Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

What [Thomas] was getting at in the stream was more a matter of ball supply and leaving your alliance susceptible to ball starvation.
Well, I completely missed the point of the question, but still a valid question.

My response starts here:
A question that came up in the chat for FRC Top 25 - Week 5, but I think it does warrant some consideration. With six weeks of competition under our belts, and Championships of both District and World varieties coming up, what do you expect the state of the game to be?

Obviously the "standard" for defense is playing courtyard defense with a cheesecake blocker.

3560, under the tutelage of 1241 and 610, showed a new kind of defense, where you defend the opposing secret passage. Mr. Lim talked about that type of defense on the show and indicated that, while it can be effective, it varies from alliance to alliance and requires a tremendous amount of driver knowledge that you simply can't teach in an afternoon.

East Kentwood Semifinals showed that, unopposed, elite robots such as 3357 and 2771 can put up simply massive scores. There are many, many robots this year that shoot from the outerworks and simply have a trajectory that's over 5' before it even leaves the perimeter of the robot. "The best defense is a good offense."

So that's where the question came in. 2013 is somewhat comparable to this game, where cheesecake blockers were a prime pick for alliances, yet the 610-1241-1477 machine swooped in and took Championships with triple cyclers. Do you think that this strategy could win again?

Obviously Ultimate Ascent and Stronghold are not directly comparable, with the lack of a low goal then and the ability to carry more than one frisbee per cycle, and longer shot distances.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

2013 three cycler alliance played defense on Einstein finals.

I think defense is and will always be a key tool for pretty much any game, especially this one. Especially if you are outgunned.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

What I was getting at in the stream was more a matter of ball supply and leaving your alliance susceptible to ball starvation.

The reason that 3-cyclers worked in 2013 was mainly that we had 2 different feeder stations to go to for discs. In Stronghold, once the field balls have been exhausted, robots will have to go after the secret passage to get balls. With 3-cyclers, all three robots are going to have to be perfectly in time with each other so that nobody is waiting to get to the passage for a ball (something that we ran into at Waterloo with 1241 :p).

But what I'm getting at is the enormous scoring potential that you have with 3-cyclers. Because your alliance is scoring at such a fast rate, the opposing alliance is forced to throw balls out of their castle and flood their secret passage leading to a starvation for your alliance.

Issue is that if you don't have a defense bot and the opposing alliance does, they can easily park that bot in front of your secret passage shutting down all scoring robots and starting a starvation.

What you're looking for is to reach a point that we did in 2013. Where you're scoring so much that the opposing defense bot has to start scoring for its alliance to try and keep up on the scoreboard. Keep in mind that this is basically a situation that can't be found anywhere but at champs at Einstein levels of play.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

To be completely honest, the way I remember Einstein 2013, 1241 and 610 started playing defense because we ran out of discs to cycle :p

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

There are a couple of key differences in both Ultimate Ascent and Stronghold that need to be re-stated.

1) There is only space for one robot to collect a boulder out of the secret passage at a time where as in 2013, there were three locations to collect disks.
2) In 2013 as long as you were touching the pyramid, you were warranted as protected, in this year's game you can only be protected from the outer works which typically depending on line-up is only useful from the 3 and 4 positions.
3) There are less boulders than there were disks, even if you take into account that in this year's game you can only hold 1 boulder and in 2013 you could hold 4 disks per team.

That being said, I believe that defense will always be played, in some form. Whether it be a starvation strategy, neutral zone defense or the classic courtyard defense, especially in this year's game. Mainly due to the fact that the lesser scoring robot will be starved for balls and having them fight for a ball over another partner of theirs who scores faster/more accurately may not be worth it. It may be wiser to play a form of defense to decrease opponent cycle time.

1241 ran the 3 cycle strategy a couple of times at North Bay, just to see how it would turn out and it did work somewhat efficiently at the beginning when balls were in the neutral zone. After the first 30 seconds had passed and the balls were cleared from the neutral zone, there were only two locations to obtain balls from and that was the secret passage or the opponents secret passage. The game then turned into 1 robot cycling through the low bar, the other bot feeding the robot who remained in the courtyard who would shoot into the high goal.

