Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I'm creating this thread in response to this thread which was made during build season. I'll ask the same question that was asked then, now that we have seen a full week of Stronghold: Is anybody worried about defense ruining the game? I for one am not.

I just got done volunteering at the Duluth double regional. There wasn't a single robot out of the 123 robots at the 2 events that was built specifically to play defense. There wasn't more than a hand-full of quals matches where defense was played on the Lake Superior side. Defense most definitely didn't ruin the matches; it made them so much more exciting.

Here is a video from Qual 78 on Lake Superior. Team 359, arguably the best offensive team at the event, and 6175, the 3rd robot on the winning alliance with 359, went up against 4607 playing defense. It could be that I'm biased, but I thought a team running interference made things so much more exciting.

Here is another example in Qual 61 with 4607 against 4009, the number 1 alliance captain, and 1816 a second round pick. A defensive team can't prevent breaching effectively, only boulders scored. So quals essentially go uninterrupted because Captures are so rare anyways. Defense really only comes into play when you get to the playoffs and everybody is breaching, and everybody has the potential to capture.

Defense is also the best way for a lower ranked alliance to beat the top alliances. On Lake Superior the 2 Seed vs. 7 Seed matches were incredibly close. Barring a cable snap, the 7 seed walks away with the win. They weakened the tower twice but didn't capture which would've won it. There's no way a lower seeded alliance can out-cycle the top teams at an event with similar depth. The only way to win is with defense.

So is defense a good or a bad thing for Stronghold? Post videos of great defensive performances along with your opinion.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

There was a great semifinal match between alliances 4 and 1 at Kettering for just this. Previously, 1 had put up over 150 points in a match, but then got completely shut down once 4 applied killer defense, and still put up 130 points. It doesn't look like the match video is up just yet, but if you can find it I highly recommend giving it a look.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

You guys had us.. the defense was straight up ruining our boulder cycles. We had to tell 2227 to play counter defense cause you guys were so disruptive.. It was a great quarterfinals and I was sad to see you guys get knocked out so early.

But back to the point, I agree with you that defense will not ruin the game. Great defense will result in tons of upsets and 2nd seed vs 7th seed at lake superior was nearly one.

I wish we could of seen a match of 1st seed vs 7th seed to see the results there at Lake Superior. Would of been interesting to see the results.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I would say that as of Week 1, the game is in a very healthy state with regards to defense. Teams are rewarded for playing defense, but they sacrifice just as much by choosing not to play offensively and score.

I was watching the GTC regional, and I saw a robot specifically designed to play defense in the form of Team 5092. They were a very tall robot with wide blockers, allowing them to shut down and delay teams trying to shoot. In fact, I think that they single-handedly caused teams to focus on low goaling if they weren't already, because their defense was so strong. However, I believe that 5092, while playing defense, suffered in ranking because they chose not to contribute to the alliance's score directly.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I'm still worried defense will lead to too many fouls, which really decrease the excitement of a game. Worse yet, I fear refs have too many things to watch and keep track of, resulting in inconsistently enforcement.

I haven't watched a ton of matches, but 2443 was probably the best defender I've seen so far.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Watch the PNW West Valley district finals. 4495 (top seeded backup) was a defense bot and replaced 4082(?) for the semis/finals and beat 5920/4061/4120 (1st seeded alliance) in the finals because of 4495s defense. It was amazing to watch

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

This.

In my opinion, the rules of this years game makes defense extremely impractical unless you have a robot that cannot do anything else but drive and you're up against a skilled shooter. There are just too many ways to get penalized for touching someone at just the wrong time/place on the field.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

San Diego was fierce (in eliminations) with multiple (four) non-defense bots playing very aggressive defense and knocking many (a dozen or so) HG shots wide not by blocking but by ramming corners as hard as possible. We even mixed it up as a defensive bot when our shooter jammed as a low bot.

I think what will happen is exactly what I saw in San Diego, teams will look for "Hybrid hidden defenders" instead of "Specific defenders" as they are equally effective and can "do more" for your scoring. As re-purposed bots even without a cheescake just because they had a speedy drive train and mass

Teams that only do one thing are toast

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Outerworks shooters suddenly become more important.

bumping a robot shooting into the low goal is a very effective way of slowing the cycle time down.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Yep. If your robot has to get close to the batter to shoot, a good defensive bot can just circle around the batter (in a ring like pattern) and just harass the team from getting a low goal or a close high goal. Outerworks will be very important this year.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I saw only one Outer works shooter in SD and they were off target I never saw a shot go in. There was another able to hit from 2/3 back but did it rarely.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

THat doesn't mean the concept is bad it just means that the execution is bad.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I agree the most efficient play is a cross and a protected shot into HG ..rinse repeat 15 point play and dual bonus damage toward two more RP's.

