Full court shooting strategy
 

Hi, all. We have our first regional coming up this weekend in Chandler, AZ.

The Bit Buckets have built a low profile, fast shooting, floor pickup bot that we have added an angled feed to the top of so that we can do full court shooting. (We withheld the shooter and put it on a wooden mule for post-build time-wasting.) We seem to be able to score ~90% in the 2 point goal and ~50% in the 3 point goal at 50 feet.

I assume that full court shooting is most likely to be useful to win qualification matches, since in those matches when there's no wallbots, we should be able to shoot all 51 frisbees in about 1:30.

Have any of you folks actually done full court shooting? What was your experience, in terms of actual success vs planned success, and when was it useful as an extra scoring strategy?

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

What we did was run cycles. Load 4 go to pyramid and score. We switched to full court shooting when we ran into either too much defense or when we wanted to avoid interfering with alliance partners who were also running cycles.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

This strategy will be very effective in qualifying matches. In most cases a bombardment of 2 pointers should suffice but be prepared in the elimination matches to be blocked. You will draw a lot of attention to yourself being a long range shooter depending on who your partners are that may be exactly what you want to do. Let them shoot while the opposition focuses on trying to stop you.

hope this helps

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Case in point: The St. Louis Regional and team 1706.

1706 plowed their way through qualifications (scoring 100+ points in almost every game they played in) and ended up on the 1st seeded alliance. However, they ended up losing in the finals due to 3284's defensive net completely shutting them down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHik1lx5PLw

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Depending on the robot's exact configuration, Full Court Shooting is a viable and extremely effective strategy. In our last district event we were lucky enough to partner with 225 and their FCS. They were devastatingly accurate shooting into the 2pt goal and that combined with their high exit point (~50" or so) made them really, really tough to effectively defend. Most wall bots that were built on the fly to counter their shooter weren't all that effective.

That being said, if you've got a low FCS, say under 48" tall or so, odds are, someone will be able to block the better part of your shots. Though, it's worth noting, that the difference between a shot clearing a blocker and not is usually a matter of a few inches.... ;)

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

We were shooting full court sometimes at Traverse City (Week 1). It worked well, but beware teams blocking you. We saw many many teams adding poles to their robots to block us (and other full court shooters). Be prepared to deal with defensive robots. Hope this helps.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I think we'll see some excellent full-court strategies at MSC/MAR/Champs, where there will be more full-court shooters available. 2, or even 3 full court shooters that are also great at pyramid cycle runs could dominate one of the Divisions. Full-court shooters are especially useful if they can also drive underneath the opponents' pyramid for an end-around reverse (bot 3 comes underneath either bot 1 or bot 2, both of which leave their full-court shooting positions to run a cycle, thus taking defense with them; bot 3 then begins full-court shots).

It's an age-old remedy to a long-standing FRC defensive strategy of clogging up a field against great teams ('07, '10-'13): Fight them where they are not.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

In addition to being blocked once you start shooting, expect to be blocked on your journey to the protected feeder.

Work with your alliance partners on a good strategy to get you past the defense into the protected zone. For example, your partners can pin the opponents to the rail while you zip around the right side of the pyramid to the feeding zone. Or have a partner push you through the defense to get to the feeder zone.

You can expect to be blocked and slowed on your way there, so you will need to have help from your partners to get in the zone.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

A lot of different variables at play here.

Assuming your pyramid cycling is pretty fast, and your setup time for full-court shooting slows things down, you just might be better off cycling shots at the pyramid. In this case, the threat of a full-court shot keeps the defence close to you at the feeder station, which makes it easier to drive past them through their pyramid when cycling.

You may not have the full-court shot very often as a low-profile robot. But sometimes you can take advantage of a defender who needs to go and hang early in the match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNDNX...YdSlRb_rLXUTtM

As much as I like the full court shot, at BAE our cycling ended up being faster and more accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvjdN...YdSlRb_rLXUTtM

Your mileage may vary of course... but my non-answer is to do what's going to score you the most points :D.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

This reminded me of 1519, Mechanical Mayhem at GSR in week 1.

They teamed up in the finals with 885, The Green Team, who had floor pickup.

As I have stated in other posts, a Full Court Shooter, combined with a floor pickup Robot, is the combination that I believe will take Einstein this year.

It eliminates midfield traffic, and the third bot can keep a defender away from an FCS.

Any disks that don't make it in the goal, can be picked up and scored.

1519 didn't win GSR, bout they did win North Carolina last weekend, so watch for them in St. Louis.