It all comes down to the opponents you are facing, if there is no clear indication of weakness, then defense may not be worth playing and 3 cyclers may be more efficient, especially with the abbreviated 1 robot cycling, the other feeding the courtyard bot. However, most robots have weaknesses and if you exploit them correctly, there should always be a form of defense that can be played.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

1477 played defense on 469's fullcourt :)

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Can you expand on this please or provide any videos?

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Not a great video, but here seems to be one of the few current videos of Waterloo Finals. Keep an eye on the blue bot in the neutral zone; that would be 3560. Note how they're "stockpiling" balls from the Red Human Player as well as getting between the robots and their Outerworks.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Does this look like a G25-E violation to any of the referees out there? Or G38-C?

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I don't think it's G25-E because it's not happening in the secret passage, it's all happening in the neutral zone. They're preventing access from the neutral zone to the secret passage.
At around 3 minutes in that video, the Portcullis makes it a little difficult to tell, but I don't believe they're actually pinning boulder(s) against any field element; since they're accessible from the secret passage side.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I think another viable strategy, that was also used a lot in 2014, is "counter-defense", where your third bot shuts down the opponents defense bot. This can free up teams who are huge offensive threats unopposed but struggle when defense is applied.

For example, in the Midwest finals, 111 was arguably the best shooter there unopposed, but could not get over the defense played by 3352. Because the first seed's main scorer, 2451, scored from the outer works, they were virtually undefendable, and so 111's alliance did a triple cycle strategy, but if 4241 had focused on harassing 3352, 111 arguably would have been much better off.

The obvious downside here is that a courtyard with 4 robots can be very cluddered, but that's the same downside as doing triple cycles with defense anyway

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

G25 A ROBOT may not attempt to stop or impede the flow of the MATCH in any of the following ways:

E. isolating BOULDERS in the opponent’s SECRET PASSAGE from opponents while not contacting the carpet in the opponent’s SECRET PASSAGE

I think the point of G25-E is that it's illegal to block robots from entering their secret passage from the neutral zone to retrieve boulders. It's only legal to isolate the boulders from your opponent if you enter their secret passage (which can only be done from the courtyard), and then your opponent can force you out at the risk of penalty if you don't get out of the way quick enough. If our alliance played against a team that parked their robot in front of our secret passage we would certainly have brought this to the question box if it wasn't called to get clarification. If this doesn't violate G25-E then I don't know what would?

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Notably, there are very few teams this year that would prefer to shoot from the outer works. Any team that doesn't score from the outer works can be defended. I think it's going to be very difficult to put together alliances that have 3 outer-works shooters, or even two.

A perfect example of effective defense would be quarter finals 1 at South Florida last weekend. Our team was able to effectively shut down a clearly superior alliance. While we were only able to scrape a single win, I could definitely see this kind of defense swinging matches at championships.

Quarterfinal 1 Match 1

Quarterfinal 1 Match 2

Quarterfinal 1 Match 3

While we did not end up winning quarterfinals, a stronger alliance, with a better defensive robot, could have used defense to pull a victory. I think that, at the top levels of play, teams will be able to capture even with the best defense being played on them, however, if both alliances can reliably breach and capture, every boulder counts.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I don't know what you guys are talking about - triple cycling is defense. You have to break this paradigm of "are we gonna play defense (push people) or are we gonna play offense" because the best third robots don't fit such a clean paradigm.

If you drop your ball in the courtyard and fight to control as many of the midfield balls as you can right after autonomous, is that offense or defense?

If you are going into your own secret passage to guard against opposing scorers getting balls while also feeding your own balls out to the neutral zone, is that offense or defense?

Pushing people can be important with particular types of scorers and scoring, but ultimately ball control is the most effective way to prevent a capture and to ensure your own, which is absolutely the name of the game. While a weak event, we won Rhode Island with three robots that all scored goals, all denied balls to opponents, and all played some level of defense at times. Three cyclers, right?

