Best Fender shooters
 

Hey guys,

At the beginning of the season, everyone thought that the 3 point basket was going to win the matches. Plenty thought that if you could score effectively in the 3 point range, then you would win. But over the weeks I have noticed that there are quite a bit of very good fender shooters. Although they could be defended easily, more time is freed up by shooting quickly then leaving. In addition, due to normal probability, making 3 point shots for some teams may end up being the same amount of points as shooting 2 point shots with higher accuracy.

In MSC, MAR or the Championship itself, will fender bots be a contender? In addition, what fender robots are the best out there? We have heard a lot about the 3 point shooters, but what about the 2 pointers? And if they still indeed are contenders, what is the best way to defeat these teams?

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

What about the fender 3-point shooters?

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Sorry, I meant to add 3 point fender shooters in there as well. That is a very good point.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

1985 comes to mind.

But they are not in Michigan. And I think that MSC is going to be a tough event for fender shooters. We will see smart defense force the shooters to hug the key.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

548's cool. I also enjoyed playing a match with 1504 in Detroit.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

1592 and 801 her in Florida

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

How to defend against fender shooters?

1. Sit in front of the fender, so they cannot fender shoot
2. As they line up for the shot, hit them to make them unaligned. Then they either miss, or have to realign. Repeat

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

It takes a little bit of practice to hit them so they become unaligned. It can be difficult to push a traction bot sideways sometimes. It's better to hit the side of the bot so that you spin them in place, rather than dead on in the side which does very little.

The subtleties of body checking are the best!

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

It was fun watching 842 shoot 3s from the corner at the end of the fender at the AZ regional. And when they encountered defense, they just scooted back to the key and shot 3s from there.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

If you guys want to force two of your robots spend most of the match crossing the field and sitting on both sides of the fender to shut down our shooting, go right ahead. :)

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

When you use the term "shooter" you are categorizing the robot to have a spinning wheel. What about a fender "dumper" like 340?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vni7UpNF6pE

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

For most of the season it's been "common sense" that fender shooters are easy to defend, but despite lots of talk, that hasn't universally been the case. There are some fender shooters that simply do not move when hit (2056 is one good example). While 469 is one team that's hard to move year-in and year-out, another team that'll be at MSC is 862, who can push right back.

At MSC, many fender-shooters shoot from up close by choice. This means that a robot that tries to defend the fender will not decrease the number of shots the opponents gets, but will hopefully reduce accuracy by forcing opposing teams to move back. Teams like 33, 469, and 548 are all teams that can hit the top hoop from up close or farther back. While this defense may be helpful, it won't be very effective against these high-achieving and versatile teams. I've also seen some offensive blocking played against fender defenders. Overall, when it comes to fender defense, all I have to say is "good luck."

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Just need to make sure your frame is up to the punishment and you contact in the bumper zone or else a G27 will get you.

We had a problem with robots wheelie the front of the their bot and riding up our bumpers thus contacting our inside frame perimeter real hard. The refs didn't call it but it was a obvious foul. I hope the refs watch for G27 in Champs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_mgq...eature=channel

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Don't need to on the lane side, if you go over there it's penalty time if your against a smart robot.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

That's an unfortunate consequence of this year's bumper rules. You can't reasonably except two sets of bumpers, one at max height and one at min height, to not slide past each other when heavy contact occurs. Even when their isn't a wheelie, the 2" of contact between bumpers isn't going to prevent the higher bumpers from getting on top.

If you're worried about your frame, you can just raise your bumpers to be in the middle of the bumper zone. But I know the purpose of low bumpers is to give you an advantage while pushing, because your wheels don't come off the ground as much. So when you're in a pushing match with a robot with higher bumpers, you are fully expecting their robot's wheels to come off the ground a bit, giving you an advantage. But with that measly 2" of bumper contact in the first place, you're also deliberately deciding to risk contact within the frame perimeter.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

If you don't think fender defending is effective, I suggest you watch the Troy Finals. 548 if left unchecked during most qualification and elimination matches, scored on average 5 balls/match @ 85% accuracy. In both finals with 244 defending the fender, they scored 1 ball, and shot 20% accurate.