IMHO, If they were to be allied with a team like the Rocketeers (20), who have an excellent floor pickup and can use the pyramid for protection, they would be unbeatable.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

This works phenomenally against rookie teams and for the first half of the competition or so. By that point, even at Detroit where a quarter of the teams were rookies, almost all bots had installed some form of wall to deal with the cross court menaces (though limited driving ability of some rookie teams rendered a lot of the walls limited in their effectiveness)

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

As part of 225, I have to agree that blocking is going to be an issue for us. We lost once in the semis, and once in the finals due to the heavy defense stopping our robot from ever reaching the feeder station. Metal Moose in particular played an awesome defense, relying on their powerful drive to shove us around the field.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Full court shooting should work well during qualification matches, but it is not a viable primary method of scoring in eliminations, unless you have some way to shoot through or around defense (I'm looking at you, 225~). Any and every alliance will add a net (or pool noodle) to block you, and will be on you before you can fire your second disk.

It does, however, add an interesting secondary effect. If you should, for some reason, need the defensive robot to move closer to yours, shooting full court is a sure way to force them into blocking distance or closer.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I have personally seen full-court shooting wreck havoc during qualification matches (1 robot scoring 100pts by themselves, another robot scoring 23 consecutive discs).

I have also personally seen those same full court shooters get shut down during the playoffs.

What I have yet to see is an alliance prepare for this ahead of time and draft a robot with the specific task in mind to stop the defender/mobile wall from blocking the cross-court shots. When alliances realizes that there is a legitimate way to prevent your cross-court shooter from being blocked, this game will get really interesting. For now, it's relatively predictable.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I'm very surprised most teams aren't taking advantage of the 84 inch rule when making an "on the fly" wall bot.
Seems a bot with a wide appendage at 84 inches would block any shot.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Well, think about the maneuverability you lose with an 84 inch robot. Bots who just tack that kind of height on become unbalanced, and they tend to tip. Plus, most full court shots come out fast, and unless the blocker is big and heavy, it causes damage.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Not true at all. pool noodles are super light and if you put some kind of fiberglass rod inside the pool noodle it should be a very good defense against full court shooting.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I am just saying what I saw from Chestnut Hill. 4454, a rookie team, added a perfectly strong blocker, pool noodle over plywood, but it upset their CG

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

G22
ROBOT height (as defined in relation to the ROBOT) must be restricted as follows during the MATCH:

If in contact with the carpet in its AUTO ZONE and/or its PYRAMID, ≤ 84 in.
Otherwise, ≤ 60 in.

You cross the carpet at the edge of the pyramid (outside the auto zone) and it is a foul, a technical if you keep doing it. Not exactly a good strategy for an "on the fly" modification. You are trapped and can't load disks, not that you had been shooting any in the first place.

Now, if you built a wallbot that could raise and lower it's wall from 84" to <60", that may work. Just don't leave the AUTO ZONE while you are extended.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

1806 was the most feared bot at the Kansas City Regional because of their versatility. They were hitting high percentage 3 point shots from full court, then if you blocked them, they would just run cycles at the pyramid, then climb for 20 and dump for 20 more. It had everyone in a panic trying to figure out how to defend it. I would be surprised if they didn't make it pretty far at Championships.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I would be very interested to see a very high profile/high arcing shooter such as 3604 paired with a very long robot such as 326 parked in front of them. This pair to me seems like it would be able to empty all feeder station discs with hopefully and ground pick up bot to clean up the early missed shots.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

something the judges, at least at st louis, did not do well was the 84in rule for outside the auto zone. Wonder if that rule has been interpreted the same at other regionals.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

We made our shooter harder to defend actually...

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

How about this particular scenario:

An alliance elects to use 2 Full Court Shooters, one on each side of the field. The third alliance partner is playing defense or scoring via discs on the floor. If the opposing alliance decides to block both Full Court Shooters, would this result in a blockading/stopping the flow of the match penalty under G25?

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Were they not calling violations for robots > 60" completely outside of the auto zone, or do you mean something else? I'm having trouble parsing your post.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

There should be no problem stopping the FCS on the single-load side of the field; there's no protected area. No blocker needed; just bash them off their loading spot.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I believe it may..

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

They were calling them. I'm not sure what he means either.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Easier said than done in some cases. Plus, in doing so, you would essentially be preventing the shooter bot from leaving its loading zone while also blocking the one on the other side of the field. This might be even more of a G25 penalty.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Not sure how other regionals will call it, but in St. Louis you could really only blockade the protected feeders. As long as a theoretical route is open, then it's not blockading, even if none of the robots can take advantage of said route (such as going under the pyramid).

One of our defensive strategies was to place a robot on each side of the pyramid to prevent the other alliance from feeding their full-court shooter. No G25 violations.