But in reality not sure the "efficiency" will be there 179 missed shots in week 0.5 and had a great shooter up close..in San Diego Agency was one of the most efficient shooters and missed up close a lot too. Both when not being harassed. Same for WARlords. Its hard to hit that HG and not waste time on missed shots. Lucky for the Agency (after declining to be #1's pick) they found two other fairly consistent boulder bots and all could cross defenses at least one would be not defended. They simply outscored everyone, many were LG

I cannot see being even further back making HG's more likely in fact it may just be a longer time waster IMO after watching a live regional.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Team 359 was the only once able to do it from the outerworks here and there at lake superior. I think 4009 did it sometimes. We may have done it once or twice, but we were inconsistent.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

In the finals matches of Auburn Mountainview there was some really good defense being played by team 3786 in finals matches 1 and 2.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Our choice to shoot from the outer works was in anticipation of defense. Once we got our intake working Saturday, we were in the region of 25% shooting accuracy from the outer works (with a camera and ~zero practise). Even if your shooter shoots exactly straight with the proper trajectory every time, it's very, very tough to line up your yaw (side-to-side) manually.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

They were really consistent towards the middle of the event. In playoffs they were off though.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

At Southfield on Friday, we were having various problems that were causing us to miss shots (bottom prong on our shooter being bent, camera being knocked out of alignment from going over the defenses) or not take them at all, but after the last match on Friday, we fixed all the problems on our shooter, and Saturday, 100% of our outer works shots went into the goal, although two bounced out the side in QF 1-1. I was driving so I didnt see if they did it in a match, but I saw 3322 could shoot from (what was around the distance of) the outer works also on the practice field. 2960 and 548 both scored high goals too, but from close to the batter to on the batter, respectively.

The point I'm getting at is that high goal shooters from the outer works are rare. It just depends on the event how many there are. I expect more teams to score in the high goal as the season goes on, in order to stay competitive and raise the score.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

The way I see it from strategy perspective...an accurate HG outer work shooter could be awesome but its very hard to do...much harder than 42 point HP stackers of last year...hence the rarity.

We know the pitfalls of visual processing that is why we attempted zero HG shots even though we "can" but we really need the auto aiming. We could technically hit 16 feet every time as we did over and over in practice at home 100%... but not having auto aim is not worth it.

Some teams will figure it out. We will try again next week to get auto aim going.For us its mainly a camera placement issue(with unobstructed vision of the goal) on a low bot with not many great places to put the camera where it won't get destroyed or make us too tall. We don't need it to compete to win but sure would be nice...if we make it to WC we'll figure it out.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Another question that I've been thinking about: Can a defensive robot be a first round pick? An early first round pick? Usually the alliance captain will be good at breaching, and in deeper events, the alliance captains will be good at breaching and scoring. There are a ton of teams that can breach effectively that could be picked up in round 2. So if there's an elite defender on the board are they worth a top pick? Let's assume this defender can climb and play spot offense (not highly effectively) as well.

I would say yes because an elite defender can prevent a capture, and a capture can be done by an elite robot being fed by a breaching 2nd pick. If you capture, and prevent a capture, you basically win.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I would respectfully disagree. If you are a great breacher/scorer, there is very little reason to not pick another great breacher/scorer that complements you. I think that a team's ability to win matches is first decided by how strong they are offensively, and second by how strong they are defensively.

From watching a few regionals via webcast, as well as my observations from our practice field that several teams came to, I observed that it's possible to disrupt a team for maybe 8 seconds if they're shooting high goal, but it's very difficult to disrupt a team that zones in on quick low goals.

Against an expert defender, I think that the best way to play around them would be to have your first pick robot score a low goal, then play counter-defense for you, pushing their solo defender back as the captain takes a shot, and then both robots cycle back. This presents a problem for the defender, as if they attack the high goal shooter, they lose the low goal and then are pushed away by that robot to make space for the high goal shooter. If they choose to attack the low goal shooter, they fail to defend against the high goal shooter, and it's very difficult to play defense on a low goal robot anyways.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

No because there are no elite defenders and you can find "Hidden hybrid defenders" that can not only defend but score if needed also and possibly scale.

A defender no matter how good will probably lose you a regional with the sole exception of 179 so far

More important are boulder bots and scalers

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

To quote myself:

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

They seemed to shoot mainly like a foot from the outterworks, under very heavy defense they would shoot from over the outterworks. In SF they were hitting about 50% from there. Towards the end they started having some accuracy issues.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I get what you are saying. But if you are a higher up alliance captain I wouldn't risk it.

If I was a lower seeded alliance captain at Lake Superior (seeds 6-8) I probably would of picked the top defensive bot first then picked the breacher/scorer... but that's just me and that possible situation.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

With the protection offered to robots transiting the outer works, a good sapper 'bot should be able to breach the defenses solo, or only with the support of its alliance partners cycling boulders through their favorite defense. You can only get points for ten defense crossings; there is very little reason to have a second robot with a primary mission to breach defenses.

