[JamesBrown]

OK first off I am on the same team ans DaveA and Guju4life, however I have to take the opposite point of view scoring points is far more important, If you can't put points on the board you can't win. Especially in qualifying rounds when you need good scores by both teams to seat well for picking.

In the elimination rounds scoring is most important this is why you nearly always see the top shooters picked first, defense can also be used effectively abut not nearly as effectively as scoring. Many of the best alliances are 2 shooters and one defensive bot (I believe this is largely due to the serpentine draft) three defensive bots will never beat 3 offensive bots, the period system this year makes it very difficult to effectively block shooters for the whole game. Over all I would say big shooters are the best but strategy will always reign supreme, as much as I would like to take credit for having an effective defensive autonomous all these do is go across the field really fast and at high torque, the success of 90% of these modes is properly predicting what the other robot will do rather than elegant design of the bot or elegant programming. Defense is bigger this year than it was in the past, however I believe at nationals it will be less defensive and more emphasis will be on robots with good traction that can shoot and push (like the triplets 121, 233 and 1276 I'm sure there are plenty more that I haven't seen).

James

p.s. Dave there is no way half the robots we have been against can score 80 points, I would say that no more than 5 of them could.