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Not having a presence in your own courtyard allows the opposition to poach balls out of your secret passage.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

But 2 offense and 1 defense won in 2011, which is probably more similar to Stronghold than 2013 (no full court scoring, protected lane by opponents goal, feeding was a valid strategy...).

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Well that year 12 tubes was the real max scoring you could do that year since the bottom rows were worth almost nothing. If more than 12 tubes was needed, I could see triple offense being viable. The goal that year was to score 4 logos and prevent your opponents from scoring 4 to give some wiggle room for minibot races.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

And this years max is 8 boulders, the rest is worth significantly less ::ouch::

There aren't any balls there to begin with.

Exactly. This is a key point to this game, and any game with non-alliance specific game pieces. However just because offense is defense it does not mean it's the best defense.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

What are you talking about? There are balls there nearly every match. Teams across the country have been taking advantage of these balls to get "easy" captures. Even against good human players, all it takes is one offensive robot to drive in and block a fast roll to create opportunities for balls to be re-scored.

Ultimately, especially when you are outgunned, you are trying to prevent an opposing capture while ensuring your own. Slowing down scorers with physical defense is one way to do it, and it is effective, but at my events I've found ball control to be more effective. Your mileage will vary.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Agreed. There are a few reasons why defense will be important for getting out of a division, and this is one of the most overlooked.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I diagree on them being significantly less. Assuming both alliances get a capture, the winner is who can get the most points on top of that. That includes autonomous, extra boulders, and scaling. One or two extra balls could very well be the difference on Einstein.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Chris is Me you are, IMO, right on the money. Although we lost in the tie breaker in the finals with a defensive robot on us, I feel that we could have won had our alliance robots been shooting as we had in the quarters and the semi's. We put up 197 points with three high goal shooters. We were missing auto shots and undefended teleop shots which was the reason for the loss. We lost by 15 (three high goal shots). Had we made the two auto shots which we had been making, defense would have had not made a difference.
Now, none of this takes away from the amazing play of 1156 and 287 and their top notch shooting ability, nor the great defense played by 263. I just feel (especially seeing all of the unforced errors by our alliance) that three hi goal shooters could definitely beat a two shooter/one defender alliance, even without having them shoot from the outer works.
And yes, I know this is going to open a whole lot of comments but remember, this is just my view.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Let's build two second-pick robots and compare.

Robot 1: 50% high goal shot, can consistently shoot 3 boulders per match and cross 3 defenses
Robot 2: defense specialist, no boulder manipulation at all

Robot 1's contribution to the alliance will mainly be adding to their own alliances score by crossing 3 defenses for 15 and scoring 5*3*50% for 7.5 per match. I'm going to assume that endgame and auto are constants and irrelevant for our calculations to make them easier.

This means that Robot 1 contributes ~23 points per match on average to the alliance. However, this doesn't take into account a number of other issues, the least of which being congestion at the defenses and in the opposing courtyard, and the most pressing having no boulders to score after a while.

In Robot 2's case, while they don't contribute directly, they contribute by adding to the opponent's cycling speed through a combination of increasing intake distance by knocking balls away, protecting the secret passage from being locked down and directly blocking opponent's shots.

I would argue that if Alliance Captain and Pick #1 are equally strong on both sides, the side with the defensive robot would win, because it's a lot easier to slow down 23 point's worth of cycles than it is to jostle for balls in the neutral zone, decide on the spot which defense to cross, organize with your alliance and then cross, nevermind shooting positions.

