[karomata]

Defense has actually probably had one of the largest impacts in Ultimate Ascent. At kickoff, many people thought that because of the placing of the pyramids, it was insane to get anywhere near robots shooting near their pyramid. However, with the rise of full court shooters, defense quickly became a good idea. Taller robots with more material higher up were successfully able to block full court shooters, however alliances without them were knocked out consistantly because of the sheer scoring power of full court shooter. For example, 3173 had an average score of 80 at the Boston Regional. This was not an easy team to beat, regardless of who their alliance partners were, this is shown in 3173s continuous success throughout the elims in both the Finger Lakes and Boston Regional. The only way to have any chance at stopping full court shooters, like 3173 or 148, is to have a defensive tall robot, or as shown in silicon valley, have them fall over on the way to their feeder station.

Throughout the build season, the idea of defensive robots was radically under estimated. Nobody thought that any team would pull off a successful full court shooter, so nobody would see any need for defense. It just goes to show that you can never overestimate the abilities of FIRST teams.

The one robot design that is defense based that I believe would have a great impact would be a fan robot. This is basically a robot with a gigantic fan on top of it, that would blow vertically and blow all the discs off their paths. It would be the ultimate defense robot because it could defend any sort of shooting from any area on the field. It could just station itself beneath the opposing alliances goals, and prevent the alliance from scoring at all. This robot would probably not have a whole lot of luck getting a high ranking because it's design is not conducive to getting a whole lot of auto points or winning all of its matches, but it would definantly be picked. It would probably be picked as a 1st pick by the top seed, with the assumption that their robot was effective in matches, and they would be the first team picked not only because they can basically shut down most of an alliance by themselves, but also because none of the top seeds could risk going against them in elims.