[GeeTwo]

It's not a chokehold, as it does not prevent a breach, and there is a counter-strategy for the tower.

That said, a robot with a roughly 44"x15" frame perimeter COULD be made to block both low goals and high goal batter shooters, which would be useful as a "fourth robot" in CMP playoffs, when playing against alliances with those sorts of shooters.

A major weakness of the design as initially shown (and adjusted for bumper rules) would be that it could not challenge the tower or climb it in the same orientation it defends without blocking its alliance partners from their challenges or climbs. As such, it would be essential that a robot of this design be able to scale "sideways" (probably ending up with the frame perimeter in a vertical plane) or at least semi-scale so that it can be fully supported within one third of the tower.

Between the unusual frame perimeter and the requirement to scale, this would not be a cheesecake so much as a replacement robot that would have to be built during an event from almost entirely COTS parts.

Making a robot that could play this function from the carpet and defending with 15" extensions from the frame perimeter sounds like a serious problem in making the robot sufficiently robust for game play.