Of course, if the third robot is also an effective cycler, then I would agree that the three-cycler alliance would win. It's just a matter of whether or not that third, effective cycler is there for you to pick.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

From watching many different high level regionals, I think the game will become more like 2014 if anything. Basically what Chris is talking about where robots that currently don't have a ball or where a ball isn't available to be contested, will be productive by playing neutral zone defense until a ball becomes reasonably available to be contested. I think just having a pure defensive robot wastes a lot of time whereas a 3 cycler alliance has the flexibility to take turns playing defense and offense when it's convenient for them. Even if an alliance can't get a third good high goal scorer, a robot that feeds balls is almost as good and may even be a better approach because they will spend less time in the courtyard and more time ready to steal balls or play neutral zone defense. If an alliance does decide to play 2 scorers and one pure defender, I think they better be sure they are the fastest at collecting and scoring balls that they will be able to keep up with 3 shooters if defense isn't as effective as they hoped it would be. Even so, I think alliances that are in the situation where they are the two best scorers would be playing it a lot safer to just pick another scorer to extend their lead. Of course with 4 robots per alliance, captains can pick both a third scorer and a pure defensive robot depending on the situation.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

If the captain and first pick are capable of breaching - and they generally are - then I would suggest that the "3 defenses for 15" is not a contribution that is needed from the second pick robot. The other two robots can cross on their cycles.

In the scenario above, I think the mid-game contribution would be closer to 7.5 rather than 23 - the other points are redundant.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

It is definitely possible but I don't think that there is enough depth in teams to have 3 high goalers, especially at champs

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Realistically, a 50% high goal shooter who shoots only 3 boulders is more like a third pick--especially at the Worlds. A 50% high goal shooter making only three shots per match may not even be a viable second choice for an alliance with any expectations of winning. Although this may have occurred in matches at regionals/districts, it is not what realistic, consistent expectations are for the caliber of teams attending the Worlds and as such doesn't make for a fair comparison for a three shooter alliance.
Looking at the number of good high goal shooters already qualified for the worlds it seems that it is quite possible to have at least 3 alliances with good (or better) high goal shooters. Realizing that a high goal shooter can switch to the role of a defense bot but the reverse most likely cannot happen, I would venture to guess that all good (or better) high goal shooters will be picked before defense bots (unless a defense bot is outstanding).

*An interesting observation- At SBPLI the serpentine selection process brought to light an interesting situation. The possibility exists that if there is not a sufficient # of good high goal cyclers the high seeds loose out and the argument becomes moot. The One and Two seeds had to pick defense bots for their third pick.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Depth!?! With over 50 regionals and tons of districts there will be at least 13 event winners in each division. It is not ridiculous to think that divisions may have 15 - 20 robots capable of high goal autonomous modes. and roughly the same number capable of 4 - 7 high goals a match. 6th 7th and 8th alliance may have 3 shooters capable of cycling, the 24th robot though may not be leaving the 1st seed potentially at a disadvantage.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

A couple things I'd like to point out-

1) The defensive setup that worked at your specific event isn't necessarily the end-all be-all to be emulated across the world. When your opponents are prolific outer works shooters your strategy should probably be different than if they're batter shooters and should be different than if they low goal exclusively.

2) 3 cycling robots can theoretically occupy your own secret passage enough to deter poaching if an alliance is well coordinated, but a dedicated defensive robot can arguably do so better.

I think that we'll see both types of alliances in the coming weeks.
At the Finger Lakes Regional, our alliance of 5254 and 2791 picked up 2383 as our third robot. 2383 was having a bad weekend compared to their usual standards for sure, but they were an alliance captain at both Orlando and South Florida when they were working better. We helped them a bit with autonomous and their shots, and in our first quarterfinal match they scored 3 high goals individually during teleop, as well as one during auto, contributing 25 boulder points of the 82 scored that match. That was despite 2383 missing a few shots as well. Unfortunately they had issues in semifinals that caused them to start missing, but they rebounded from FLR to be the 5th alliance captain at South Florida.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Let's look at this from an eliminations point of view, as it is at this point that you would be debating whether to formulate a triple cycler alliance, or a double cycler and a defense robot alliance. FIRST has a picking order as follows.
If we look at the 3rd collumn (2nd picks), it's evident that, under the assumption that alliances make the correct picks (which is a variable we can't quite account for), that the 8th alliance should have a better 2nd pick robot than the 1st alliance. One could take this and draw the conclusion that, because of this, the 2nd pick robot on the 8th alliance should be more capable of completing tasks that satisfy point-scoring options of FRC Stronghold, as opposed to the 2nd pick robot on the 1st alliance, which may only have a drive train.

