[rachal]

My team designed to be a fast scorer, but unfortunately we were unable to get our arm working until the end of LA, so we kept it disabled the whole time. However, our speedy mecanum drive enabled us to put up a decent defense, and if the opposing alliance only had one scorer, we were usually able to prevent them from scoring during the whole match. In one match on Friday, our alliance was unable to either score or lift, but our human player managed to score one ringer. We were able to fight off the opposing alliance's scorer and kept it 2-0 until the last two seconds when they got around us and placed a ringer =P

At LA, most of the alliances I saw in the qualifying rounds could only score a few ringers, and successful lifting nearly guaranteed winning the match. However, there were some amazing offensive bots (254/330/4 got a row of 8 during finals) and in those matches, while lifting was still important, the ringers were much more so.

Most of the defenses I saw in qualifying matches were played by rampbots of average speed. This isn't very effective against great scorers; I saw 254/968 constantly get blocked and then zip around to the other side of the rack in a split second, and 330 was usually able to push their opponents into the rack and score over them. Some alliances were able to block 254 by ganging up on them, but when they were allied with 330 they were impossible to stop. Is it possible to stop an alliance with two strong offensive bots like that?