This year, I have noticed that different teams have different views on what is the best use of the autonomous period. In years past, the object has almost always been to score as many points as possible. In change up, the win point task lined up nicely with maximizing your score. This year however, there are three distinct approaches to the autonomous.
Completing the AWP
By completing the win point task, you are get an extra winpoint. This is obviously beneficial, but by going for the winpoint task, you might not score as many points or be in the best position at the end of auton. You also risk your partners auton failing and getting all of the bad and none of the good.
Win the autonomous
By bringing back multiple neutral goals to your side of the field you can maximise points. However, you also risk not being able to complete the AWP task if your auton is messed up by scoring entering the neutral zone (and if you do the AWP first, then you risk being too slow). This also doesn’t put you in the best position at the start of driver if all you did was move 2 goals 2 feet and it can easily be undone in driver control. This can also help out by denying your opponents the points of a neutral goal.
Start driver control in the best position
By scoring rings on the alliance goal or only grabbing 1 neutral goal, you can make sure you are in the best starting position for the start of driver control. This strategy won’t yield as many points as bringing back 2 neutral goals, but you can make sure you have a firm possession of at least 1 goal that you know you can hold onto for the rest of the match. This can also synergies nicely with the AWP.
What do you think is the most important thing to do in auton?
Get the AWP
Win the autonomous
Start driver control in the best position
0voters
What do you think is more important for elimination rounds?
Winning autonomous and getting in the best position for driver are very closely related because to win auto, you need to score the most points which puts you in a better position for driver. For example, scoring rings on the alliance goal wins auto and those rings can’t be descored. That being said the win point is better for quals because half a win is better than six points in a match as those six points are not nearly half a win especially if you consider that the goal of quals is to get in the best position for elims, which is accomplished by the wp.
As a coach/mentor, I find this question to be a fantastic aspect of this game. There are so many different auton strategies that are perfectly viable, and even then, many of them can be rendered null depending on what your opponent does. I think it forces teams to be 1) ultra cognizant of what their opponent wants/tries to do and 2) exceptionally flexible in what they are able to do. As the season progresses, I think it’s going to create a very interesting chess match at the start of the game. With that in mind, I think rule T6 is going to play a larger role than normal. Can’t wait to see how strategy evolves throughout the season.
AWP for qualifications for sure, but then I would abandon an AWP auton during finals for one that either dumps preloads in alliance mogos and goes for the middle neutral goals, or just going after neutral goals. I think this would be best at least IMO
I agree that most of the time, they are very closely related. However, there are a couple scenarios where they are different. At our last tournament, we could bring a neutral goal back to our side, or we could pick up an alliance goal and score 6 rings on the branch. While it got us 2 less points, we decided to score rings every time.
Also if I am reading this graph on http://vrc-data-analysis.com/ correct, then only 5.863 percent of matches are decided by 6 points or less. So if every time you sacrifice the six points for a wp for 50 matches, you would lose about 3 more matches gaining 50 wp from auto and -6 from the three matches you lost for a net value of 42 wp in 50 matches.
For my team we plan on having separate programs for qualms and finals. Qualms focuses on the win point, and finals focuses on the mogos in the center. I see no reason to get win points in finals because they wont help your rankings (unless a rare tiebreaker)
the only instance I can think of where the AWP should not be targeted in qual matches is if the matchup is so close, you only think you can win if you start with neutral goals and the auton bonus. Because winning a match but not the awp is worth more than winning the awp but losing the match.
in all other cases though, the awp should be targeted. It’s important to be able to score either half of the task, and in the case that your partner has no auton, the entire task.
How much is an awp worth? Do you get bonus points taking into account your robot is balanced and you have a mobile goal on your bot (with or without rings)?
I have read the manual but still dont clearly understand an AWP
if you win a match you gain 2 wp to your rankings. if you tie you get 1. losing is 0.
if you complete the task during autonomous, you gain an additional wp for your rankings, independent of the outcome of the match. What that means is that for every 2 matches that you score the autonomous win point, your ranking will go up as if you had won an additional match.
It counts as a win point in qualification rankings, like the win point you would get for normally winning a match during qualifications. It’s not any extra points in a match but it can really help you climb the rankings.
If we are discussing Live Remote, then you can do both at once as you only need to dump one ringle into your color MOGO and drag it off the diagonal line. If in person tournaments, you also need to consider your partner’s capabilities. Unless you are skilled enough to run to the second color MOGO and deposit a ringle there, it is a bit of a gamble. In our region we did not even have tournaments yet and team building/programming skill ranges considerably. So for us it is probably best to have various autonomous routines selectable before match based on what our opponents and alliance partners can do, or we think can do or we are told can do. If you go against a crazy fast robot that consistently runs to the middle and clamps the MOGO hard and you have a very slow forklift style intake and you know you have no chance, do something else, go for the harder to handle tall MOGO or try for the win point. This year there is a bit more strategy to think about.
if you are a team that can’t do much but place mobile goals onto balances, a good idea for auton early on is to place rings in a mogo base and stack it once the match starts, this effectivly makes the balance untouchable by the other team early on due to the fact that touching it runs a high risk of having the ring fall out and getting DQ’d