For the next sector, we will assume that the alliance captain and 1st pick are both on default cycling for any alliance, and the debate only exists in regards to what the 2nd pick should do.

Since we've seen that the 8th alliance's 2nd pick robot should be strongest, we will decide whether or not they should have this 2nd pick robot playing defense when playing the 1st alliance (a typical QF match). There are several factors that could make having a 2nd pick cycling as well an intelligent move, or a complete mistake.

Clutter
FRC Stronghold as just a field is already cluttered. The goals are all very close together, as they are all on a fairly small tower, opposed to a game like Aerial Assist where there was a very wide goal, or Ultimate Ascent, where the goals were less compressed. On top of this, the surface area of the places to score from is very limited. The game has enforced a rule to only be allowed to shoot from the Courtyard, meaning that you have to get reasonably close as opposed to a game like...

Aerial Assist: Half court shots to score, or full court to get the ball to the other side of the field to then be scored.

Ultimate Ascent: Shoot from anywhere on the field, even full court.

The most recent game that comes to mind in which the area which it was only really easy to score from a close range was Breakaway. However, in this game, the goals were also spread out on opposite ends, unlike the compressed nature of FRC Stronghold.

Now, assuming that we go against this logic of clutter, and do a triple cycler anyways, it's quite plausible that someone who has some decent sense of strategy would play a defender robot on top of all three robots. Now you have four robots in one courtyard. That's going to be fun. And not only that, you now only have, at maximum, two robots in the other courtyard, allowing them to have plenty of room and free space to carry out fast and efficient cycles without delay.

In such a compressed and compact game with limitations on where you can do what, clutter is a problem that will appear with triple cyclers, especially if the other alliance plays a defense robot.

Stopping The Other Alliance From High Goaling
Keep in mind that we are still considering the value of a triple cycle alliance from the view of an 8th alliance, as it is the most plausible situation where this strategy could be valuable.

High goaling has become extremely frequent this season, clearly showing itself as a major factor that determines whether or not an alliance emerges a match as a victor. However, the high goaling, on average, isn't great yet. Or even good, for that matter. Very few robots have shown the ability to shoot from the outerworks (a safe shot) without being blocked. 2056 is capable of shooting from there, but their shot is at a low enough angle that it can be blocked with a tall robot. 118 demonstrated their shot in their reveal that cleared a defender. However, in all honesty, in match, 118 hasn't really been able to carry out this shot very well, and have been favouring the batter shot.

From this, we can continue on the analysis based off of the notion that all robots can be defended against, and that no robots have a safe shot that can't be blocked.

Many robots have displayed very long shot line-up/shooter speed-up rates. I feel like it is safe to say that examples of these teams aren't necessary, as these long line-up times have become an average in FRC Stronghold. Because of this, a robot on defense can effectively push a robot out of their line-up position before they release the ball. Some more recent robots that cannot be pushed as easily, but can still be blocked from getting to what could be considered their "lock down spot" are 1241 (beside the batter), 118 (batter), and 610 (on the wall beside the batter). However, it's fair to say that defense can still be effective on them, in regards to either stopping them from getting to their "safe spot", or slowing them down.

The real kicker in regards to why it's important is simply that, if they aren't defended, they're almost unstoppable monsters, and it's just a free walk in the park for them for shooting. Coming from the view of an 8th alliance once again, you'll be up against some of these elites, and you need to stop them. Slowing down these high goals is essential to success as a lower alliance.

Secret Passage
The secret passage is a gold mine in regards to scoring objects, should it be left undefended. If no one is there, you can go in and out quickly, scoring, and reducing your cycle time phenomenally. If you are able to get more than 6 balls into the goal, you can keep on going, and they'll be forced to feed the balls onto the field for you, so long as you can keep up.

