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Strategy: Competition

Adriana Massie edited this page May 26, 2020 · 3 revisions

Intro

Strategy is important because it is the main key to success. You can have a mediocre robot but a good strategy and still have a successful competition. Strategy can be strategy for the build season and it can be strategy for the competition. This page will mainly focus on strategy during the competition.

Before your competition

Plan and organize!

It is very helpful to spend the meeting before your competition organizing your tools and planning what you are bringing to a competition and what isn't. If you have spares, they should be easy to find. Finding spares last minute can be stressful. It might be helpful to plan a pit layout

Drive team

Get Prepared. Make sure everyone knows what the plan of action is for competitions. Watch other events, go over any rule related questions.

Pit Crew

A pit crew is a group of people who stay in the pits and help fix the robot in case something breaks. Having a good pit crew can make or break an event just as easily as drive team can. They should be the only people in the pits including a safety captain and maybe one or two people who can talk to judges.

Scouting

Scouting is when you have a group of team members take notes on robots and their performance during competitions. The scouting team works with the Drive coach and Drive team. The team members who are scouting are commonly called scouts or scouters. The information they collect is very important and can help you create a strategy before a match and create a list of teams to pick during alliance selection.

During the competition

During a competition, there is a lot going on. Discuss amongst Drive Team, Strategy, and Scouting about Everyone’s course of action

Drive Coach

Anything can happen during a match. Sometimes your robot breaks, or another robot breaks or the other alliance does something that changes your strategy completely. Therefore,They should also be prepared to change the strategy during the match and communicate it to everyone. This includes alliance partners and the human players.

Pre-Match

Drive team, mainly the drive coach, should talk to your alliance partners for the match. As an alliance, you should talk about a strategy. This can include dividing up what each team will work on.

Post Match

Talk about the match. Focus on what went good and what went bad.

  • Stay hydrated and healthy
  • Take advantage of breaks
  • Get ready to repeat.

Other Resources

  • “Effective FIRST Strategies” by Karthik Kanagasabapathy
  • “From Design Requirements to Robot Design” by Aren Hill
  • “To Compete Consistently and Effectively” by Logan Farrell
  • “Mechanical Design” & “Strategy & Game Analysis” by Mike Corsetto
  • “Game Analysis and Strategic Design” by Rahul Yarla