I'd talk to the head-ref at each event to figure out what you can get away with, because it is up to interpretation.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

It didn't during the finals at Detroit. 314 and 1701 both attempted full court, and both were blocked, the field was still maneuverable, it just wasn't a walk in the park is all.

I think the 'blocking the flow' rule is really about intention. It would not be advisable to allow the FCS in the unprotected zone to continue to score all of the disks, and logically, pinning them away from the feeder slots would not effect the flow of the court, but just the mobility of said pinned bot.

Edit for clarification:

Crude paint skills aside, the field (for the most part) still remains accessible. Perhaps the rule implies that blue robots (in this situation) are not allowed to stop the red robots from passing the auto line, but the blocking of the FCS in question is perfectly legal.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I guess it's all up to what the head ref feels is a blockade..

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

While I can't speak for their intent, that was basically the strategy used by the winning alliance at Central Valley Regional:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaSIo4VUm74
The execution wasn't that great on either side, but that's Week 1 for you...

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

The Israeli Regional Finals had one full court shooter on the Red Aliliance (1574) and one on the Blue Alliance (2630)

1574 was a 60" robot and was unstoppable in qualification matches - great accurate full court shooting for 2 and 3 point goals.

The competition was won by blocking 1574 with a 84" net put up by team 1577 - Steampunk from Raanana.

2630 shot full court with the help of team 4320 doing both great defense and offence and won the competition after losing final 1.

The games:

F1.1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHTZT-xJB4

F1.2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeSe1Wv7Xdg

F1.3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rKuyx3RQD0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPVb1G1Sg8

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Thank you! I am very glad to see that somebody somewhere was wise enough to employ this strategy. And as evident, it was wildly successful; won the regional as the #6 seed. Despite being a week 1 event.

Some really nice human player throws by blue too.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

It's a hard call to make on the fly, especially in between elimination matches if you want to do it legally.

A wide enough 84" tall robot in the right position is pretty much the end all be all to the FCS game. Even with a high exit point on the FCS (50" or so), the 84" wall would only need to be within 30-36" to render that FCS useless, assuming they're exit angle is somewhere less than 30 degrees from horizontal. (haven't seen something more steep yet)

That being said, there are some interesting trade-offs to this decision.

- Assuming it's something being done very quickly, odds are the 84" tall wall is going to be stuck at 84" tall. If it is, you've now limited your defender to playing on a third of the field... And of that third, you lose quite a bit of it to both the pyramid and your opponents loading zone.

- Assuming you're building blocker that can withstand repeated shots at point black range, it's going to have to be well constructed. Odds are, this is going to shift the CoG of the robot up quite a bit, which could make playing effective defense a bit difficult.

- If the opposing alliance has a capable floor loader, the FCS robot only needs to get discs to the other end of the field, not necessarily score them. In this case, shooting over the blocker becomes a viable option.

Now, if you can make the blocker removable and/or actuate into position, you can ignore a lot of this stuff. But, if you think about it, if your alliance is willing to sacrifice a machine to be an 84" tall wall then odds are, the opposing alliance is willing to sacrifice one of their machines to remove the wall from the equation.

Also, at CH, in multiple matches, the opposing alliance would send two or even all three of their robots after 225's FCS in an attempt to prevent it from getting to the feeder station. One of the things to remember when trying such a strategy, is that you can't win if you're not scoring points... Specifically in Semi 2-1, the Blue Alliance spent the first 45-50 seconds of the match playing defense against 225. During this time, we (341) essentially were playing offense on a completely open field which let us put up some solid points and win the match...

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

What he means is that a robot configured such as 3284 is so tall we are unable to shoot over them when they are in their auto zone and our head ref determined that our pushing him out of the auto zone was us breaking a rule and having the sole intent on making that robot get penalized when we were just trying to shoot over them

The refs were also not looking out for those robots and consistently said that they would do better next time after they were questioned about missing the calls

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Were you assessed a foul, or did the tall opponent just not receive one? To the former, the G18-1 call is a judgement issue, but it really depends on exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you appeared to have a choice of pushing them a different direction, but you elected to push them out, I could see how a head ref might call that.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

We were given a technical foul, actually.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Yes, so G18-1. Again, judgement call, though luckily you're allowed to Question Box technical fouls. There are certainly scenarios in which a G18-1 technical would be warranted doing what you describe. Perhaps we could all also ask at our respective next drivers' meetings.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Thus illustrating the true advantage of an FCS. Not that you can score points -- which will be vigrously defended against -- but that you're enough of a threat to open the field for your alliance partners.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I think G18-1 is being called too quickly in most circumstances.

