Quote:
Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman
2 Defense + 1 awesome scorer. Everyone thinks defensive-minded alliances can't score tubes. Purge that thought from your heads. Also purge the thought that all defensive robots have to play defense all the time - they don't. Some do; many don't.
Ramps aren't nullified if you hold a defensively-created rack score advantage at the beginning of endgame.
Again, we'll see. I challenge some of the big scorers to consider the possibilities of participating in a defensive alliance as an option as opposed to the "drown 'em in offense" alliance strategy - which is "nothing new".  |
yea.
Tom said his strategy doesn't require an arm. That's what I was responding to.
As for defense+scoring..
2 of the three scorers on my dream alliance have good drivetrains. They have the option of running this strategy. Defense does take a bit of skill, I agree.. that is, the driver has to know how to use a decent drivetrain defensively. But in this game it seems sufficient to simply get in the way of scorers.
You want to block our scorers, eh? Our "beefy" drivetrains will meet at mid-field. I hope your scorer is faster than the one we've decided to cover.
If you ramp 2@12 and we ramp 2@12, then the ramps are nullified.
I don't (think I) underestimate defense.. I also agree with the statements, "no ramps, no chance" and "ramps win." I just like getting my cake and eating it too, whenever possible. I'm advocating my dream alliance.
And actually, I sway more to the defense+ramps strategy than to the score, score, score strategy.. especially since its very easy to lockdown the rack. But again, with three scorers, two (or more) having good drivetrains, and one (or more) having good ramps, I can choose from among many approaches depending on who's on the other side of the field.
Something else not given enough credit: a good field crew. Perfect alliance, perfect strategy, mediocre execution.. down in the first round.
I've been watching 1114 and 330, and looking at how well they execute. The drivers are good. They don't mess around picking up a tube, and don't mess around when they get to the rack; its in and out. And where are they capping on the rack? Exactly where a leg needs to be capped. Do they ever switch to defense, or etc.. absolutely.. just as soon as they need to. They both have good mechanisms for grabbing the tube, and scoring, but then again so do many other teams.. the difference seems to be that their drivers use the machine extremely well. That's one reason I think 56 can shine: drivers.