Re: Two Questions Regarding Hurdling
 

I can't remember which team it was, but at Seattle a robot blocked the launchers to great effect. They had a tall robot designed to knock balls off the overpass. They would position themselves in the homestretch of the other alliance and just sit. If bumped, they would move off, but the launcher would then be too close to shoot. If the launcher fired from its optimum range, they would either hit the blocking bot, or have to maneuver into a clear position to fire. In either event, the defender either blocked the shot, forced the shooter into a bad location to launch, or simply wasted some of the shooter's precious time. It was a nice strategy, and one that I am surprised not to have seen on Webcasts of other Regionals.

Re: Two Questions Regarding Hurdling
 

Since most launchers don't shoot straight up, the ball remains in contact with the robot as it projects upwards and forwards. This means that a launcher could pull up right behind a blocking robot, fire the ball into the robot, and draw a penalty on the blocking robot as the blocker would be contacting the ball while the launcher was attempting a hurdle. Minus ten for the blocker if the ref catches it, and the ball is still "live" for a hurdling attempt without needing to do another lap.

The refs in Seattle were on top of this... in fact they were on top of pretty much everything... and in fact our final game of qualifying in Seattle was decided in the last few seconds when an opponent was penalized for blocking our shot.

Now it might work better if you positioned the blocking robot on the counter-clockwise side of the overpass. Since the ball needs to completely pass over the finish line to complete a hurdle, the ball would not have scored, and there is no way that the blocking robot would be contacting either the ball or the launching robot in the home stretch.

However I know from our launching experience that our drivers were able to hurdle (and even place the ball on the overpass) when there were two balls already on the overpass... so while the blockers do slow launchers down, they aren't likely to stop them.

Jason

Re: Two Questions Regarding Hurdling
 

In the semis at FLR, 272 did their best Patriot Missile impression by shooting down Sparx's hurdle right over the overpass :yikes: . No hurdle, and both balls bounced back near their launching robot. Craziest thing I've seen so far this year.

Re: Two Questions Regarding Hurdling
 

I certainly saw that shot and block -- it's probably the one to which I referred in the last post -- I didn't realize they called a G42 on it. (You'd think as the scorekeeper I would know, wouldn't you?) That same bot used the interfere-subtly-with-the-hurdlers technique throughout the later matches of qualifying. It worked pretty well, and I don't think it drew many penalties.