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Unread 26-01-2014, 12:12
TheMadCADer TheMadCADer is offline
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Re: Abilities of the top teams at a regional?

Quote:
Originally Posted by dchartley View Post
Almost all the shooters I've seen are very built low and could be blocked by a 5 ' tall robot. Our team decided to concentrate on maneuverability, ball handling and catching. With a 5' tall "glove" blocking short shooters should be easy.

Doug
This sort of plan on defense works well to a point. A well organized alliance will realize that they only get points once that ball is scored. The other two robots won't be just sitting around, they'll be playing counter-defense. I see each alliance at any one point in time having one robot with the ball, one robot playing counter-defense, and one robot on defense (switching to counter-defense at a moment's notice). This means that defenders will almost always be 1v2 or worse.

The part that will separate the good alliances from the bad will be how well they handle trading off these roles. Whoever is playing defense might need to go and possess the ball for an assist, leaving the other alliance with a free path to score. Good teams will minimize how much movement between zones they need to do.

This is the concern I have with a catcher/shot blocker. Those tasks would take place in different zones. Instead, I could see there being more value in blocking truss shots, since you wouldn't need to move zones and it still prevents a lot of points (at least delaying the 10 points from the Truss Score as well as delaying the whole cycle).

Still, I think the ideal catcher is the robot that also scores the ball after catching it, being the last assist in the cycle. Having an exchange in your scoring zone will probably be more dangerous than on the other side of the Truss since for most teams the scoring zone is the 'obvious' place to play defense.