Strategy Crew - Progress

Preparation period

Before the 6 week period of the project started, we went through a preparation period that lasted four months.
In these four months we first learned what actually "A Game Strategy" is, the way of thinking that we had to adopt and how to write it.
We also learnt what "The Game Manual" is and how it is written.
After learning the theory, we began practicing and experiencing this way of thinking and writing.
Our first challenge was to write a strategy to the 2006 game.
We opened "The Game Manual" and began reading it, it wasn't that easy.
We had to read it few times in order to understand the game rules good enough for start writing the game strategy.
When we understood it completely, we moved on to the thinking phase.
First, we began thinking what actions are most important for us, for our robot to do.
Then, we defined robot grades: Weak, medium and strong, to make it easier for us thinking about the strategy.
After we finished these stages, we moved on to "Alliance Strategy", the stage which in we think of on a strategy (moves, defense, actions...) that our alliance can do without referring to the opposite alliance.
We decided which moves are the best for our alliance in the autonomous period, and what actions we should take.
Afterward, we thought of the "Game Strategy", which is the part we do consider the opposite alliance while thinking on the strategy.
We thought about the strategy a lot, we got to a lot of actions we can take that will lead us to the win. This is how we ended our first strategy.
We moved on to the next strategies, and with time we earned experience.
We read "Game Manuals" faster, and we understand them better.
Several weeks before the 2010 FRC Kick-Off, we had a fictitious Kick-Off, for the 2004 game.
We read the manual with the whole team, and after reading it we did a presentation about the game: the rules, the game, we answered the team questions about things they didn't understand.
After we made it all clear for everyone, we moved on to the strategy writing as described previously.
Finally, the 2010 Kick-Off arrived.


Building Season

The KickOff
Us and our team watched the live Kick-Off in NASA Channel, and then proceeded to reading the Game Manual.
After reading the Game Manual we met with the whole team, and introduced the game and the game rules before them.
At the end of the presentation, the team asked questions about rules they didn't understand, and we answered.
Questions we didn't know the exact answer, we checked again in the Game Manual, and if we didn't find the answer in it, we asked the question in the Israeli Kick-Off the next day.
Afterward, we began working with the team on the "Single Robot Strategy", which means, what actions are the most important for our robot to do.
Then we left the team and went to work by ourselves.
We defined robot grades: Weak, medium and strong, to make it easier for us thinking about the strategy.
Then we set our guidelines in this game.

Week One:
Our goals for this week are, first of all, to understand all the rules that we didn't understand before, and to begin writing the "Team Strategy".
During the first week, we had a lot of discussions, between us, "Strategy Crew" and with the whole team in order to reveal the "catch" in this game.
We invested a lot of time finding this catch.
Afterward, we started to work on the "Team Strategy".
We didn’t know how to approach it, so we factorized the "Team Strategy".
We supped up every "Robot Grade" to functions.
We thought what positions the robots can arrange in.
We wrote when we should use every position and what are her pros and cons.
Afterward, we thought what we will do with every alliance, we wrote moves and positions.
We looked for important discussions\information at "Chief Delphi".
We looked up for updates as well.

Week Two + Three:
In the beginning of this week we finished writing the "Team Strategy".
We began to work on the "Game Strategy".
We started the "Game Strategy" with an easy Game like "Strong robot, strong robot, and strong robot "Vs." weak robot, weak robot, and weak robot".
We thought about the Game from the Autonomous Period to the final; we wrote moves for every period of the game.
We moved on to do more games.
After every game we understood it better. We got ideas for more moves and things that we can do in the game.
We always were in touch with the other crews; we instructed "Software Crew" what autonomous software they should write.
We told the "Building Crew" all the things that we saw when we did the so that they will add these things to our robot.

Week Four:
In this week we finished to write the "Game Strategy".
We fixed all the Strategy and added more moves.
We gathered all the moves into one document and organized them.
We wrote Strategy for our robot when we don’t have co-operation from our alliance.
We made scouting page, for the game and for the pit.
When we wrote the scouting page we understood that we have a problem with our definitions for "strong robot, middle robot and weak robot" so we discussed about it with our principal and fixed it, and now we have to change a lot of things in our strategy.
We also did "Risk Management" that means what we should do when a part of the robot won't work.
As well, we did "Game methods".