Do you agree?
 

stopping a bot from scoring 80 points is jut as good as scoring 80 points?

Re: Do you agree?
 

Well it depends on teams game strategy, but why not. I guess it would be as beneficial as scoring too. And to my knowledge there are many defensive robots out there, and most of the time teams pick other alliances keeping in mind how defensive there robot is.

Re: Do you agree?
 

I would disagree, only because of the system where you are ranked by your opponents score. Other than that yes, so in elimination rounds it is the same.

Re: Do you agree?
 

Depends on if you're down at the time. If you're a few points under, it doesn't matter if you block eighty points, you still are a few points under. But, by defending and keeping the low point margin, you stand a better chance at the end of making up those few points on the ramp. It all depends on where the match is at the time.

Re: Do you agree?
 

From experience, I am obligated to agree. I was the driver for team 418 (LASA) and we played 118 (the Robonauts) in the Lone Star Regional Finals. 118 is actually capable of scoring 80+ points (37-40 in autonomous). Our allience (231, 1421 and us) agreed I would do what I could to stop them from scoring. Though 231 had an amazing shooter and 1421 were an awesome dumper, I do not believe we could have won had 118 been allowed to do their thing. This was not the only instance we used this strategy; however, it is the most obvious, and because this strategy worked so well, I definately agree.

Re: Do you agree?
 

Disagree.
If you are down by 1 point, and stop them from scoring 10billion points, you are still down by 1 point. Additionally, every ball scored by their alliance is now under your alliances control, and able to for you to score again.
I will grant you that stopping them from scoring 80 points is better than them scoring 80 points, for quite obvious reasons. This game is all about who can score more effeciently, and often, who can score last (as to not give the opponent the chance and appropriate ball quantity to respond).

Re: Do you agree?
 

Well, that is true, but if your robot scores that 1 point, and said robot scores those 10 billion points, you've still lost (by a lot actually :D ).

Thankfully this problem has been solved by the existence of alliances! I would love to have a robot that could stop 10 billion points (ok, I'll settle for 80 points ;) )

Re: Do you agree?
 

The real question is can you score 80 points. Thier aren't many teams that can score 80 points.

Re: Do you agree?
 

I agree with the people who have said that if youre still under by justa few points it doesnt matter you need to score the points not block them

Re: Do you agree?
 

but if you block them from the beginning of the game...u might not be under at all

Re: Do you agree?
 

Hey, guys, it wasnt a question of whether or not you could stop 80 pts from being scored, or score 83, 87, 1394... points; the question was if blocking 80 points is as good as scoring 80 points- that is to say80 points in both situations- the point differential will not be any different

I'm inclined to say that it is as good or better to block points as score them, in equal amounts- in the interest of being selected, at least, even if not selecting during alliance picking, I think that strong defensive robots are much more visible and noticeable than strong scoring robots; there are less people that can shut down (insert number of points here) than can score (insert same number) at any given event.

Re: Do you agree?
 

In my experience at the philly regional this weekend, blocking is better...

In the finals, we were against team 84, Chuck. They built an amazing robot that filled up all match so they could score 30+ points at the end of it. The only way we beat them was by keeping them on their own side of the field, away from our goal.

Re: Do you agree?
 

Re: Do you agree?
 

one thing you can forget is if there is another robot that can score lots of points. you can't block both at the same time. this is where i would say scoring the points is better just for the fact of keeping it close. just my two cents.

Re: Do you agree?
 

This weekend I saw some very effective coordinated defensive attacks on good shooters. They were contained and controlled. Look what happened in Philly. The defensive attacks are only going to get better and more coordinated. For offensive super shooters to succeed I believe they are going to have to work more with their alliance setting up picks and screens. I noticed that if you constantly whack an auto aiming shooter, they are ineffective. Don't try to push them, Use the hammer drill on them. At the end of this week i believe defensive strategies are on top.

Re: Do you agree?
 

lets say the opposing alliance has a defensive bot, and two offensive. One of the offensive and defensive can play defense on these two bots and the other can score...this is what happened throughout eliminations in Boston with 1568 (defense) 233 (offense) 121(offense), by taking turns playing offense and shooting, 233 and 121 provided the points, while 1568 blocked any bot trying to shoot in the center goal.

Re: Do you agree?
 

This is a trick question and my brain already hurts!

Each alliance has 40 balls to start, right? So to block 80 points that means your alliance must have put at least 40 balls into your own goals, giving you 40 points or 120 points already.

but if you block the 80 points does that mean 80 balls, or 26.6666 balls are now on the play field, or are they still in the opponents robot that could not get off any shots?

If they are on the field then it depends whether your robot can snarf them back up off the floor. If your alliance cant do that you may be better off letting them score in the side goals, so you can (maybe) reload your robot and score them in your center goal?

