[jtrv]

Strongly pro-defense game here.

Why? This year's game had ... zero counterplay. Zero strategy. Zero metagame development.

So how do you out-score the opponent? You better pray that you just get the luck of the gods and that the enemy screws up a few times. This year, the alliance that screwed up the least won. Sure, that sounds great - strive for absolute perfection. But most of the time, the screwing up is not always something you can help. Ex, your robot loses comms with the field. Then you look at the DS logs and it literally tells you nothing. "Oh you lost comms, nothing was wrong, your comms just cut out." and the assistants don't have an idea either.

No defense leads to very uniform designs. Sure, you had a lot of different designs this year. Did you see each of every design win? Absolutely not. The multi-bot self-stacking mechanisms destroyed everyone. They're stacking while scoring - maximum efficiency. Sure you had some ramp based bots, but in perfect execution, they won't keep up.

"Oh, the defense was the cans in the middle!" Yeah, for auton. That's it.

"You had noodle defense!" Hahah good luck throwing those things very far when every other team bends them at 180 degree angles and they rarely get replaced or people get fed up with replacing them each and every game.

There was zero strategy. It's like - "Okay, we'll score here, you score here, and you score here. Let's just hope for the best. Since X team grabs these two cans in auton then we go for the other two." That's it.

There weren't any clever strategies at all. Honestly. It's awful. No critical thinking during the competition, you're just going out and hoping to do your best.