[Jerry Ballard]

We've discussed this topic several time since the reveal of the 2016 game. My conclusion (details below) is that because of the way the game is designed it will be a very rare occurrence.

Let's assume that (1) shooting times (pick-up, aim, shooting accuracy) are similar to 2012 World times (mostly true so far), (2) traversal time across defenses are about 3-4 secs one-way, (3) you have a “feeder” bot that will carry boulders from the neutral zoned across the defense, (3) defense will cause about a 5 sec delay for a shooter (80% of the time), and (4) human players will always keep “hoard” 6 boulders in the tower. These assumptions are my worst case scenario for boulder starvation.

Given those assumptions and assuming that both teams will be trying to score boulders, conditions for boulder starving won't exist more than for a few seconds during the 120 seconds of teleop. Even if the neutral zone is empty, both courtyards will continue to have boulders as long as the shooters continue to shoot.

If one alliance refuses to score into the tower, then there is a possibility that boulder starving will occur but in that case I doubt that is a viable winning strategy.

I have have several of these scenarios coded in SimPy, PM me if you would like to see it.