Want your alliance to defend?
 

Are you planning to ask your alliances not to defend?

Considering the penalty risks inherent in defending. Combined with the thought of not knowing your alliances abilities. Are you thinking you can trust them as a standard strategy to go into opponent territory and not draw fouls? It seems very risky (as a routine plan) to want unknown alliances to play the other side of the field at risk of making contact with teams in the loading zone, or ramming high speed, or pushing high on another bot etc. Even with a great drive base and excellent control, I'm not so sure how easy it is to keep from drawing fouls.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

Since every robot is different, kinda, every teams strengths and weaknesses will be different. That means that something like this would have to mostly be determined during scouting and the alliance drivers meeting before the match.
I think having a bot not do much defence is much safer though.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

If we get paired with teams who can't cap or can't cap well we'll most likely ask them to play defense at mid-court. If they can defend the cap well enough that leaves you with two rows to cap and makes it so the opposing team can get only 1 row.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

Even given the risks of penalties I think that we will want 1 of the 3 robots on the far side of the field in most matches.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

With a six motor drive and two speeds we might end up being the defender of our alliance. It should be fun though because we play defense in an offensive way. :D

But as said earlier, it really depends on your partners. The alliance as a whole needs to take a few minutes and assess who is capable of what, and then decide on who is doing what.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

The problem though is that nearly everyones got these looooong arms. So when they go to get a tetra from even the autoloader they'll be sticking out up to 7' from the side of the field and be "recieving a tetra" sometimes it will be almost impossible not to hit them.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

Our strategy really depends who we are with and against ifno one or only one team on the other alliance can stack then we wont be playing much defence however if we are the only team who can stack and are against strong teams that can also stack then defense will be key

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

222 plays offence. Our alliances will do as their bot suits it in accordance with the opposition, basically take it match by match. IMHO the ideal ratio on an alliance is 2 offensive and 1 defensive. I have heard 1:2... but this game is too offensive not to have have 2 robots scoring (if not three:) ). And remember guys, sometimes the best defence is a good offence. 1 cap adds three points... can add ten for your alliance... and can take ten from the opponent. A 23 point swing in my favor doesn't sound bad to me. ;) . Opposed to a three to twelve point cap block (depending on how many tetras a team is trying to cap) , in which case neither team scores.

This year is all strategy.. its ridiculous..and I LOVE IT!

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

I Agreed with the scouting-
Many of the strategies I been hearing amongst teams I’ve chatted with started to sound like a basketball game.
Stuff like:
One-on-one
Protecting and controlling the zone
Defending the goals
Goal tending
Blocking the shot (or cap)
Attacking their zone

I think the HARDEST task is having your Alliance to agree on a uniform strategy before the match. Some teams will dominate the game plan because they are more prepared, more capable, or just pushier.

I’ve suggested to my teams to double the scouts this year (4-5) and to hold a scouter/ strategy meeting immediately after the Thursday practice matches, analysis the data and create thee Playbook.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

I think that their are going to be a lot of accidents this year. What do you think the refs will call this year? Will it be like you start pushing someone and you will get a penalty or will it be like if you get really aggressive you will get a penalty? This year I am going to be very cautious when driving carefull not to cause damage or recieve it.


GO 1403!!!

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

Careful. If you have been paying attention to the "load bearing surface" thread and others like it it seams that even the long arm bots may not be able to be sticking out as far as they would like. I think that at least some part of their drive base needs to be over the loading zone triangle.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

There are really a huge amount of factors, like drive train, arm ability, opponents, and much else that factor in, but we feel that offense is more effective if all robots have the capability. We might end up goal-tending and doing a bit of blocking during matches, but were gonna try to have our robot do as much capping as possible. Keep in mind, capping and stealing rows may turn out to be the best defense of them all.

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

I would prefer our alliance lean toward offense since the game requires offense to win. I think our robot will be more defensive because our arm is not the best but it can "accidentally" hook onto oppose robots and tip them over. Hopefully our driver will do this but he is a better sport then me so he might not.

I would have also liked our robot to have an arm that would pull other robots over. I know that is not good sportsmanship, but if all the opposing robots are on their backs, how do they score?

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

I' d prefer our alliance does what they do best and most reliably. And that the drive teams talk to each other and THINK during the game.

Often the simplest answer is the best but you have to have the sense to see it.

WC

Re: Want your alliance to defend?
 

If you did that razor you would be the one not scoring.