Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Hear me out here, because I think this strategy will crush in finals.

This is kind of like most of the events that First puts out. You have to go across the field and score on the other, while you are loading on the opposite side.

Now, I have read the rules thoroughly, and I think that defense is one of the best strategies that you can have in this years event.

Think about it though. Gears have a huge value to them. They make you think that shooting would be a waste of your time, practically. So why not create the ultimate gear robot and just crush everyone else and get those sweet RP?

Because, if you have a defense robot in your game, you are so screwed if you can't hold your ground.

You are allowed to hit those robots putting on those gears as much as you want (unless you pin them for more than five seconds :/) You can push them away from that pin and keep them at bay. The only saving grace they may have is the side bars, which don't protect them that much.

I think that this will be the most broken strategy, but most of my team doesn't, but we'll see at the regional competition.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

I'll happily take my 8/18 ft/s 6-CIM drive train and smush you into my receiving zone. Game on! ;)

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Hidden?
11:25AM today:
Defense is most definitely viable for STEAMWORKS, but it can be done with most designs, and I don't think many individuals have thrown defense (specifically at the gear scoring area) out the window as a viable match strategy.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

You might run into a problem with C08 there.

If you push me into your RZ and it's clear I can't avoid being pushed there, you should draw a C08 foul for forcing me to draw a foul that I otherwise wouldn't have.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

It's a statement about being able to do it.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

In that case, I'll happily let you do that to get 5 points :D

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

So... you're saying that if we build effective robots, we'll win? Wow! What a revelation! :rolleyes:

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Not a ref, but....

Don't put yourself into the position of having a ref need to make a split-second decision.

Let us say that the ref isn't looking directly at your pair of bots the entire time but is needing to be looking at another spot as well. When the ref focuses on your bots again, what he sees is you being in the retrieval zone no matter how you got there. Who do you think is going to get the foul? You put yourself into a risky position, you have to accept that risk.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

This has come up many years before now. In the cases of protected zones, expect the referee to give the penalty to the person on defense. Especially if my team has only ever done offense, it is easy to say we're only pushing into our own zone and you getting a penalty as a result is not our intent - we simply want you out of our way and are doing what's within the rules to do it.

It will likely be Q&A'ed.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

This is call that you will rarely get called to the defensive robots favor. Last year a robot flipped us in our own courtyard. The ref still gave the opposing alliance scaling points when their robots smashed into our robot inside of its frame perimeter, significantly damaging our robot. The scaling points "won" the match for the other alliance.

I can see where the call came from though. It could be argued that the other robot was acting within standard gameplay when tipped our robot (unintentionally) as it attempted to get to the low-goal (as well as at the end of the match while trying to get to the batter.) Same call should be made if a defensive bot is trying to block access to a receiving zone and it is pushed into it.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

We have not played an official match of STEAMworks yet. In the reffing of the above years with the listed rules, however, what you're discussing was never the interpretation. (I say having reffed that exactly situation several hundred times under those rules and having coached champion defensive and offensive bots under the same.) If an offensive robot had a right to be somewhere or do something, pushing a defensive robot that put itself in the way was not at all a "strategy aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule". The pusher's strategy is to "play offense", and the defense is just in its way. The foul is on the defense. The only time one of my ref crews has ever not given it to the defense is one case in which the defensive bot actually broke down in front of a protected zone, stayed there dead for a good chunk of the match, and an offensive bot went out of its to hit it repeatedly and then leave. When I coach, my rule is always Defend at My Own Risk.


You're of course free to Q&A this, but forwarning to phrase it carefully lest you provoke the dreaded Your FRC Overlords Do Not Comment on Hypothetical Situations response. (Myself, I wouldn't bother provoking them for such a perennial situation; this is by no means a new phenomenon unless you have an edge case in mind.)