My answer: insufficent input - please specify all required parameters necessary to determine a meaningfull answer! :^)

Re: Do you agree?
 

I think it is what you consider "good".

It's more impressive and crowd pleasing to see a robot score 80 points in a match by itself.

But as far as scoring and winning a match it can go both ways. As 418 already stated they used the "Stop the other guys from scoring at all cost" strategy and without it they wouldn't have won the regional. So in that sense is is quite as good to stop a team from scoring, especially if it means winning a regional.

Re: Do you agree?
 

From my experience as coach and strategizer for our team at two regionals, it always DEPENDS. One strategy will very very rarely work for all matches in this game; you have to take each match as it falls out and go from there. Our robot can play multiple roles on an alliance: if we have a good shooter on our alliance, we can play defense and dump a bit, but if we're the top shooter on the alliance, we can shoot quite well. We're an all-around robot, basically. So for our strategy...

Say we're with two dumper/defenders. We'd be the primary offense, ask the others to play defense for us while we shoot, then go for the ramp. But what if we're with two good shooters? We'd play defense with the better pusher of the other two, and we'd block for them so they can shoot effectively.

What about the opponents? If you're against two or three shooters, you concentrate your defense on the center of the field. If you're against three dumpers, though, you sit in front of the corner goals. If your opponents can't push well, defending your scorer isn't as crucial; but if you're up against a minitank, you keep them away from that shooter at all costs.

My point is, it depends on your alliance partners' capabilities, as well as those of your opponents, as to whether it's better to stop the scoring of 80 points or to score those 80 points yourself. Due to all the headaches trying to strategize before the competitions, I've decided "Case-by-case basis" is a great motto for this game. ;)

Re: Do you agree?
 

Commenting on the pick and screen method.

From what I hear (I've yet to see video) In Palmetto, 11 was able to shoot 10 for 10 through the center hoop in autonomous. Then in later matches other teams wised up and knocked into them throwing off their alignment. In the eliminations 11 had one of their partners set up a screen to block the defender so they could score...I guess that strategy worked since 11 and their allaince won the event.


Then at Philly 306 was able to shut down 84 and 365 (two of the powerhouse scorers) to win the event. So I'd go out on a limb, that if you get a robot that can score a few points in autonomous then play defense you're golden.

Re: Do you agree?
 

Our alliance at Pittsburgh did the same thing; 393 dumped in the corner for a solid, reliable 10, we (1629) shot in the center and generally made at least 3 or 4, and 1370 blocked for us.

Re: Do you agree?
 

I would think that scoring 80 pts would be better because you could always block a robot from scoring.

Re: Do you agree?
 

You can find my predictions for the winning allaince

here


here

and

here

notice my third one (on the list, actually the first one chronologically speaking) is from February BEFORE the start of regionals...so it's not like I just jumped on the bandwagon. I've been preaching it for a while...and now it's coming to fruition.

Re: Do you agree?
 

at the two regionals ive been too half the teams atleast could score 80 points easily and effectively one team even scored 130 some odd points(233) ive definitely seen a lot of teams score 80 points without breaking a sweat but idk a lot fo veyr good teams were at my regionals not to say there wasnt at yours but it was jaw dropping with teams like 121 233 40 1276(i think kaizen blitz if i got the number wrong maybe it was 1257 idk)but once these teams got it it was amazing team 126 even shoots 2 balls at once

Re: Do you agree?
 

my view exactly well put and well said

Re: Do you agree?
 

The LA regional showed that Defensive bots prosper.

968 (offensive), 1138 (defensive), 4 (defensive).
968 has the same bot as the Cheesey Poofs so they are just as good.

If you are a good enough defensive bot. Stopping 80 points is equally as rewarding as making 80 points.

I'm not sure what's more fun though. Keeping one of the big-shot teams from scoring, or actually scoring yourself. I'd say keeping the big-shot team from scoring.

Re: Do you agree?
 

I have to take the opposite position. You cannot win unless you score at least one point.

The logical extreem of the question would be one robot that can only shoot and score, against another robot that can only block (play defense).

so if it comes down to blocking OR scoring, scoring is better. Its the only option that allows you to win the match.

Re: Do you agree?
 

Scoring 80 pts is better. There are only 80 sec (2 periods) of offense in this game. Defense can take all 120 sec (3 periods). So the offensive bot is more productive since it only takes 2/3 of the time to do its 80 pt job. The offensive bot could play defense during the defensive period and prevent other bots from scoring (bring its point total above 80 pts). Or the offensive bot could be the backbot (required) and let other bots play defense.

