Ok, so here is team 1107’s in depth view on Gateway strategies
******Note, you may have thought of the same strategies as us before, good job! We are just posting strategies out there for teams that do not know about them yet. ******
First we need to be clear on a few terminologies:
-A “NZ” robot is a typical high efficiency dual side roller intake, ramp, 6bar, ect (nothing special)
-A NZ bot can completely prevent another NZ bot to enter their a zone 1 v 1 (act like a wallbot)
If you have trouble believing this, try it!
Take two robots, and have one defend while the other is trying to get past
Now do it again but reverse the roles
-NZ bots can clear the iso zone in about 20 seconds into drivers (or less)
-All NZ bots in our examples are at the same theoretical peak efficiency state
-A “wallbot” is an un-passable “thing” dividing the interaction zone to two smaller halves
Two NZ bots cannot push past it
It can only advance forward when there is no robot blocking it
It splits the pyramid in half so both teams get 1/2 the pyramid
*Now that we have established what these terminologies mean, please do not say “we can push a wallbot!”. Let’s just assume the above as solid facts. (If there IS a “wallbot” that you can push around, then they are doing it wrong and will not be considered a “wallbot”) *
Now onto the Strategies!
The first a pretty standard strategy called the Swamp.
Hey Gordon, I just wanted to thank you for posting this. We hope to start off some pre-worlds strategy discussions with the rookies and these videos seem perfect.
The vids definitely made my day, as recognition of various situations and objectives happening before in matches I’ve played dawned on me. “Swamp” and “Stalemate” were how one EXO alliance edged over the other in BCIT finals. And I remember shouting at our alliance partners in the heat of a match to “cause a mess” in the triangle between the opponent’s interaction starting, isolation starting and the 30 inch goal.
Looking forward to seeking a 1107 strategy paper made public after worlds like last year.
575 is working on implementing some interesting strategies for worlds. The super long set of Q&A threads just might be related.
Thanks for the strategy reveal and videos murdomeek. I feel like they were very in depth and revealed a lot of theory behind field control, goal space control, object control, gate strategy and prioritization of objectives.
The one assumption that didn’t sit well with me was that a competent wallbot would not be capable of blocking a robot off of the middle goal during autonomous and the beginning of driver control. I suppose this wasn’t in your definition of a wallbot, but seems like a very important capability that a wallbot should have.
Interestingly enough, your demand to discuss strategies with team 404 doesn’t seem to be needed. You’ve already discovered most of our strategies for yourself. In any case, I believe our captain has already, to some extent, made contact with you in chatango. It’ll be interesting seeing what you guys do at world. =]
Awesome reveal. The swamp strategy is brilliant, and I’m pretty sure variations of it were used to win both BCIT and New Zealand nationals. Keeping the opponent’s doubler and negator out of play is probably the best use of an interaction robot during the endgame, since both of those barrels can, together, potentially create a significant 14-point swing.
The 222 interaction autonomous seems to be descended from the athletic autonomous in terms of map control. Spreading out objects at the beginning of the game, including scoring as many bonus points as possible, is much more effective than concentrating in only a few goals. Even if the robot misses the 30" goal, both 11.5" goals combine to earn six points with four objects, while the center goal earns only one more point, uses two more objects, and has the potential to be negated.
The cover autonomous is also a great way to secure the 20" goals, but it seems to have an effective counter-strategy (as all strategies do). If red is going for the five object cover, blue should have an autonomous that races for the 20" goals, then every few seconds tries to drive forward a bit until it successfully blocks both of them. In driver control, the blue robot will score the first object in both goals for four points. The red robot will respond by dumping all five of its objects into the goals for five points. The blue robot will then pick up one object and score it in the remaining 20" spot (assuming both hold four objects), giving each alliance 5 points from filling those two goals. The difference is that the blue isolation robot still has four objects left, while the red one has only two. This gives blue an advantage, and sets up a great scenario for them to attempt the swamp maneuver.
Seeing all of these strategies almost makes me want to dust off our old NZ robot and give them a shot. Almost…
(Also, as a tip to any teams unfortunate enough to have to play against 1107B, it is much easier to score the negator into their robot before they park over a goal, if you can get your alliance to block them for that long. Also, do it after they use all their match loads and their doubler so the negator cannot be removed through loading.)
yeah, when are you going to start your own teaser thread on your “special” robot??
i bet karthik hates you right now
thanks, but with the gate up, you can get the center 30 from the iso zone at an angle (something like that)
or a robot like 10C that has an incredible reach
most NZ (actual NZ) robots can reach the 30" goal from the iso zone anyways, so its definitely possible
haha, not really “demanding”
the brainstorming when you are metagaming seems to work better when you do it with people that are already “strategy smart”
and from your reveal thread and by watching the youtube matches, you guys are DEFINITELY someone i would love to do a strategy analysis session with
haha, thanks for giving them hints about our previous, outdated robot
and for the counter strategies, its good we got all of you thinking!
remember, this is only stage one of the strategies…
after you go back and fourth to the counter, counter, counter strategy, i can tell you right now, things get VERY interesting…
and also, if anyone wants to have some “Strategy analysis” sessions, feel free to add me on skype: “murdomeek”
Interesting strategies, I posted some comments on some of the youtube vids, I might talk to you again later as well Murdomeek.