IMO if there is any conceivable reason for the game action other than forcing the penalty G18-1 should not be called.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I agree. Alas, we're not refs, are we?

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

We have what I would call a very good full court shooter (314 Bigmo). We are able to empty all disk from our feeder stations in about 1:15. This is into the 3pt goal, way faster in 2pt. We do find trouble keeping the disk in after about 30 disk because the goal is almost filled at the bottom and they tend to bounce out but we do believe we have this fixed for MSC. No one knew we were also able to shoot from up close and do cycles. This was a good strategy for us but I would do whatever works for you! remember, you can be blocked so don't base everything off of one task!

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

I wholly agree

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

This included the first seed, who might have chosen differently had you displayed the ability to react better to defense during qualifications. Sometimes it's good to keep an ace up your sleeve for eliminations, but you should also take every opportunity to show off if you'd rather be picked by the first alliance. Finding a balance between these two aspects is the true challenge.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

We have a nice deployable tall arm that is about 80 inches high when deployed. It is just a square tube within a tube with a cord that that pulls the inner tube up as the the whole assembly is rotated up by a pneumatic cylinder. It has a bungy inside to pull it back down when the cylinder is retracted again. It does not have much effect on our CG.

We only used it in the last of the Gull Lake district finals after our shooter feeder was damaged and it worked great. The problem is as several have mentioned that it takes you out of offense. We are primarily an offense robot and are loath to use this unless neccesary. I would like to see more defensive robots have someting like this and we have even talked about making something similar to retrofit onto elimination round alliance partners.

You can see this match here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1XVwRkKOlw

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

What I was trying to say is, with the G18...I think the rule is, they gave us a technical foul for keeping them outside the autozone. The head judge interpreted that we were doing that to SOLELY get the foul points, when really we were trying to clear a path for our full court shooter. That's what costed us the second match in the finals

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

The rule is G18-1:

It's an hard call to make, though in most situations, I would rule against the 84" tall robot, I think. Assuming the 84" tall robot is attempting to block shots, they're at some point between their opponent's feeder station and their autozone boundary. Odds are, there's only about 2'-3' of play in that spot, so if they get hit hard enough, they'll be out of the autozone. If they don't imediately attempt to return to their autozone or decrease their height, the penalty should be assessed to them.

Now, If they're attempting to return to the autozone and kept from it by an opponent, then technically the opponent is the reason that the blocker is in violation. Now, if the blocker can decrease their height (retract their mechanism) they should do so to be back at the correct height. If they cannot... I'd have to say that they should have build a machine that has a way to retract the blocker or not be moved from the autozone... Unless, of course, a team is obviously keeping a blocker/over height robot outside of the loading zone for no reason other than to attempt to have a technical foul assessed against them (i.e. the blocker has no robot to block)...

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

It is a hard call to make. It really is a judgement call. Some teams are able to lower their....blocker for lack of a better word, and others cannot for they are just pool noodles or something of the sort quickly made. The question remains for the teams that CAN lower their blocker and get pushed out of the autozone completely: Why aren't they required to lower their blocker instead of trying to get back into the autozone? If they have the ability to lower it, then shouldn't it be fair play to keep them out of the autozone?

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

At the Greater Kansas City Regional team 1806 (S.W.A.T.) was very effective as a full court shooter. Throughout the competition more and more teams tried to change their bot to be taller to block them yet only 2 or 3 teams were successful at it

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Doggon, that drive train was ridiculous. Two offensive linemen and they STILL couldn't keep 3284 from blocking the shots. That's one beefy drive system.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

3284's drive train was one to take notes on. Very powerful. Throughout eliminations, they were able to completely shut down a robot from scoring and could easily push robots around as if they weren't there. Quite impressive.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Our bot wasn't really designed with defensive play in mind, it was mostly just figured to be a selling point, and our tank drive was just us attempting to keep the drive simple compared to the headache inducing swerve we did last year!

However, nets like ours don't necessarily invalidate the full court shooters. If we were on 1706's alliance (like we wanted to be) then we would be the ones pushing away any potential blockers, and you don't really have to push them very far to keep them at bay.

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

Unless they are the full 84 inches =)

We would have loved to have gotten the opportunity to play with you guys in the finals as well

Re: Full court shooting strategy
 

When our shooter is raised to about 30 degrees is when our net is at the full 84", and so when we lower down to be flat it only loses a few inches, and you can see that once we are pushed out of the autonomous zone then we can no longer block. So even at 84" you only need to push them a bit out of the autonomous zone to deny them their blocking.

We have a practice bot and we'll probably be looking at these distances a bit closer between now and the Arkansas regional.