Quote:
Originally Posted by s_forbes
. . .
But back on to the topic of cornering trackballs: it seems to me that this is something that was originally anticipated by the game designers, hence the lack of a rule to prevent it.
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I'm not sure I follow your logic there. Are you suggesting that they would not have originally anticipated cornering of track balls if they
did make a rule to prevent it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by s_forbes
But remember, if you pin both of your opponent's balls with two of your alliances' robots, you effectively have only one robot on the field that is doing anything. The other alliance has three teams that can all run laps while their trackballs are pinned, which will still get them a substantial amount of points!
Unfortunately for the defensive bots, this years game doesn't offer much of an endgame bonus (as compared to 06 and 07), so it is hard to play defense the entire match and pull out a win.
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It still seems against the intent of the game. Do you really believe Woody Flowers intended four robots to be pinning track balls up against a wall while the two remaining robots run laps?
I'm not sure I buy all this "defensive bot" talk. It seems these robots are simply bots that are not capable of doing anything else. Anyone can slap a drive train on a control board and create a "defensive bot". If one has a robot that can not hurdle/herd and is not even fast enough run laps the appropriate term is
box bot.
I believe this is why the game creators put such little value in defense this year. They want to encourage teams build a robot to actually play the game. They don't want teams to put together some robot that can be thrown into any game and called a "defensive bot". They want us to put some real thought in to our bots. They want us to truly engineer a unique piece of machinery. They want us to craft arms for hurdling. They want us to design complex shooters to launch the ball over the overpass. They want us to build grippers to quickly retrieve the track ball. They want us to engineer speedy drive trains to rack up laps.
They don't want us throwing wheels on an iron frame and pinning track balls in the corner.
Come on people, lets play the game!