[IbleedPink233]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

A couple people have posted responses as to why a team would even consider a strategy like this. Why waste your engineering resources on this type of mechanism, etc. Why not try and score instead?

Consider a few things:

1) What does your perfect alliance consist of? Mine is 2 extremely effective hurdlers, and one other robot. There are only two alliance trackballs, and assuming your 2 hurdlers can maintain possession of the ball throughout most of the match, your 3rd robot should never interact with a trackball. There is no "viable" defensive strategy, so what is your ideal 3rd robot supposed to do?

DRIVE REALLY FAST, make 10 laps, and score 20 points right? THAT, in my opinion, is waste of engineering resources. Most every FIRST team probably feels they are capable of doing much more, and I predict most will! But a 3rd robot that can herd or hurdle is no better than one that can't. It should never touch a ball, so why bother having the capability of herding or hurdling?

I'm looking for a 3rd robot that doesn't need to herd or hurdle, but can still change the outcome of a match. Wouldn't a robot like this fit the bill?

If you're an alliance captain making your last pick, and you have a field of mediocre herders and hurdlers, or a speedster that can spontaneously decide to be "tippy, disably, and extendy" at the perfect moment, who are you going to pick?

If your team consistantly qualifies 16 or lower at an event, will be fighting for a 3rd robot spot in the eliminations, and you are seriously thinking about WINNING an event (remember, it's not everything, but it IS important to many), these are viable strategy decisions.

2) Over the years, the serpentine draft has added some interesting complexion to 3rd robot picks. No doubt, this "tippy, disably, and extendy" speedster will be offensively weak. During qualifications, I would expect it to do very poorly, and rank at or near the bottom, which is actually a very good thing for the team. Most "terrible" robots that rank dead last with no discernable scoring capabilities tend to not be picked.

The caveat is that during the last round of picks, generally, the last to pick, higher ranked teams have more scouting and strategy experience. They would be the most likely to recognize that your "tippy, disably, and extendy" speedster is actually an EXCELLENT 3rd robot.

From this standpoint, strategy decisions like this can vault your team from the bottom of the rankings, to regional winners before you even cut your first piece of metal.

I personally don't think it would be so strange for a team to consider doing something like this.

It would kill me though if I ever saw it done on purpose.

You are very much limiting the strategies that a team can use - even to the point of being unrealistic. I can almost guarantee that there will be no robot that will be able to perfectly keep control of their ball for an entire match while Hurdling - the rules appear to be designed to prevent that. Also, a robot without a Trackball is still able to do things such as: play defense (which there are plenty of "viable" ways to do, just poke around the forums), herd opponents' balls, etc. Limiting them to doing laps and the freak chance that tipping over can help you win one match is making that robot a very inflexible robot, and thus, a poor pick for any alliance. Even ignoring any possible penalties, I know that my team - with a great scouting and intelligence system that I am a part of - would only pick that robot over another that could only go around the Track 9 times, they are by no means an "EXCELLENT" pick.
Not to mention - if you are going to be 9 ft tall anyway, why not try to score? Why would you design a bot that had a tower that would only be used once per regional?