Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffy
I'm very surprised most teams aren't taking advantage of the 84 inch rule when making an "on the fly" wall bot.
Seems a bot with a wide appendage at 84 inches would block any shot.
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It's a hard call to make on the fly, especially in between elimination matches if you want to do it legally.
A wide enough 84" tall robot in the right position is pretty much the end all be all to the FCS game. Even with a high exit point on the FCS (50" or so), the 84" wall would only need to be within 30-36" to render that FCS useless, assuming they're exit angle is somewhere less than 30 degrees from horizontal. (haven't seen something more steep yet)
That being said, there are some interesting trade-offs to this decision.
- Assuming it's something being done very quickly, odds are the 84" tall wall is going to be stuck at 84" tall. If it is, you've now limited your defender to playing on a third of the field... And of that third, you lose quite a bit of it to both the pyramid and your opponents loading zone.
- Assuming you're building blocker that can withstand repeated shots at point black range, it's going to have to be well constructed. Odds are, this is going to shift the CoG of the robot up quite a bit, which could make playing effective defense a bit difficult.
- If the opposing alliance has a capable floor loader, the FCS robot only needs to get discs to the other end of the field, not necessarily score them. In this case, shooting over the blocker becomes a viable option.
Now, if you can make the blocker removable and/or actuate into position, you can ignore a lot of this stuff. But, if you think about it, if your alliance is willing to sacrifice a machine to be an 84" tall wall then odds are, the opposing alliance is willing to sacrifice one of their machines to remove the wall from the equation.
Also, at CH, in multiple matches, the opposing alliance would send two or even all three of their robots after 225's FCS in an attempt to prevent it from getting to the feeder station. One of the things to remember when trying such a strategy, is that you can't win if you're not scoring points... Specifically in Semi 2-1, the Blue Alliance spent the first 45-50 seconds of the match playing defense against 225. During this time, we (341) essentially were playing offense on a completely open field which let us put up some solid points and win the match...