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

It is because of all this discussion and thought that I despise defense. I understand its part of the games but its not FIRST IMHO. Otherwise I would rater open it up to full contact and be more like battle bots. Bumping is ok with me but just getting in the way to stop a team from playing the game is silly in my opinion. I would rather just be able to have a function flip the offending bot over and be done with it. All or nothing. I realize I am in the minority here and many like the idea of defense and feel its important to the game. I disagree. I feel first provides enough challenges in the game to keep us occupied and silly bumping is remedial. Just an opinion I can respect the POV of those who do think its important. Either way its legal.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

I am a Denver Broncos fan and I take serious offense at your comment.:D

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

where in the rules does it say that you can push a robot while it is trying to attach a gear to the spring

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

You don't need a rule telling you that you can do a thing, you need a rule telling you that you can't. If you have found a rule that says you can't hit someone when they're placing a gear, please let me know. I have not found such a rule.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Fyi regardless of how, why, or what state your robot is in. If you were in that courtyard at the 20 second mark any robot could touch you for any reason and they got an automatic scale

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

There was a poll posted earlier, and it stated that most teams are designing towards being gear robots, which essentially makes your point moot.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

First rule of CD polls: Don't trust 'em.

Second rule of CD polls: You heard me. Don't trust 'em.

Do I need to include the third, fourth, and fifth rules of CD polls?


Joking aside, I would suspect that many teams are still making that decision, and suspect even more strongly that many teams aren't saying that that decision is or which way they're leaning. If the poll was up in Week 6 of build and was public so everybody could see who was voting which way, that would be another story.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

That wasn't really the point of the post. The point was that although that situation was a textbook definition of a offensive robot forcing a defensive robot to commit a foul (there was no way that we could have avoided the foul after they forced a flip and then hit us within the last 20s), it didn't matter since the offensive robot was arguably attempting to act within standard gamplay and thus no G11 (or C08) call.;)

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Thankfully, some of the T-bone power will be mitigated by the shields next to the gear lifts. It's also important to consider how easy it is to get stuck in the lauchpad- there's some tight choke points over there. If you get backed into their key, you're picking up fouls.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

6 CIMS? Wow. The stall current is 133 amps per motor, or 800 amps total. How do you keep from tripping the circuit breaker?:ahh:

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

6 CIM tank drives are perhaps the most common drive in FIRST.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

6 CIM colson with cut treads says otherwise.

I think you can defend all you want and possibly slow down teams and stop them from putting up 1 or 2 more gears then they would have, but at the end of the day scoring is what wins. I'd think about if stopping those 1 or 2 more gears is worth devoting the time when you yourself could be scoring. Especially when stopping those gears could, in the end, not even matter as you need 6 gears for the last rotor. If you defend for 2 or so gears and they wouldn't have put up all 6 anyway, you just wasted your whole match doing nothing.

The real opponent of this game, like most cycling games, is time. You'll see defense through districts and regionals but I believe it will fade away at higher levels.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

I would bet 4 CIM is far more common, the kit chassis transmission has been designed for it since like 2005.

Don't Stall, a single CIM will trip a breaker at stall. Putting multiple motors in parallel should move you to a better part of the current curve, at the same torque, two motors in parallel should draw less current than a single motor.

A good piece of advice, is to design you drive train so it can play great defense, but build towards a different strategy. You are much more likely to be picked for the finals as a decent gear bot that has a great drive train, than being a purpose built defense bot.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Easy. Don't stall the CIMs. There will be some code protection, but otherwise it will be driver training.

Teams who think it will be easy to push/etc a bot that is placing a gear have another thing coming. If you come to defend us on one side lift, we'll make you chase us to the other side lift, behind 2 airlift ships that 100% obscure driver vision of what's going on with your robot. You'll likely get caught/jammed up on the walls that separate the lifts.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like that fact - I have no idea why the GDC is obsessed with obscuring the driver's vision of the field in recent years. Yet teams are better off watching the field tour videos of the driver's station before they decide what defense they play. There are plenty of other spots on the field for good defense :).

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

My guess is to push vision. They really seem to want vision to be used, and thats one easy way to do it.

it would be nice if we got a little more bandwidth though... :rolleyes:

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

But you're not going to use vision to drive behind the airship up to a heavily defended loading area. It just makes everyone peer through laggy webcams :(

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

The past two years we did vision our camera hasn't been that laggy. I dont know the code (only saw the driver station at competition being the HP) but ours was fairly good at keeping itself in realtime.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

I didn't realize this was a hidden strategy. With the loading station and the lift at opposite ends of the field and a limit of one gear carried meaning that you want to make about a dozen trips, disrupting that supply chain was obvious to many of our team members.

Re: Call me crazy, but there's a hidden op strategy
 

Meh. It is obvious to me how to make your disruptions irrelevant and/or risky to execute. It's a lot of the same on-field strategies employed in 2007 & 2013.