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Originally Posted by Ogre
Three decent shooters, all with strong drive trains.
It's simple. Two robots cannot shutdown three robots. With three decent shooters, you can't defend them all. While they're on offense, they all shoot. The two defensive robots can only guard against 2 others, leaving the third open to score. When the balls start filling up the goal, the defensive robots slide, leaving a different robot open to score.
It's just like playing man-down in lacrosse, except everyone has the ball.
One team starts scoring, slide, another teams scores...repeat for 40 seconds or until the match is finished.
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That's not exactly true. 116 had defended multiple robots on multiple occasions, and even once stopped all 3 for couple seconds while a second defender got re-positioned. 116 and 1371 shut down 3 shooters (1261, which finished as the #1 seed, 1415, which was the #4 seed, and 281, which was selected into the #2 alliance at the Peachtree regional). We only allowed a single 3 point shot to be scored during their offensive period, and none in the final period. They won the match 42-30 based on a 12-10 autonomous victory and having all 3 robots on the ramp (12 auto points+10 auto bonus+3 offensive+25 ramp points-5 backbot penalty=42). 1261 misses one more shot in auto, and it is a 29-40 match, favoring the other side. This is the best example I have seen personally of this defensive scheme, but I know of many others.
You use a "man-to-man" example, but you can very easily play zone defense and shut down multiple shooters with one robot. This is especially magnified because of the relatively small area that most shooters have to fire from. Un-turreted shooters have to reposition after almost every time they are shoved, so they are especially easy to defend, because you can shove them, defend someone else, and return to them as they are about to get repositioned. Short-range (base of ramp area) shooters can be taken out by clogging up the front of the ramp, especially when multiple opposing shooters are "short-range".
The zone defensive scheme fails when you have points that can be scored outside of your defensive zone (typically the base of the ramp). This can typically be acheived one of 3 ways. A strong corner goal threat (like I said, many shooters can shoot and/or dump into the corner goal as well as the center, it does not have to be a dedicated herding bot), a high-ranged shooter that can fire from one of the sides of the field (perimeter shooter), or a ramp top shooter. The corner goal threat requires the defense to break away and stop the corner goal threat or else take 10-20 (or sometimes more) points in a very short amount of time. The perimeter shooter is obvious, it requires a bot to travel outside of the zone in order to defend it. If the ramp top bot can get into shooting position on the ramp, it almost always requires a dedicated bot to get it, and keep it, out of scoring position.
My reasoning behind taking a herder over a ramp top bot or a 2nd perimeter shooter is as follows. Ramp top shooters can be shut down if they are denied the ability to get on the ramp (a zone defense at the base of the ramp can often do this, or even offensive congestion from other alliance partners at the base of the ramp). The herder also allows you to get the most underrated 10 point in the game, the 10 point corner autonomous dump. It is the hardest 10 points to defend (as it provides the shortest path, and therefore the least amount of time to intercept. Additionally, once it is in position, hitting it just pushes it into the wall, and will not stop the scoring process of most robots) in the game as well. The herder can also be a shooter (ie 56 and 1002) as necessary, but it is not essential.
The issues with a 2nd perimeter shooter is travel time and availability. If both perimeter shooters are firing from the same side of the field, the defense just adjusts its zone to the perimeter shooting area, so therefore they would have to fire from opposite ends of the field (red starting positions and blue starting positions). That is the first, although rather not damaging, of the travel issues. The second arises when they deplete their ball supply. A majority of the balls are going to be either near the goals or at the HP stations themselves. Because of their ranged firing positions, the shooters are at approximately the longest position from any significant source of balls (if they are short range, they are near to the balls on the ground near the goal). The second more significant issue, is availability of these shooters. Quality perimeter shooters are few and far between. Most regionals only have 2 or 3 of them, if any at all.
Another possibility of a herder bot is reloading other bots. While I have yet to see this tactic used, it may come into play. Have your herder gather up balls of the field, and then dump them in the immediate area of a ground loading shooter, for rapid reloading of balls. A more complicated, yet possibly successful method, may actually having a ground loading shooter fire low speed shots into another shooters HP-loading hopper. I highly doubt that will ever happen, but you never know.