Re: Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept
 

No, that is not what G11 states. This is what G11 says (emphasis added):
Bumping into someone in your secret passage is not a "strategy." No momentary game event is a "strategy." You have every right to drive around in your secret passage, and if someone is in your way you have the right to bump into them.

A lot of people are over-interpreting G11 in this way, and some of the previous posts have done a good job of showing how absurd that interpretation is. Combined with G21, that means that if two robots on opposite alliances hit each other in a secret passage, whichever one initiated the contact gets a foul, which will often be impossible to judge, and clearly goes against the intent of G21, which is written to only apply to members of the opposing alliance. That's not to mention the infinite descent of "well you caused me to cause you to foul me, so you violated G11 by forcing me to violate G11," and so on ad absurdam. Any interpretation of the rules that results in infinite recursion is clearly flawed.

The intent of G21 is clearly that robots in the opposing team's secret passage have to make way for opposing robots or get a foul. The opposing team does not have to have a justification for doing so--it's their own secret passage, they can do what they want in it!

Re: Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept
 

I had a similar thought on this strategy initially.

I also found that I had misinterpreted the field drawing as to whose secret passage is whose, due to the different flags in different drawings being visible. That topic is covered in another thread.

The point is that the secret passage you'd need to sit in or by, is controlled by the other alliance. Therefore if you are contacted by their bot when they try to receive boulders you will most likely be penalized. It also means that the other alliance controls when and how those boulders are put back onto the field. This will limit your points. AA year proved how a nicely timed bump can cause a miss with a long shot. Therefore I do not think this will be a high scoring strategy for very long if at all.
It worked better for Frisbees since you controlled most of the variables.

It's technically feasible with the current rules but very risky. This also depends on the interpretation of the blockade foul.

Re: Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept
 

We discussed the Choke-hold robot idea today, and we see 2 flaws with it:

The first flaw is debatable: Intuitively, this is not the way the GDC intended the game to be played. The reason you should care is that they have the ability to change the rules at any point, including AFTER build season. (see HighRollers in 2008 for an example of this)

The second flaw is a bit more powerful. Consider Rule <G4> (emphasis added):
Our interpretation of this is that a human player may insert his hand into the BRATTICE while holding the ball, and then throw the ball UP and possibly also diagonally. The ball would most probably not enter into the choke-hold robot, and the strategy defeated.

The height limit means that the robot can't block the brattice, so this would always be possible.

Thoughts?

-Leav

Re: Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept
 

The rule does say "placing." More specifically, if you want to dive beyond that., "placing... into that hole." I think that kind of firms things up a bit.

Re: Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept
 

The other problem with this concept is TU#1... If there's somebody parked down there, and their bumpers don't match the berm, they need to run if somebody else comes in!

Re: Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept
 

Only if they are touching the carpet, if I understand correctly. it's possible (probably) to execute the choke-hold strategy without touching the carpet in the secret passage.