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Re: Defense-A Fancy Word For Poor Ability
Posted by Chris Hibner at 04/27/2001 8:40 AM EST
Coach on team #308, Walled Lake Monster, from Walled Lake Schools and TRW Automotive Electronics.
In Reply to: Defense-A Fancy Word For Poor Ability
Posted by Bill Beatty on 04/27/2001 12:42 AM EST:
In the past head-to-head competitions, avoiding a blocking robot was part of the design challenge, in my view. We always had debates: should we be fast and maneuverable, good traction and powerful, shift gears and do both? There is just as much good engineering in getting around or through a blocker as there is in putting an inner tube and a tree limb. To me, eliminating blocking eliminates half of the design process and 75% of the strategy.
If someone were to try blocking the TechnoKats this year while they were trying to score a ball, they would have been able to push them out of the way and score anyway (good design). If a blocker completely destroys a team's scoring chances, perhaps the problem is that that team missed something in the design process, not that the game needs to be changed.
-Chris
: Sorry Kyle, I can't agree even a little bit with your push to return to wheel to wheel competition. In the six years of our involvement in FIRST, this competition was, by far, the most exciting, electrifying of them all at the three events we were in. There were more folks watching and cheering at the final matches then there have been for a number of years. I can't imagine a design engineer or design team that can create a high capability, high scoring robot would ever want a slug of a do nothing robot to block, pound, or in any way restrict it's ability to perform. Could it be, that in actuality, the folks who are pushing for head to head and defensive competition are really fearful of putting their design and construction ability on the line? Maybe the ones that are saying they want competition really do not want to try and compete. Interesting.......
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