On a side note, I'm shocked that I haven't really seen people putting the boulders through the battrice (I think that's what it's called, it's so forgotten about), when high level teams start to play this strategy and there is no defender. It would certainly mess up their cycle, considering that they're expecting the balls to come out of the lower human player slots.

To be brief, you simply need a defender to stop the opposing alliance from getting these boulders. The importance isn't as much because it's always extremely valuable to have a robot defending to stop them from getting these balls, the importance is that it will hurt a lot if you don't have a robot defending to stop them from getting these balls.

Overall
It seems that it is safe to conclude that, in an 8th alliance, a 2nd pick is needed to defend to stop the 1st alliance from having a scoring palooza, while a 1st alliance (on the other end of the spectrum) is typically the weakest robot selected for an alliance, and thus has a very low chance of being valuable as a cycler, and may just get in the way more than it can help.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Speaking entirely out of personal experience, being a team that played defense in the playoffs of both a shallow district and a relatively deep district against the #1 Alliance, I can say with almost certainty that a 3-Cycler Alliance will be better off. Honestly, only play defense if you are noticeably the scoring underdog. Here's why:

1) A well coordinated Alliance will not run into congestion problems. All three robots we faced had distinctly different shooting locations and travel pathways, making it literally impossible to play defense against all three robots (67 high-goal shot from the center or right batter, 2834 shot from the center of courtyard/Outerworks, both traversing misc. center Defenses, 51 low-goaled into the left goal, traversing the low bar). Any given time, 2 robots would enter the courtyard looking to shoot from two different sides of the field. We could stop one for a while, but not both. Defense robot can't be in 2 spots at the same time.

2) There is a defense-free period at the beginning and end of the matches that net your alliance 6 safe boulder scores. The time it takes to travel courtyard-to-courtyard gives the 3-Cycler Alliance about 5-10 seconds to put their first boulder in (or second if they scored in auto and returned to the neutral zone). And of course, the last 20 seconds also permit 1 last boulder shot from all 3 robots. Than means only 2 more boulders are needed from the 3 robots combined over the span of 1:55. That's VERY likely from just 1 robot alone.

3) Tall OuterWorks shooters are completely undefendable in the courtyard, period. Batter shooters with good drive teams are harder to defend than you think. Our strategy to stop 67 from getting to their shooting location was to always stay between them and the tower. They saw this, and in response to us would drive laterally an arced path, forcing us into the right batter divider and allowing them an opening to the right or center batter lane (intelligently using the field to stop the defense robot). You'd think that we should have had the driving advantage because of the shorter path distance, but a) reaction time to "which direction are they accelerating" eats into that advantage, and b) even neck-and-neck driving would still favor the offensive robot because of the batter defender-blocking technique (also we were lighter, which was our own fault).

4) The third robot is your security blanket. We were able to limit 67 and 2834 to a combined 6 boulders in each of their matches (which when less defended the two scored 8 and 12 high in the finals), yet they were easily able to capture thanks to the 4 boulders scored by their 3rd robot. 51 was the difference between capture and no capture in all QF and SF matches. Whether they are just transferring boulders across the Outerworks for the other 2 robots, or scoring them in the low/high goals themself, against the best drivers, the 3rd robot is adding more worth to their alliance by adding 2 high boulders or 4 low boulders to their side than subtracting 1 or 2 boulders from the other side. (Against lesser drivers, a good defender can completely shut down an entire alliance's tower scoring. This will not be done at Regional Championships or Champs.)

5) Put boulders in the neutral zone. You don't want opposing robots stealing boulders from your secret passage for a quick score? Don't put them there. Throw them into the Neutral zone, where they are effectively closer to your robots anyway to reduce cycle time.

6) No wasted time. In an Offense-Only system, all your time is accounted for; collecting boulders, crossing defenses, and scoring boulders into the tower. Playing defense, there is dead-time while you are waiting for the opposing alliance to return to your zone (while they collect boulders or cross defenses). That is effectively non-value added time. And then when they do enter your defended region, you have to pick which robot to defend, meaning that someone is still not being defended.

