Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

Hmmm.

• Relay Race
• Sculling
• Synchronized Swimming
• Scramble Golf

That said, I fully expect the bumper rules to return in 2016.

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

Relay races actually have a lot of interaction on the track. (See the British team knocking the baton out of the hand of the US team in the 4x100 at the Olympics in 2012, and the many battles in the 4x400.)

Rowing and other lane races such as swim and track relays are head to head competitions that are heavily influenced by your position relative to your competitors. There is team trial cycling but it's usually one component of the larger tour race.

I'm not even sure of the rules of scramble golf! Curling is a team sport/game that could fall into that category.

I excluded judged sports like synchronized swimming because I was limiting to my universe to quantitatively scored sports. There's pairs ice skating too. Probably should have made that clear.

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

While I haven't followed relays or tracked races that closely, I would think that the interaction there is similar in impact to what we had in Recycle Rush, between the scramble for the cans and the occasionally nefarious litter.

Curling would definitely not constitute parallel play. While the teams take turns with the stones, each stone can displace previous stones, and serve as a barrier to the desired placement of future stones. And IIRC, one player on the opposing team can sweep towards the end of the stone's travel.

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

This year had defense, just not robot to robot, at least not most of the time. There was the occasional snag on a can that could tie down two robots for 30 seconds or more and to those who say there was NO robot to robot action, I point to Final 2 of the Hopper division (don't worry, its on youtube). Going into this year I thought it would be boring, and for a spectator who was not well versed on the rules and objectives, it probably was, however as an involved member of the team, I was not bored for a second, and as programmer, this year has offered the opportunity for my most advanced and longest auto routine. I think equally of both types of game having now played both. That being said, I do have one complaint about games with no intended robot to robot action. Teams who do not have the background to build a good superstructure are left out in the cold with no place to go. I saw one team this year with no way to lift totes and honestly, because of driver practice, they got more totes scored than some teams who tried, but failed to build an effective manipulator. This, near forcing teams to build some superstructure also created some interesting designs, for example, I saw one team who used a garden rake head with some teeth cut off to lift totes and it was one of the most stable one sided lifts on the field. Strategy wise, this game was not as fun because the other side could not do much to mess with your strategy, most matches you had a reasonable idea of how many cans they could grab, if any, and how well they could throw noodles and could easily plan for these. In previous years teams could do things unexpectedly to mess with your alliance strategy, for example at last year's SCRIW, our alliance had one robot that was just a kit base that when we asked if they were ready to go on the field they replied, "do you have a screw driver?" They came out to play in our final match and all three of the other alliance's robots were working against that one base to try and score the ball leaving us and our other partner free to score as much as we wanted. To clarify, SCRIW elims were played like champs with 4 robots per alliance, so we did have 3 robots on the field every match. This unexpected defensive domination is not possible this year with this style game play. In answer to cries of robustness or lack thereof, if your base has trouble being robust enough to take full power hits, then you should use the kit base. Our 2014 bot has survived not only a cross the field hit, but also a 3ish foot tall drop off our cart while driving down the road and has some suspiciously yellow powder coat paint chips on it, sorry Flash. It is built primarily of the kit base and 80 20 extrusion and we continue to abuse it at numerous local demonstrations. It has been one of our lowest cost robots and IMO one of our best. This year though, because of the game and the humps in the field, I saw some robot damage of their own doing from tip overs and yes, can wars. So as this thread indicates, there are pros and cons of each and personally I think that each can produce a very fun and challenging game. That being said, because we are good at building robust robots and I enjoy seeing the sudden twists that come with the buzzer beating 360 no-scope shots, I would like to see the bumper rules return.

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

My team had a pretty major malfunction- match one of our week one competition at Southfield, because I had listened to another team member's suggestions on how to program our autonomous and did it based on seconds at his insistence, and that included turns, we kind of sort of maybe broke a yellow tote and slammed into the left wall and driver station wall.

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

Do you have match video :) ?

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

4476 was probably doing most of the ramming! :D

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

Here it is: https://youtu.be/2_-p9oAxuT8

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

That's why i don't like playing with autonomous at events... We still did it in our last quals and playoffs on Tesla to match with 2122. Worked well on the first try, but didn't work in the playoffs

Re: Pros and Cons of Defense
 

As far as I am concerned, it was a nice break from previous years. 2014 was arguably the most aggressive years so far, with the clear playing field. We saw some teams come out of practically nowhere with ridiculously competitive DPR's. 2015 was on the other end of the spectrum. It was also a very difficult rookie year, mostly due to the un-scoring of entire stacks, that also hindered progress of new stacks. There are arguments for both, but last year wasn't a spectator sport. Who can understand by watching a single match what is going on? Why don't they drive to the other side? Who got the points for the yellow boxes? Why isn't that robot moving (at the feeder station)? Stronghold is very easy to understand. You get points for crossing obstacles, clearly indicated by lights, and each ball scored gets you closer to a capture. The defense is a very important part of the game that adds so much excitement. Also, a lot of the modifications made for elimination rounds/playoffs are only about robot-robot interaction. If you get stuck with a KOP bot as your second pick, you add a T-shirt blocker. We faced bots like that in week 2 (proud to say we shot over them). Last year there wasn't much to do. We were the 3rd pick on Carver at the championship, I believe by the second alliance, and we had to modify our robot so badly for a can grabber that we lost literally all scoring capability, because that was the only way to prevent them from scoring more. My point is, it would be much more interesting to watch a game with defense, and 2015 was just a break from the action.