[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Speaking entirely out of personal experience, being a team that played defense in the playoffs of both a shallow district and a relatively deep district against the #1 Alliance, I can say with almost certainty that a 3-Cycler Alliance will be better off. Honestly, only play defense if you are noticeably the scoring underdog. Here's why:

1) A well coordinated Alliance will not run into congestion problems. All three robots we faced had distinctly different shooting locations and travel pathways, making it literally impossible to play defense against all three robots (67 high-goal shot from the center or right batter, 2834 shot from the center of courtyard/Outerworks, both traversing misc. center Defenses, 51 low-goaled into the left goal, traversing the low bar). Any given time, 2 robots would enter the courtyard looking to shoot from two different sides of the field. We could stop one for a while, but not both. Defense robot can't be in 2 spots at the same time.

2) There is a defense-free period at the beginning and end of the matches that net your alliance 6 safe boulder scores. The time it takes to travel courtyard-to-courtyard gives the 3-Cycler Alliance about 5-10 seconds to put their first boulder in (or second if they scored in auto and returned to the neutral zone). And of course, the last 20 seconds also permit 1 last boulder shot from all 3 robots. Than means only 2 more boulders are needed from the 3 robots combined over the span of 1:55. That's VERY likely from just 1 robot alone.

3) Tall OuterWorks shooters are completely undefendable in the courtyard, period. Batter shooters with good drive teams are harder to defend than you think. Our strategy to stop 67 from getting to their shooting location was to always stay between them and the tower. They saw this, and in response to us would drive laterally an arced path, forcing us into the right batter divider and allowing them an opening to the right or center batter lane (intelligently using the field to stop the defense robot). You'd think that we should have had the driving advantage because of the shorter path distance, but a) reaction time to "which direction are they accelerating" eats into that advantage, and b) even neck-and-neck driving would still favor the offensive robot because of the batter defender-blocking technique (also we were lighter, which was our own fault).

4) The third robot is your security blanket. We were able to limit 67 and 2834 to a combined 6 boulders in each of their matches (which when less defended the two scored 8 and 12 high in the finals), yet they were easily able to capture thanks to the 4 boulders scored by their 3rd robot. 51 was the difference between capture and no capture in all QF and SF matches. Whether they are just transferring boulders across the Outerworks for the other 2 robots, or scoring them in the low/high goals themself, against the best drivers, the 3rd robot is adding more worth to their alliance by adding 2 high boulders or 4 low boulders to their side than subtracting 1 or 2 boulders from the other side. (Against lesser drivers, a good defender can completely shut down an entire alliance's tower scoring. This will not be done at Regional Championships or Champs.)

5) Put boulders in the neutral zone. You don't want opposing robots stealing boulders from your secret passage for a quick score? Don't put them there. Throw them into the Neutral zone, where they are effectively closer to your robots anyway to reduce cycle time.

6) No wasted time. In an Offense-Only system, all your time is accounted for; collecting boulders, crossing defenses, and scoring boulders into the tower. Playing defense, there is dead-time while you are waiting for the opposing alliance to return to your zone (while they collect boulders or cross defenses). That is effectively non-value added time. And then when they do enter your defended region, you have to pick which robot to defend, meaning that someone is still not being defended.

So... yes defense is an option, but after playing it, if you have the high goal firepower to keep up, Offense-Only is the way to go.

As stated before by someone else in an earlier post, it's easier for your 3rd cycler to play defense when needed than for a defense robot to score boulders.

Wow, this ended up being a longer post than I wanted it to be.