Quote:
Originally Posted by Swan217
These sort of statements make me wonder if people on Chief Delphi have lost their collective minds.
We're talking about RAMMING, people. Taking your robot from across the field & smashing it against a prone robot. This should NEVER be a valid strategy in FIRST. Come on now, we're all better than that.
You're saying you can't play defense without ramming. That is LITERALLY like saying you can't play defense in hockey without leaving your feet, or boarding. Ramming with bumpers is like helmet-to-helmet contact in football - Yes, the helmets protect your head from damage, but only so much. This is like saying you can't play defense in soccer without bodychecking your opponents. It's completely un-gracious & un-professional.
You're saying that engineers, in the smartest sport in the world, can't figure out how to play defense without bashing another robot's skull in? I have been in FIRST for 15 years, and I KNOW there are better defensive strategies than you give us credit for. I think my respect for Chief Delphi posters has gone down quite a few notches from not just this but MANY posts in this thread.
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This sort of statement makes me wonder if we're watching the same video.
We saw two robots, moving at a brisk pace, hit each other squarely on the bumpers. It was not particularly violent, it was clear neither had the aim of damaging the other, and it was utterly unavoidable unless one robot decided to cripple their own play by making an effort to
not contact the other.
How can this possibly be made to penalize either party without completely breaking all strategies that involve robot-to-robot contact? Moreover, how would it be clear which robot to penalize? "Which one broke after the hit" is a terrible deciding factor for a number of very obvious reasons.
If that hit in that video is now illegal, then I do not know of a single defensive strategy that involves moving quickly around the field (i.e. all of them, save perhaps a goalie-bot) that would not be at grave risk of incurring fouls and losing the match. What, do you think you can get in position to set a pick or get between a robot and their ball without risking hitting them while moving? Are we supposed to cut our drive speed down in half when we're near other robots? How is this a benefit to the game? How is it fair to the teams that built their robots around powerful drives which they're now not allowed to use?
If a shooting robot has a beefy tank-drive, the
only way to interrupt their shot is to hit them rather hard on the bumpers. Everyone who did more than a cursory analysis of the game saw this coming and built their robot accordingly. If other people didn't, tough luck - I don't see anything ungracious or unprofessional about hard defense, so long as there's no intent to damage or disable the other robot. Aggressive driving is good driving - it makes for more impressive games, more interesting strategies, and a much better spectator sport.