[Donut]

Originally Posted by Swampdude

Unfortunately you're going to miss and nail the wall sometimes, and regardless I think its important to have 1 teammate almost every match that can run an autonomous interference pattern. Scouting will eventually tell you where a team will wind up while they shoot, be it in the start spot or somewhere else. Then you can just point and shoot.

Exactly, and in reality any team can do this autonomous mode. Have a partner without an auton? Simply have them enter their drive pwms as full forward/reverse in their autonomous routine, line it up on field, and poof! You have one defensive autonomous mode, even if not consistently effective.

I seriously don't know how many teams will take advantage of how easy it is to create a simple defensive autonomous though; 2 years ago you could employ an effective defense by running forward to prevent your opponent from knocking down the ball, yet I do not remember seeing any other teams at Nats do this other than us (of course that was just our division, and some of the matches).

Quick warnings on this though; you do run the risk of damaging your robot by doing the "suicidal charge" (one match 2 years ago had us run a caster full speed into the platform, bending it at a 45 degree angle and severely compromising driving ability). Also, you may have to limit how fast you drive your robot if the refs start flagging teams for high speed ramming in autonomous.

Originally Posted by Swampdude

Although in our case its not worth it to take out a 4 ball shooter when we know we can get a minimum of 5. So it depends.

Once regionals get more than halfway through the qualifying rounds, most matches autonomous modes will become...

1. A bunch of robots flying across the field to hit their opponents, with autonomous being decided by 1 or 2 balls.
2. Both teams ignoring defense and having a high scoring shoot out.

Originally Posted by Jherbie53

But no one knows whats going to happen at the competitions.

True true. We will see starting next week.