[MattB703]

Wow!

I feel so lonely in my opinion.

I do realize what a powerful defensive strategy having ramp sides is. That is why I'm predicting that there will be so many of them next year. I have also seen enough Battlebots to know that a good drivetrain and a wedge shape can make a powerful offensive strategy as well.

Lets say you make a robot design to play next years game and you put sloped sides all around it to protect yourself from "brick bots". For whatever reason your scoring concept does not work as well as the team had envisioned it to. It soon becomes clear that the best contribution that you can make to your alliance is to get in the other teams way and slow down their scoring to allow you partners to outscore them. You play several qualifying matches and this strategy is working very well, them you have the match-up against this year's uber-scoring robot. You driver is trying to block them and is playing a very good game but the uber-bot is dancing circles around you with its awesome "hover drive". Suddenly uber-bot is on its side. Did your driver press the sticks forward a little while they were mixing it up? Is it the uber-bot's fault because they drove up on you? Do we ask the refs to make a judgment call? Weren't the judgment calls by the refs a lot of the problems people had with this year's game?

I'd like to avoid the whole scenario above.