If you are planning to score against the fender and you are playing us, if we think your team is a threat we will be sending a defender to sit in front of the fender and force you to take a lower percentage shot.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

244's defense in the first match was exemplary, but if one is to say that fender defense isn't effective, that's no excuse. I cannot at all deny what you're saying - fender defense CAN BE very effective, even against such good teams - except to note that 548 refused to avoid the defense (when 244 was up against the fender, 548 drove right up into them instead of staying right off and shooting from there). They're aren't quite built for it, but they can shoot from a yard off, even pretty well. Not sure why they didn't switch to that strategy midmatch (maybe it's a bit too much to expect from drivers or a bit too far? If you think so, I'd be willing to defer to experience and expertise), but it looked that they considered feeding balls to 217 to be a better (higher %?) shot for the second match. Definitely one good example of great and highly effective fender defense.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I think 1629 can be added into the mix of a great fender shooter, we were a high scorer in Chesapeake, and the second highest scorer at Buckeye. We missed two shots in Autonomous, and probably only two in Hybrid the whole weekend at Buckeye. I may be bias to my team, but we have an effective robot! We have tracks, and when being defended we can drop to low gear and move other teams away from the fender as well. I think a good mix of high goal scorer and middle goal scorer is extremely effective. 1507 (high goal) and 340 (middle goal) put up some big numbers and won the Buckeye regional.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I completely agree that the 2point hoop was game changing!!! On our team, team 1099, the DiscoTechs, our robot was able to change the angle and position of its whole entire shooter, ball picker upper, electrical board, battery, and more which allowed us to shoot from the key or fender to any hoop with ease. At our second regional we discovered that if we just focus on the 2point hoop our accuracy became close to 100%!!! So we changed our autonomous to move forward and sink 2 into the 2point hoop, and during the match we almost always did fender shots into the 2point hoop unless there was defense. This strategy was great and we became a force to be feared and was chosen for the 4th alliance because we could do everything very well even though we were ranked 27/64.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

To answer the original poster, watch this weekend's matches at MAR. 1370 made it to the finals at both Rutgers and Lenape with their defense. At both previous events, fender shooters were forced by 1370 to shoot from the key, where they were less accurate, while hopper/dumper robots were harassed constantly. MAR should feature more of the same...

Good luck to everyone competing this weekend in both districts. :)

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I'm the coach for 548, we were having serious problems with out camera tracking at troy. Without the camera a long range shot is 100% manual and very difficult for our drivers. Needless to say changes were made. See you at MSC. Also congrats to 67,469, and 244, by far the toughest defense we have seen yet

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

We prefer to shut down two fender bots simultaneously. More fun that way. ;)


We've never had a problem with a dunker (or two), and even exclusively close scorers. There are bunches of robots that can take both shots, though. The best (and most likely to be defended), at least around here, don't seem to have major loss in accuracy from the Key. Secretly I think they do it just to draw defenders back so they can screw with them (it worked, 25). :P MAR bots include 103, 25 and 222.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

You have a funny definition of everyone. :P

The key to making the two point fender dump valuable is the autonomous, specifically the +3 bonus rather than the double from last year. This has made fender dumper after fender dumper viable this year, as driving forward and making a high percentage close range shot is simply easier than a distance shot, especially since these balls have notorious consistency problems. When you can drive up and puke out balls for only 2 points less than a technical-challenge three point arc, I am frankly surprised more teams didn't go for the easy points.

As the play level gets higher, you'll notice these bots fall out of favor for a few reasons:

1. Traditional distance shooters have had multiple events to tune their shooting in.
2. Fender defense has developed and has become more dynamic.
3. At deeper events, the least good scorer is starting to find other things to do (fender defense, ball movement, etc)

However, it would be silly to say they will not be a factor. Consistency matters.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I think that the variable distance shooters are the most dangerous teams at any event. These teams can sink repeatable shots from the fender or the key, or even farther for a slight accuracy penalty if needed. They are the most dangerous precisely because they can hit from both a close and a protected location.