So... yes defense is an option, but after playing it, if you have the high goal firepower to keep up, Offense-Only is the way to go.

As stated before by someone else in an earlier post, it's easier for your 3rd cycler to play defense when needed than for a defense robot to score boulders.

Wow, this ended up being a longer post than I wanted it to be.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I just wanted to add that defense is probably more advantageous than triple cycling. At Hartford, defense helped the number 7 alliance shut down the number 2 alliance, which had 2 high shooters and a low shooter by consistently denying them a capture. That effectively robbed them of 25 points, giving the number 7 alliance a big boost. Even the 5 point penalties that effectively "gave" the other alliance the shot helped deny them the capture, making it difficult for number 2 alliance to score. Defense is effective.

If you do triple cycling, on the other hand, you may score more balls, but the other alliance is almost guaranteed their capture, which is 25 points. The question becomes, can the third robot add an extra 5 shots, plus the points to make up for the other alliance's shots (so total 6-7)? Probably not.

I conclude this with my support for a third defense bot that can also quickly help with breaching rather than 3 shooter bots

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Again, this is your experience at your event. Different events with different teams require different strategies. Talk to 1241 about whether running a defensive robot is worth it after Waterloo. I think they'll disagree with your analysis.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

While I do agree that defense can have a strong impact, I think it's disingenuous to characterize the #7 alliance beating the #2 at Hartford as being a result of the overwhelming defense.

In quarterfinal match 7, the first hint of defense occurs around ~50s left in the match from what I see. The match also started with two out of three robots on red dying immediately after autonomous (both of their alliance stations have blinking lights at ~128s left in teleop). 3104 came back after about 50 seconds, while 176, the first pick of the alliance, remained dead throughout the match.

In the quarterfinal tiebreaker match, again defense doesn't start until there are only about halfway through the match. 3104 a few seconds after auto, contributing nothing until the end of the match. Despite this, the red alliance still got the tower health to 1. I'm all for talking up defense, but 7 upsetting 2 wasn't about the defense played. It was an alliance taking advantage when the opponents couldn't keep comms together and perform their strategy as a result.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I appreciate the effort and thought put into this thread by you and others. Your personal experiance is a great addition, but I think I draw a different conclusion. While your other bullet points have merit, I think they are greatly overshadowed by #4. As a third robot, you held two robots that scored a combined high of 12 high goals to only 6, in two matches! Instead of saying defense is only an option if you can't stay with them, I think defense is the way to go if you can stay with them. You say in the same bullet point that their third pick put in 2 high balls, you prevented 6. Assuming the capture is a given and your other 2 bots offense is equal or better, you're coming out ahead.

Not even factoring in the other points brought up pro defense; like congestion from 4 bots, preventing a short circuit of balls being inbounded, availability of shooters as a top 3 seed alliance, etc. The PNW has seen defense consistently change the game at the highest levels seen thus far, we'll see how DCMP goes this weekend.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Think about the "opportunity cost" of having a dedicated defense robot in your courtyard:
- They aren't scoring any boulders
- They aren't breaching any defenses
- They aren't delivering boulders to your high goal shooters
- Your high goal shooters are making fewer, longer cycles (on average) because they need to complete the breaching.
- The defense robot is "idle" any time they are alone in the courtyard.
- Defense carries a high risk of collecting fouls
- Defense slows down good scorers, but rarely stops them.

You can't just consider the goals blocked. You also need to consider the affect it has on your own offense. There is more to defense than sending a dedicated robot into your own courtyard.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

Honestly, after watching Waterloo Finals, I think they'd have been better off with another 1-2 boulder high goal shooter. (No idea if there was even one available though) 3560 didn't block shots at all, staying in the Neutral Zone entirely, and only really played a factor of really getting in the way twice during the 3 finals matches, maybe adding a total of 20-25 seconds delay to the opposing alliance per match. That's like 1 ball. They got more penalties than that in their final match.
5912 did a much better job of defense for the red alliance, and even then was only responsible for maybe 1-2 missed shots and 25-30 seconds of total delay per match. But they got a penalty for contact to a robot in the Outerworks each match, so that negates at least one of those boulders saved each match.

