Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
Just because the advantage looks relatively small does not mean it doesn't have major impacts on gameplay. Do a few comparisons of speed vs distance while accelerating and it easy to see that 'mere' 20-30% quickly converts into much higher energy impacts since the energy imparted is proportional to the square of the velocity. These will inevitably occur more often during gamely since they don't require much room for the acceleration.
The advantage then becomes "find the robot who can't do much on offense and which has 6cims, then tell them to go push the other robots around. If they hit the opponents enough, maybe the opponents will just stop working and then we can win".
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Or, in more legitimate terms, if you hit them enough they will find it hard to position themselves to accomplish game tasks.
I think it is unfair to characterize tough defense as "hitting people with the hopes their robot breaks." We played defense a
lot this past year, and our goal in robot-robot contact was never to cause damage. Good defense is about being in the right place at the right time and knowing
how to interact with the robot you're trying to defend against, not simply hitting them as hard as possible. Having additional motors definitely helps with this, both by allowing you to push for longer when needed without tripping a breaker (especially if your opponent cannot do the same), and by allowing you to get to where you need to be faster (and, as a lot of defense is stop-and-go and rapidly-changing, acceleration is critically important for this).