Also, the offensive bot might draw defenders effectively preventing them from scoring. In one qualifying match at Philly, a bot was the best offensive and defensive bot on an alliance. They spent their entire match playing good defense on a high scoring bot and probably prevented more points than they would have scored, but their alliance was unable to to score enough points without them. Their point gain is the difference between the points they prevented and the points they would have scored if they were not playing D. The other bot's point gain is the sum of points they managed to score while being defended and the points the defender would have scored.

I am not saying defense is not important because it is very important in this game. However, it is not a 1 for 1 tradeoff with offense and if you have a choice I suggest you score 80 pts.

Re: Do you agree?
 

OK first off I am on the same team ans DaveA and Guju4life, however I have to take the opposite point of view scoring points is far more important, If you can't put points on the board you can't win. Especially in qualifying rounds when you need good scores by both teams to seat well for picking.

In the elimination rounds scoring is most important this is why you nearly always see the top shooters picked first, defense can also be used effectively abut not nearly as effectively as scoring. Many of the best alliances are 2 shooters and one defensive bot (I believe this is largely due to the serpentine draft) three defensive bots will never beat 3 offensive bots, the period system this year makes it very difficult to effectively block shooters for the whole game. Over all I would say big shooters are the best but strategy will always reign supreme, as much as I would like to take credit for having an effective defensive autonomous all these do is go across the field really fast and at high torque, the success of 90% of these modes is properly predicting what the other robot will do rather than elegant design of the bot or elegant programming. Defense is bigger this year than it was in the past, however I believe at nationals it will be less defensive and more emphasis will be on robots with good traction that can shoot and push (like the triplets 121, 233 and 1276 I'm sure there are plenty more that I haven't seen).

James

p.s. Dave there is no way half the robots we have been against can score 80 points, I would say that no more than 5 of them could.

Re: Do you agree?
 

James i was overexaggerating but i totally agree with u and 3 good offense is the elite alliance but because of the picking its hard to comby 3 good shooters they are usually all picked up and im pretty certain more then 5 bots could score more then 80 points id say 6 but at atlanta i think their might be more then 6 maybe 7 or so idk

Re: Do you agree?
 

Why an effective autonomus is good:

at milwaukee, we were against Wildstang and another really good shooter. One time the other alliance got so many in the center goal during autonomus that the can was full, and there were still balls jammed up the tube. :ahh:

Needles to say we lost, even after we lost to wildstang in Chicago too :(

P.S. I now have nightmares about tie dye :eek:

Re: Do you agree?
 

Stopping a robot from scoring 80 pts. is an excellent game strategy, if you have someone on your alliance who can score. We did a lot of blocking this year and honestly it was the deciding factor in a lot of matches.

Even if your losing and you don't have a good shooter, blocking is good because it creates a reputation for yourself. Even if you lose 80-0 people can say "Wow, look at ______, they really tried and they'll never give up" which can lead to a good rep and that can do wonders for you.

Re: Do you agree?
 

Truthfully, it depends on the capabilities of your robot, your alliance robots and his alliance robots.

If you believe you can out shoot/score your opponents then then stopping them from scoring is counterproductive.

If [with all the stars aligned and karma smiling sweetly on you] your alliance can only hope to score 30 points then blocking them is just as good.

So, in answer to your question, I'll go with a definate maybe ;)

Re: Do you agree?
 

Yes. Then rely on your allies to score the rest of the point you need.

Re: Do you agree?
 

From what I have seen, their are very few combination of robots that can score 80 points together. Everyone by now has gone to regionals, ask yourself how many times did you score over 80 points.

at FLR we (as an alliance) did it 5 times out of our 20 matches at FLR (25%)

at GTR we (as an alliance) did it twice (if i remember correctly) out of 15 matches at GTR (13%)

These are extremely low percentages, and i know for most of the other teams at both of the regionals these precentages are even lower.

Now given you have the right alliance you could score 80 points but from what I have seen it is nearly never done in qualifications, let alone finals.

edit:// I'm only using my team because we were mainly in the high scoring matches and I also know the regionals that i personally attended the best.

Re: Do you agree?
 

i thought about this last night how i agreed with my teamate that 3 good shooters is the best alliance and irealized i was totally wrong to agree i think its only the 3rd best line up
2 good shooters and a defender will level the playing field with teh 3 shooters right away so then its 2 shooters against two shooters not counting if the defender can block more tehn robot at times which will give the 2 shooters and edge

2 defenders and a shooter does the same thing plus im pretty sure 2 solid defenders could block all three robots at times as i have seen teams push 2 times at once this is counting the fact that the 3 shooters some might be loaded by the human player and have to drop back to reload and then your team again gets the edge so i take back the 3 good shooters being the best aliance if u have 2 shooters or 1 shooter that is just as good as the other shooters i think it could be a nice match up just my 2 cents