You want my prediction? Fender bots will be a huge factor if they can back up and still score. They back up far enough with you contacting them, they don't need to hit every shot to get 3s.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

1629 is a very consistent mid level scorer and is able to play through defense, and is definitely a team to watch at champs.

That being said, we picked 340 at Buckeye for a reason. With a guaranteed 10 points in auto, smart driving, quick scoring, and good balancing, 340 and similar teams are poised to make their presence known at champs. They might not be the flashiest, but any consistent fender bot with smart drivers is perfectly capable of taking home hardware.

Also, defense will get better as the season progresses, but so will teams' ability to play around defense. Check around 1:30 in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2oTSZOtqq4 for an example of 1507 and 340 working together to clear the fender.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I am of the opinion that fender defense is only valuable when the offensive robot shoots only from the fender or has a very low percentile key shot. Otherwise the defender is probably better off trying to steal balls from the other side while the offensive team is scoring. What are they going to score with if you took all their balls? Of course, this requires the defending robot to be able to effectivly pick up and shoot balls.

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If you think fender defense is ineffective, you simply haven't played against a top tier defensive team yet. You likely are also thinking their goal is to completely prevent you from scoring, when in most cases it is not.

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After competting down at the CVR competition.

1717 was the best key shooter, but a team that helps us. 1323 was by far the best fender shooting bot followed by 330/254. It was really neat to see their idea. I was surprised it worked well. multiple times they shot balls under d.

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The main reason we put the bumpers as low as possible is because it makes the over the bumper ball pickup easier and helps prevent the balls from going under the chassis. We build our robots as close to the ground as possible to maintain a low COG.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I'm clearly not going to argue that's not why you have your bumpers so low, but I heard the note about pushing from one of the other mentors on your team while we were at SVR.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

I agree with Adam here.
Great fender defense is very possible.

Often times, the greatest defenders have yet to show until CMP, since they spend most of their matches at regionals on the other side scoring instead.

If I spent all match parked at a fender waiting to watch a specific bot, it will not be free reign getting to the spot on the fender first.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

548 is without a doubt one of the best fender shooters this season. Unfortunately they have had trouble backing off the fender and hitting shots.

If the changes they have made for assisted camera aim are effective, then they will definitely be a huge factor at MSC.

I hope everything works out. I want our fellow shop mates to excel at MSC and Champs.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Edit:--

The goal of defense would optimally be to completely prevent scoring. However, as most people know this simply isn't usually possible. The way to determine if defense is successful you have to figure out if that robot is making a positive point contriution to its alliance. This means that if the defending robot prevents more points on defense than it would have make on offense it has given it's team a positive contriution by lowering both alliances' scores respectively but the opponent's more. When a team tries to play fender defense on teams that can back up and score effectively from the key they are not preventing very many points from being scored. Instead, they might be better off taking the opponents balls each of which is worth a potential 6 point swing. So if that robot spends the first minute of the match picking up and shooting 3 balls to the other side of the field (potential 18 point swing) that would be the equivelent of preventing 6 balls from being scoring in the high basket. So again, to reitterate, sometimes fender defense is absolutely to correct thing for the defender to do, however, sometimes there is more valuable things they could be doing, especially if the offense dosn't shoot from the fender.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Team 1985 here. We do our best shots from the fender for 3 pointers. In the St. Louis finals we had an opposing bot trying to stop us from shooting. The first time they hit us they did make us miss 1 of 2 shots. The second time when we went to the fender and knew they were going to hit us, we did not line up in our normal place so that when they tried to push us they actually pushed us into place, and we score 3 3-pointers. Then they just positioned themselves in front of the fender, so we shot from the key and scored. No one at St. Louis knew we could do that because we always went for the fender. You could hear the groans from their team section when we did that. Its always nice to be able to surprise the opponent.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Although I think this is intended to be mostly about MSC/MAR robots, I've seen several others mentioned here, and I am floored we are 3 pages in without someone mentioning 2168. They were #1 seed at BOTH NYC and CT, and incredibly fast and impressive at fender shooting. They were fairly impervious to defense, as they were capable of shooting from the key, but preferred the fender. I'm sad we won't see how they stack up to CMP teams, but perhaps we'll see some good competition at offseasons this year :)