Considering some robots are able to score the middle goal from the isolation zone, a wallbot will never be able to block the center goal indefinitely (unless of course, it caps it somehow). They may be able to block the scoring from the interaction robot, which is a fair point when it comes to timings, but not so much when it comes to strategy in my opinion, and as there is so much spare time in Gateway, I don’t think its that important unless the wallbots alliance is able to claim the middle goal before the iso robot can claim it using fed objects.
Nice, nice. Although most I this I had already thought about, I particularly like the autonomous routines. Both the 2-2-2 and cover are the same as our existing autonomous but add a little something that will make it more effective. Thanks for sharing!
We’re Canadian, but we still say en zee because it’s easier than zed.
This stuff is pretty tip-of-the-iceberg; there’s a bit more to it than what we’ve got on here. I’ll probably do a tl;dr write up again after Worlds when I get to see the pinnacle of strategy for the year. There’s also a lot of conceptual stuff good for making new strategies that’s not in here because it’d make the videos too long, stuff like goal space, game concepts, etc. This is a good intro, though, and watch out for other strategy handouts (like last year) at our pits at Worlds.
I appreciate the reveal, guys, I really do, but I’m not too sure about these strategies.
The “swamp” strategy implicitly assumes that your opponent will open the gates early, which people seem to be realizing at this point in the season is almost always a bad idea. Proper robot positioning is important, yes, but this isn’t exactly a strategy you can plan before a match because you can’t make assumptions about what your opponent can do. Never assume opponent stupidity.
The 2-2-2 interaction autonomous only works in very specific circumstances–your opponents’ autonomous loads up all six preloads and doesn’t score any of them and just waits at the tower. Most good teams do not do this. Some teams, like the Poofs at Pan Pacific, abandon the notion of central scoring, opting instead to immediately scatter the pyramid in front of the central goal, preventing anyone from interaction from scoring there. Then they go score in their own isolation goal, then they come back out loaded up with objects and ready to shove you out of the way and score in the central goal. Other teams dump their objects in the goal in autonomous. Others forego the match loads. The best teams will have highly variable autonomous routines that are controllable on the spot by the robot operators. Planning autonomous is probably a bad idea because high-level autonomous is essentially a guessing game.
The cover autonomous works fine in theory, but again you’re discounting variable autonomous routines. It also ignores robots that score the center goal in autonomous from isolation and robots that are patient enough to stick around and score while you’re intaking later on in the routine.
In short, I would call these appropriate responses to certain sets of circumstances but hardly “strategies”. A good drive crew must be able to adapt to the situation on the field without coming in with preconceived notions of what their alliance must do during the match. Adapt or die.
These are not meant to be perfect, auto-win strategies; they are examples of strategy. Now that you’ve seen them, it’s easy to say that you can think of half a dozen (maybe more) flaws or counter strategies, but that’s because you’ve had the time to think about it. If we hadn’t posted these, and you had to face someone enacting a strategy you didn’t know about until mid-game or afterwards, then they probably got an advantage.
Yes, there should be highly adaptable autonomous routines and driver strategies, especially with the ability to interact with your robot via sensor to change the autonomous route, and that’s going to be really interesting. One team’s gonna start using the swamp strategy, and then another team notices, replying with a counter strategy. The first team now has to react on the fly and respond with a counter-counter strategy. This is what we’re going for: High level strategy across the board for all teams to use, and this is kind of a stepping stone for that. We’ve laid out the foundations of some basic level strategies, and now it’s up to teams to use them, figure out ways to beat them, figure out ways to beat those ways and play some really interesting matches at Worlds.
But anyway, I think these strategies are pretty good. For the wallbot, I don’t think that parking your robot in the back will prevent them from blocking you in your isolation zone. My opinion on wallbots is that if built right, they could be very effective. However if your alliance partner is non-functional, you have very little chance of fairing well. I also have noticed that generally, good scoring teams pick other good scoring teams. This means that wallbots are picked near the bottom of the list, and since wallbots don’t fair well in qualification rounds, they will generally not fair well in eliminations either.
