[Madison]

Some thoughts...

It seems that the time, effort and resources required to prevent or delay an opposing robot from scoring a ringer is staggeringly lower than those required to place it on the rack. As with any other game, there will be those teams that are markedly better at scoring ringers than most others, but on the whole I feel that we'll see low scoring matches through a majority of the season. I don't think that Champion-caliber teams will get to that level through defense alone, however.

It also appears as if a great number of folks are taking for granted the relative ease of accomplishing any of the tasks in this game. Just as scoring ringers will be more difficult than many project because of movement on the rack coupled with defense, getting robots 4" or 12" into the air is no small feat, either. In fact, doing it reliably and efficiently is more difficult than scoring ringers. I predict that some 75% of all lifts and ramps will not function in any meaningful capacity and will have sacrificed some resources that might have been better applied to a ringer scoring arm.