In general, I think the only-fender robots are going to have a tough time at champs. I have to admit, strategy-wise, I would much rather be against an only-fender robot than with one in eliminations. I think regionals didn't really prove that as many regionals were not more than 10 robots deep when it came to robots able to score 2+ balls in tele, so a very good fender had a chance of scooting around so-so defense. I don't think that will be the case in Champs. With 100-robots deep in each field, my guess is smart teams who know they cannot score with-in the top 15 robots in hybrid/tele will be trying to show off their defensive skills, and its much more likely that fender robots will see a lot more defense in Quals than they have ever seen in the past.

The more I think about it, the more this game intrigues me... how different Quals vs Elims at Regionals has been, and then how different Regionals vs Champs will be... Its almost like you had to design a robot that was good at 3 different games to stack up in the top tier.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

1403 is a good 2point fender shooter bot

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Wrote a longer post, but it contained too much strategy.

Bottom line, keep playing defense on us. We encourage it.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

Playing defense on fender robots in our experience is very effective from what we experienced at the AZ regional. So if their is a fender robot that is great at scoring, it is usually a good idea to play defense unless that fender robot can shoot with decreased accuracy from the key. In which case you may want to starve your opponent of balls rather than slow their scoring down.

I don't think we will necessarily see the best defenders rise during qualifications at championships. A robot that can score decently will want to show off their scoring and the ones that are in championships because of their defense will be the ones playing defense most of the time. Now in eliminations that is where defense will be most skillfully used. A good scoring robot is usually a great defender because they have a lot of driving skill and prowess and are used to being defended and thus know what is a good way to defend and what is a bad way.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

There are a bunch of great fender shooters, to name a few:
2168
1477
1985
548
330

But in my book when you talk about great fender shooters the conversation starts and ends with 2056. You play your first match against them and think that you will just move them sideways or shift them a bit. The first match is over and you have no understanding why despite your best efforts they haven't shifted an inch, you think to yourself, "holy cow those 2 inch wide pneumatic tires are good." You go into your second match against them thinking this time you will stop 2056. Your plan is to sit at the fender and never allow them to get set. You manage to slow them down a bit but because of their ability to line up anywhere on the fender including the side of the fender makes these attempts useless as well. Their turret and their drivetrain makes their fender scoring as good as fender scoring can be. Now say you have figured out a way to stop them from scoring at the fender, they just back up to the key where they are about as consistent as any team out there.

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1714 - Teams like this that could score very effectively from the key and fender proved to be very effective. the only thing better would be a team that can score 100% from key or fender.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

from the key:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ4fdopr42U

fender & key:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u33g6xk2Ygc

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

1056 had a pneumatic arm that dropped in balls for 10 points in 17/17 matches in auto (which most of you are forgetting is an advantage to fender shooting) and only missed one shot the entire tournament during teleop, no it was not due to defense. In one match we had two bots playing defense on us. We still scored 7 baskets during teleop. While some may argue we didn't have "good" defensive bots playing against us I would agree somewhat. Bots that could possibly play defense were probably more valuable as scoring bots for their alliance. Our gearing allowed us to push anyone out of the way and we could also come in from the side if not. Wish we had more chances to show it off. For championships, Baldwin team 2439, showed a strategy that can win. After Hybrid, they drove over to the other side and threw balls to their alliance denying the opposition scoring opportunities. They were excellent at it and would make a great third team. Instead of spending time getting three robots on the bridge, a risky move (40 seconds?) they went on with their partner and allowed the top scoring bot(359) to keep throwing in points. Very effective.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

While they definitely aren't going to MSC or MAR, 488 is a fantastic fender shooter, and although their autonomous needed work in Seattle (12 points only about half the time in the finals) I am certain that before CMP they'll have that worked out. I don't remember them shooting from the key outside of hybrid but I wouldn't be surprised if they either can do it already or will be able to do it for championships. They're just that kind of team.

Re: Best Fender shooters
 

But then agian possibly other teams might not think that you dont have a key shot. like they did to our team in the finials at the St.louis Regional