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Originally Posted by Billfred
I'd advise you to look up some of the FRC robots from 2004; ComBBAT and the FemBots come to mind. They used large hoppers to hold all of the balls that dropped from above that year, and both were a little clunky at getting them back out.
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The difference I see there is that the preferred strategy in FIRST Frenzy with a giant hopper would be to then force them out the bottom of the robot, relativly few at a time, into the human load chute (or whatever it was called.) With this, simply flipping your hopper onto the goal seems ideal.
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I'm going to make a bold prediction here: against competent opponents, no alliance is going to be able to trap every single opposing puck. The racks are just too far apart for any team to be able to hit them all. At most, I'm predicting that an alliance could trap two racks, one per robot.
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I agree that it would be a stretch for every single puck to be captured on a regular basis, but I still think that this will hamper the game in more ways than one. First, it contributes to the issue I pointed out earlier, if good teams are capturing and scoring with an entire rack at once, pucks are already running out fast. The ability to descore from the circle and triangle may be more important than anyone thinks. Also, I just don't really like the concept of the strategy. Just feels like its more a way to win a competition than get inspired about science and technology. But that's just me.
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I'm not sold on the defense options you lay out. You've got 18" robots going around a cylinder that's 24" inches diameter and thus 75" circumference--over six feet around. I'm not sure how fast you can get a new-kit robot to go, but I'm betting you'd want a second robot to achieve ideal coverage. Hope you've got all the pucks you're gonna score by then, because I'm willing to bet that the other alliances will be glad to take that time to whisk away your pucks.
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Once again, I don't think that this will happen on a regular basis. However, the central scoring structure, by nature, creates traffic jams, and a skilled driver should be able to hold off at least one, and possibly two offensive robots, particularly if they are approaching from the same side.