The only "unlimited points" (that is points limited mostly by cycle time) are boulders. Once breach is assured, the next pivot point is scoring boulders, with the major benefit of weakening the tower so that it can be captured, but an essentially open problem as far as "how many" points you can score.

The next pivot point is defense. As we expected, this is only a significant consideration during elims in early weeks. I predict that it will slowly become more important during quals through week 5, but become rather important in week 6 and quite important during district CMPs and CMP.

I expect that in later weeks and at CMP, that there shall be a designated defense robot and two robots focused on the breach and weakening the tower. At lower levels, there will be one robot assigned to each function, but at the higher levels, breaching will be a side effect of weakening the tower. This should be especially effective as the two offensive robots are able to run interference for each other against the defensive robot of the opposing alliance. I expect that at the very highest levels, teams will coordinate their crossings to further reduce the effect of defense.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

5172 was absolutely deadly from the outer works over in Northern Lights. I only remember them missing maybe one shot the entire regional from the outer works. Based on their stats, their alliances averaged 40 goal points per match, and almost all of that was them shooting from the defenses. They'll be deadly at Iowa and Champs.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

We were off in the playoffs for several reasons.
Manual aiming because issues with our IP camera. This is also why our autonomous shooting was all over the place, being very inconsistent.
The other was the way our catapult is mounted at the fulcrum. After a while we noticed it started shooting weak, and tried to bump up pressure (using a diigital pressure gauge accurate to the 100th of a PSI in set increments. The culprit was the temperature of the event, especially after they opened the roll-away doors for teams packing up and leaving the event.
How do we know? During the playoffs, we started using a blow driver to heat up the arm joint. We started to overshoot the goal.
Without going on the practice field and doing guesses, there was really no way for us to test other than during the match.
Overall, I'd say we did OK.
As for the 1 match where our shot got blocked, it was due to our appendage not being down. It is not possible to block our shot legally if a 54" robot is up only against our appendage. Our operator forgot to bring the arm down with a defender. In the match that followed, we successfully shot two right over defenders.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

I would agree with this if we were a lower seeded captain.

Our alliance discussed in detail how we would address defense. We did this after the initial annoucement that we would decline 4009 and create our own alliance, then later deciding to accept.
If you watched all of our matches, we played no defense whatsoever at all.
We understood that shooting other than the outerworks with a defender would be tough......but with all 3 robots attacking the castle, a defender can only do so much.
Other than that 1 match where we missed "capture" by 1 boulder, we did it in every single playoff match including the DECCer, often getting negative points for "over-capturing."
As the weeks go on, capturing will be automatic for regional winning alliances, and a requirement if you plan on succeeding in qualifications at championships, IMO.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Alliance 4 did a great job playing defense. Not only did it shut out 5114 from scoring but it also distracted me from breaching the defenses. It was a good battle in that semi-final match up, taking it to the tiebreaker third match. I hope the crowd was entertained! Thank you to alliance 4 for a tough competition!

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

For anyone questioning whether or not shooting from the outer works can be consistent or not. I recommend that when the videos for Northern Lights come out, you should watch 5172's matches. They were finalists and better shooters than we were in my opinion.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

If you want to see some defense...
https://youtu.be/ddDCaKKvCJM?t=20913
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddDCaKKvCJM&t=29987
https://youtu.be/ddDCaKKvCJM?t=31556

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

You guys did a great job and I loved working with your drive team.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Can't believe you beat me to it, I was just going to post that.
Talk about defense...

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

only looked at first video but the defense blue bot gave 10 points for fouls; if it was a closer match could have been a bummer not a victory.

Takes good coaching to see everything on the field and making their alliance all react properly. I truly believe any robot could defend; it would take good coaching to know when and if they should.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

As a breaching robot, the defense doesn't have a large amount of influence on us, but in finals, 3786 played some incredible defense on the two shooters of the other alliance, almost completely shutting them down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXn-AP1W1LY

At a higher level, I see a breaching robot finishing their cycle and counter-defending, keeping the defender off of their shooting robot.

The defense so far is very healthy, and keeps the game very exciting.

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

Here are some better angles of 1676 playing defense in these matches:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyAG7wIJS28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gddz-iyuu0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTkoELdL4I4

Re: Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way
 

1676 is a HUGE reason the alliance was successful. I am sure you already have, but thank your drive team and the rest of the team for doing such an awesome job.

At the Bu competition this week defense was a huge thing. One team got a red card for tipping a robot over. There were a ton of fouls but over all it was not too bad. I think defense is a necessary facet of this game. I like this game because you can come in with a solid drive train and still be a contributing member of the alliance. Defense is a good way for smaller or younger teams to help out a lot. Also it adds another side to high goal shooting. Robots that can shoot from the batter or outer works get an advantage because they are less susceptible to defense. Though I think this is a good thing because it is another thing that can separate good teams from really good teams. I do not think that defense ruins the game. I think it is a very good part of this years game.