While I appreciate your extrapolation, through watching specifically play on red's side of the field, we realistically only prevented/delayed 3-4 shots max. Alliance 1 was playing out of their mind in Finals 2, and would have not scored that much in their matches against us. And if 51 their 3rd robot had not been playing low goal offense, they would have not captured in either match, but still winning by proxy of larger high:low goals scored ratio.

Alternatively, if we HAD played offense, we most certainly would have captured both matches too. But 6 of our balls would have been low, and 8 of their would have been high, so they still would have won. We were simply way outgunned. If either us or 4776 had been shooting 4 high (instead of each of us capable of 4 low), the only difference then would be two high boulders and 67's hang, which is much closer. But we don't live in fantasy land, we didn't, and they did. Our inability to shoot high was the sole reason we relegated someone to defense. We could almost keep up with them in frequency, but not point value.

Is the capture really a given though. In most events, you'll be really hard pressed to find multiple robots capable of consistently scoring more than 4 teleop high goals/match. We'll see more data as Regional Championships play out.

I have not watched much PNW, but coming from my friends in Washington, there were not that many high goal shooters to choose from at district events, therefore scarcity forced the hand of Alliance Captains to play defense with their 2nd picks. We'll see if defense can continue when shooters are more plentiful into the 3rd round of robots.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

This is correct, IF the defensive robot can prevent the capture... many strong alliances have proven the ability to get the tower below 0 (by quite a bit!) even with defense though.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

In that case, if a capture can be achieved even with the defender, the line between shooting & defense becomes much more gray.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

1114 and 2056 are scoring monsters, both with fairly accurate shots as displayed near the end of the match. Leaving them undefended is, quite simply, a nightmare. However, 2056 has a safe shot, and 1114 is fairly good at maneuvering around defense. Playing 3560 where they did was a very smart move, and I would argue that it's what won 1241, 610, and 3560 the event. 3560 effectively prevented the opposition from fast cycles in the secret passage, limiting their scoring ability tremendously.
On top of this, you would've seen a similar effect, had 2056 and 1114 pulled the same move. 610 was running very impressive, fast cycles in and out through the low bar, and to the high goal. Had 2056 and 1114 placed their 2nd pick there, I predict that we would've seen a reduction in the number of boulders they scored by almost 1/2.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

What about the teams that place a defense bot in their own courtyard? It gets pretty crowded with four bots, but it allows for two to cycle shoot, and the last to stand it the way of the opposing alliance's defense. It worked well for our elimination matches in East Kentwood (and in some cases, the defense bot could still contribute scoring 3 low goals or so).

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

I'm pretty sure that you mean opponent's courtyard here, so I'm going to go off that.

IMO, this is lowkey potentially one of the strongest offensive strategies, but it relies of a few things:
1. Incredible coordination between Alliance Partners. I'm pretty sure that with 3 robots in the courtyard, it started to feel cramped for our drivers at Waterloo. Adding a fourth could potentially ruin cycle times as robots struggle to make space for each other while efficiently running cycles.
2. You believe that your 2 scorers are stronger than the opponent's 2 scorers. Not a difficult assessment to make, as hopefully you have scouting data to work off of.

I think that if you're able to secure >12 balls in the opponent's courtyard/side of the field, this strategy will guarantee a win. However, if you are unable to secure those balls, you run the risk of being forced to roll boulders into your opponent's eagerly waiting intake.

Re: Triple Cyclers or Defense?
 

And of course, this means that the cyclers have to be strong breachers in their own ways, since they need to quickly make into the neutral zone for boulders with no hesitation if their outer work of choice is already being used. This strategy was mostly used when the opposing shooters were facing mechanical issues, but it ensured the win in the finals for my team.