Re: defensive strategies
 

I agree, if you want to hurdle, you need to be able to pick it up quickly and be in the process of hurdling, so the defense will subside.

Re: defensive strategies
 

I was surprised not to see this in any of the Regionals I've witnessed:

Setting: Red alliance has two great hurdlers and a speedy lapper. Blue has two hurdlers and a third bot that can herd and descore, but has a marginally useful arm that might be able to hurdle once a match if no one nudges them.

Why wouldn't blue have their third robot simply POSSESS a red ball for the entire match? The way the rules are written, this would cost blue a single 10-point penalty, but would deprive red of 30-50 hurdling points. Seems like a no-brainer role for a weak third bot in an alliance -- the red hurdlers play with only one ball between them, but the blues get two. What am I missing?

Re: defensive strategies
 

The idea that your missing is that continually violating a rule can earn your team a yellow card or potentially a DQ

Re: defensive strategies
 

While you may not possess your opponents tracball, you can wedge it between yourself and the walls, especially in the corners. Works well. I expect to see teams doing that over and over in Atlanta.

Re: defensive strategies
 

There are six rules that specifically state that repeated violations can lead to disqualification. G29 is not one of them.

Interestingly, in "The Game" rules, rev G, the term "YELLOW CARD" is used in <G41> but not in any other rule. The YELLOW CARD and RED CARD rules appear in <T05>: "The Head Referee may assign a YELLOW CARD as a warning of egregious ROBOT or team member behavior." There is no definition of "egregious" but I would argue that violation of a game rule is not in and of itself egregious. Several robots in Seattle committed at least a dozen G22 errors (one robot managed four in a single match), and not one of them was yellow-carded. In the rules, only <G41> is specifically eligible for a yellow card for repeated violations. If the GDC took time to single out <G41>, why wouldn't they mention other rules?

As it turns out, I'd be in favor of adding <G29> to the "yellow card" rules with <G41>, but the question here was, has anyone tried it?

Re: defensive strategies
 

As much as I hate to suggest reffing by intent, I would say that possessing an opponents trackball for the entire match obviously shows that it was done intentionally which, to me, constitutes egregious behavior.

Re: defensive strategies
 

There're all sorts of situations wherein one may intentionally violate the rules and draw a penalty but come out ahead. I have not seen this sort of behavior receive a yellow card.

In Seattle, we intentionally violated G22 once and almost again a second time.

Re: defensive strategies
 

And if I remember correctly, one of your alliance partners risked a G22 to nudge you upright in a match. If not you, it was someone else -- watching every single match (about 100 at Seattle) converts some memories to a blur...

Anyway, grabbing an opponent's trackball and grappling it for two minutes at the cost of a 10-point penalty would surely incur the wrath of the officials -- if not immediately, then eventually. It's like 190's spinning tower, it's just such an obvious perversion of the rules that someone is going to look for a problem with it.

Taking a foul on purpose to further the strategic goal of your team is a tried-and-true tactic in sports. Hmm. I wonder if violating <G29> would draw a yellow flag.

Re: defensive strategies
 

Was a partner stuck on the overpass?

Re: defensive strategies
 

Yes -- we violated <G22> when helping someone stuck in the overpass.

The second instance would've involved deliberately breaking <G22> to place a bonus ball onto the overpass, but we ran out of time.

Re: defensive strategies
 

Why not block the other ball from play while your at it? I honestly would love to see the refs reaction to someone in procession of an opponents ball while blocking the teams from getting the other one which is in a corner, though thats just asking to be yellow carded.

Re: defensive strategies
 

you'd still have to leave a passing lane, otherwise you could be moved for a bump to pass...

Re: defensive strategies
 

This strategy could be interpreted a couple different ways. One is that they only get one ten point penalty. However looking at the rule:

<G29> POSSESSING Opponent’s TRACKBALLS - ROBOTS may not be in the POSSESSION of a TRACKBALL belonging to an opposing ALLIANCE. A PENALTY will be assigned for each violation....

and the definition of POSSESSION:

POSSESSION: Controlling the position and movement of a TRACKBALL while the TRACKBALL is supported or captured by an ALLIANCE shall be considered POSSESSION of the TRACKBALL.

could also lead one to assume that each change in position or movement of the robot possessing the opponent's trackball could be a new violation and a new penalty. (What happens if they take possession and hit "disable"?) I suspect what would happen, however, would be that after assessing the first penalty, the ref would instruct the possessing team to release the opponents' trackball, and if they failed to proceed to do so in a timely fashion they would continue to receive penalties.

Interestingly our team DID take possession of an opponent's trackball in Portland, entirely by mistake. The rest of the drive team was yelling at our (normally very calm and collected and "on the ball") driver... "NO NO WRONG COLOUR" but he grabbed the ball anyway. Fortunately our launch operator immediately hit the "fire" button (which is seperate from our launcher's charge button... the fire just gives the ball a little kick if the system is not charged) and the ball popped free before the refs noticed.

The main reason we haven't seen this strategy, though, in my opinion is because most teams have bought in to the concept that this game is supposed to be about scoring and the teams that are capable of posessing a ball want to go score some points with it!

Jason

Re: defensive strategies
 

Well, no wonder he wasn't dumping the ball. They were yelling "colour" instead of "color" and the tournament was in the USA.

Re: defensive strategies
 

I'm glad this thread came back up. I've been wondering how defense could be played after seeing the lack of it in just about every regional I've witnessed.

It looks to me as though defense itself is not a very good strategy unless it is "on the move" such as knocking an opponent trackball clockwise etc. But the best defense which I unfortunately have yet to see is what everyone else has already brought up: just taking an opponent trackball. How much harder would it be just to pin it in a corner rather than possessing it? You accomplish the same thing without receiving a penalty. The two best alliance members could just rack up the points while the third bot can be put on the task of pinning an opponent trackball and taking it out of the game. It seems to me like shutting down your opponents opportunity to score without even getting penalized does more for your alliance than just goin around the tack does. If you could get your hands on an opponent trackball early in the match, you take out half of your opponents points. I really want to see this strategy used in Atlanta (just not against my team:D ). My only fear is that if this strategy is used to often and the game turns into one on one trackballs, the refs would do something to counteract this. I don't think this strategy is what first was aiming for when designing the game (but I do like it a lot). If it's overused, I bet a rule will be made along the lines of "you can't pin an opponent trackball for more than 6 seconds" or something like that.