Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Copioli
How about three offensive robots that can also play defense? Those of you rampers that think you will have undefended ramping at the Championships like you did at most regionals are in for a rude awakening.
You rampers that are playing defense on the far side of the field better beware because the smarter offensive robots will trap you on that far side of the field. Then what?
Let's see ... 24 places to score between 3 robots or one place to score (60 pts) completely depending on your ramper ......
I think the threat of the ramp is more important than actual ramping (in eliminations). Three decent scorers is devastating to try to stop.
If you want my ideal alliance: 2 scoring / defensive hybrids that MUST be able to score on the top spider and a Hybrid that is decent at scoring.
By the way, by my count there are at least 24 good scorers in Galileo which means our division has a great chance on Einstein (whoever represents us).
With that said, you great double rampers in Galileo will be a hot commodity since most people believe the ramp is absolutely critical ... I'm just not one of them.
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I think it's plausible that an alliance that exclusively plays offense during its matches can win, but it seems like an enormous risk to attempt to do so regularly. You're putting a lot of stock in the superiority of your machines -- perhaps going so far as to think that your three machines can outscore your opponents even while defended. There may be some teams that are that good, but I don't think it's the huge number that some folks do. The pool of teams that can score well if left undefended, however, is gigantic, so why would you want to double or triple the number of teams that can possibly beat your alliance but leaving them alone? Put one defender on the other side of the field and three offensive machines will start to get in one another's way. Put two defenders over there, if you dare, and you can probably shut the factory down and send the workers home -- if you feel confident that you can get those machines back home after you've gone and messed things up quite so badly.
As well as I can see, you're going to want some sort of somewhat dedicated defensive capabilities, so that may as well be a quick, reliable lifting machine. If a defender does their job well, they'll minimize the opponents score such that a 30 or 60 point bonus will be devastating. I'd rather win matches 68-8 than I would to win them 128-64 or something similar; one win is decisive and one is by the skin of your teeth, and obviously, that has nothing to do with which number is bigger.
I guess we'll see. All of this ought to be fun, in any case, and I'll take matches one at a time and think about strategy some more as it requires. There're probably a thousand different scenarios that you could speculate about in advance and doing so will only give me anxiety.
