Re: [VIDEO] Swamp Scrimmage 2007
 

Looks like you all got some good practice in yesterday! I bet that was fun, any words of wisdom for how actual gameplay is as opposed to speculation? Anything you found interesting, or something unexpected?

I loved 179's ramp, and I'm betting young 1889 is going to be a force this year.

Re: [VIDEO] Swamp Scrimmage 2007
 

wow. all those bots look awesome. good luck throughout the season

Re: [VIDEO] Swamp Scrimmage 2007
 

Hi Barry,
Lets see as far as the "how did it play out" question.
Scoring with these teams came a lot easier than I though it might with an arm, however scoring on the other side of the rack didn't happen much. the size, shape obstruction, and the other teams being there makes it very difficult. I deffinitely see these racks being fully covered in ringers by the end of the match where no deffense is played. When we switched into defense, only 1 score was made against us.
The matches were played gently, so I'm not sure what it will be like when the gloves come off. I can say that we started out with everyone just scoring the side facing them. It just comes naturally to want to get more up than the other guy, but all that happened is both got lots up and cancelled out the rows. We had a few 6-7 rows and after that, they immediately tried to break rows, they hung effective spoilers.
The ramp was used and worked quickly at the end, that 30 or 60 points will come in handy. But a good ring game needs to accompany those points.
Our Autonomous worked consistently, and that extra keeper on there was actually the catalyst for the 6-7 rows we had a few times.
However I think this game will change quickly into a brawl and this scoring idea will be done by the forgotten or the fittest.

Also the radio dropout issue was with everyone. The radios were constantly going out and bots were coasting where they shouldn't have.

Re: [VIDEO] Swamp Scrimmage 2007
 

Agreed, its not going to be easy at all, especially when there already are ringers hanging on your side of the rack, visibility to the other side was near impossible, Its definetly going to be an interesting competition!

Re: [VIDEO] Swamp Scrimmage 2007
 

[quote=Swampdude;581496]Hi Barry,
When we switched into defense, only 1 score was made against us.
The matches were played gently, so I'm not sure what it will be like when the gloves come off. I can say that we started out with everyone just scoring the side facing them. /QUOTE]

This is interesting, just trying to clear things up. It sounds like you only played defense once or twice but from what your saying during those matches that you played defense only one ringer was scored for the oposing team? Or do you mean while playing defense on a specific team that team only scored 1 ringer?

Either way I'm consistantly more worried about defense. It seems like ramp bots / underdeveloped arms will just throw their weight around till their opponents break or can't cap a thing. Capping the ringers is not very difficult with a good arm, and a good driver, but it seems like good defense is really shutting these arm bots down. The biggest thing in question for me is usage of the yellow card. How much defense are the referees going to allow this year. If a lot, this could be a glorified robot version of 2003.

If only in mild controlled doses, this could be a quite exciting and strategic game.

At our skrimmage no one even got near each other, unless we were climbing a ramp so it was tough to tell.

Re: [VIDEO] Swamp Scrimmage 2007
 

There were only 4 teams there (1 was mostly inactive) and, what I'm describing was 1 on 1. Although while this was taking place, 1/3 of the rack was turned into a tangled mess. The 1 free guy could only score opposite of this action. Add 3 more bots to the action and you've got a big mess. It was mainly us against MARS, and they did an excellent job of placing them where they needed to go. But when we saw them coming with a spoiler, or a ringer where we didn't want it, we blocked them. This happened about 5 times.
Usually they dropped it. But once they got it on where they wanted it. These days everyone has good traction, so there won't be a lot of shoving someone clean out of site. It usually just means 2 immovable objects stuck together and some shifting around until 1 gives up. I would plan on arms getting pushed against arms for defense and bases getting shoved into the rack and spider legs etc.
Scoring will happen when teams are all trying to keep their babies away from getting hurt. But it only takes 1 bot to change all of that. I don't see that yellow flags apply to normal defense. The things I'm describing happen with very legal normal defense - where contact is made bumper to bumper, and when an arm is outside of the starting envelope it is fair game.
You can't grab a ringer in someone else's possession, but you can block it.
We were playing nice and I think what we were doing would have worked regardless. Add a little intensity to it, and scoring will go way down.
I think what will normally happen is teams from both sides will start by attempting to outscore the other side. As soon as the other teams begin to threaten what you've built or if they are beginning to put a long row together, the defense will start. That will usually happen around 1 minute into the match. Also the 9 ringers you start with will go very fast. You're really going to need the ones on the other end of the field. Those are very hard to see, and you're contending with the opponents territory also. So make your first Human Player 9 count.