Quote:
Originally Posted by Canon reeves
This is true for pretty much any strategy, but its a thing of how good the defense is, there is a difference in strategies that can be shut down by a rookie robot that had an ambitious design fail, or a team prepared and great at defense? So lets say FCA is on the blue alliance, they have 2 great shooters on team, they start in red and then shoot it over the truss, then go and play decent Defense but aren't very effective because they used the motors for the FCA (this may not be what you do, just a possibility), then their opponent score and so does their alliance, the shooter for the other team plays defense against them, or the midfield opponent, and stops them from feeding, then the midfield alliance bot gets the ball and truss shots over and it isn't caught because of the in-bounding opponent robot blocks, the ball goes bouncing, it is retrieved, your bot lines up to inbound, the cycle starts over and you shoot it over, by this time the opponents understand and block the catcher, another flying ball, while they are scrambling you have to attempt to play defense on shooter if ball is there because you can't go help because you aren't fast enough. And by time selections come around your opponents in finals know what you can do so they play easy defense on you (the shooter for opponents) but the problem is that more than likely in a finals match that shooter would be one of the top teams so they would be very versatile, so they could play quick defense, so what do you do, you grab the ball and bring it down to shoot , if you focus on a full court assister wouldn't you have to also refine it to be able to shoot closely and maybe not as good so you'd want to hand it off well? but you spent so much time on the FCA that it's not that great? this could go a million ways but this is just a way I thought of. There are so many other great ways for this ending up but this is a bad way that very well could? Please correct me if this is totally nonviable.
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This is definitely a scenario that could conceivably happen. However, like you said it could go a million different ways. I think you are underestimating how hard it would be to actually play defense on the FCA. A well designed FCA should have a good drivetrain and should be able to launch the ball from a number of different spots to a number of different spots. I just don't think even an experienced defensive team would bother trying to block the FCA.
Blocking the robot (or two robots) on the receiving end of the FCA is a different story. Finding a way around defense from the receiving end is definitely more difficult. If there are two robots receiving from the FCA then the FCA would aim for the one that isn't being defensed against (or is more open). If one of the receiving robots is better at catching the ball, then the inferior receiving robot could play anti - defense (setting a pick) for the superior receiving robot allowing it to get room to catch or quickly corral the ball in order to shoot. This ties up one robot from the opposing alliance taking away triple assist opportunities for them and still allows for (in theory) quick 40 point cycles for the FCA team.
If there is one robot on the receiving end of the FCA then it all comes down to driver/drivetrain superiority between the defensive and offensive robot. This also would allow for the third member of the FCA alliance to strictly play defense against the opposing alliance.
The advantage of having a FCA in quals is huge because there are a lot of ways to do it depending on who the FCA is paired with. The disadvantages are glaringly obvious as well because the strategy relies on a teammate of the FCA to be able to quickly attain possession of the ball and consistently put it in the 10 pt goal which will be rare qualities (I realize this paragraph contradicts itself).