[cmrnpizzo14]

Essentially, there is no way to play defense in this years game. Since the offensive robots can be up to 84" high while defensive robots can only be up to 60" high, blocking shots is not really an option. In fact, if the defensive robot is pushed right up against the offensive robot and the defensive robot is the full 60", if the offensive robots shooter is a mere 36" off of the ground and shoots at an angle of about 70 degrees (which is a fairly plausible release angle, look at any basketball player shoot), there only needs to be 2' of space between the edge of the shooter on the offensive robot and the defensive robot to clear it without being blocked. In addition to this, the key provides a nearly impossible to defend safe zone and the only way that you can effectively defend against a robot once it gets in the key would be to prevent it from acquiring any more balls past the 3 that it already had (assuming that it would have 3, I see no reason why it would not). Really the best strategy for defense would be to block robots from getting into the key in the first place similar to last years strategy of blocking robots from getting into their safe zone. By having a robot patrolling between the coopertition bridge and the opposing alliance bridge, it could force any robots from the other alliance towards the wall and pin to simply delay the scoring or if its drive train is particularly robust, then it could actually just keep pushing the opposing robots away from the key. In short, I believe that this year's game will be entirely offensive with really no way to defend against a high class robot whatsoever.