[Madison]

You all seem to believe that your way of doing things is the only way to do things. Your strategies are limited, as they're based on enormously flawed assumptions about the capabilities and strategy of other robots.

There isn't any way a robot can win this game, reliably, by perching itself atop the ramp and sitting there for two minutes. There are just too many variables.

You may have great success in qualifying rounds, of course, since the alliance pairings are at random. But, if you think that you're immune to defeat because you can park your robot on the ramp, I think you'll find that you're wrong. Alliances will construct themselves in such a way as to bring you down. That's a fact of life.

If your robot occupies all 48 ft. sq. of the HDPE surface and does so with strength and immobility, there is no incentive for the opposition to deposit any stacks until the final moments of the game. Where robots that can hold entire stacks at a time are involved, you will not have any success in knocking over their stack. If, by that, the scores become close, or your opponent's overtake you, what other contingencies do you have?

If a ramp blocking robot allows their alliance partner onto the HDPE for an additional 25 pts., beyond taking a great risk of losing all of their points, they relinquish their control of that surface.

There will be robots in this competition that do stuff you didn't even think of, and they'll do it faster and more reliably than you ever thought possible. By parking yourself atop the ramp, you're setting yourself to do nothing more than be a spectator to these amazing machines.