Tube starvation/stealing

[Richard Wallace]

What is tube stealing? Picking up tubes on your opponents' side of the field?

[Norman J]

I contest that tube starving will be utilized at high-level play. All teams that make it to Einstein will have such practiced human players that they should be able to drop all three shapes into the scoring zone. Such an ability renders tube starving strategies completely ineffective. In fact, if you try to starve and go to the lanes, the other team will just throw all the tubes and outscore you by a huge margin.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Norman J

I contest that tube starving will be utilized at high-level play. All teams that make it to Einstein will have such practiced human players that they should be able to drop all three shapes into the scoring zone. Such an ability renders tube starving strategies completely ineffective. In fact, if you try to starve and go to the lanes, the other team will just throw all the tubes and outscore you by a huge margin.

Most human players need some bouncing/rolling for the tubes to make it across the field. I've seen many teams block this roll/bounce at mid field and then shuffle the tube out of the grasp of their opponents. Just something to consider. I think tube strategy will be the difference maker in the high-level play.

-Brando

[Jon Stratis]

In recapping our last regional, this was something I pointed out to our team. We only really played defense in the very last match (the cable controlling our elevator snapped during autonomous, so we were unable to score curing that match), so that was really the only match we could critique the driver's defensive ability on.

No one on our alliance (actually, no one on the field!) was using the feeder lanes at all in that match. As a result, one great defensive strategy we should have employed would have been to simply push tubes into the feeder lanes. Yes, when you get down to the end, the human players are great... but even great human players can't get it in the scoring zone every time. Sometimes the tubes fall short, or hit other robots, or take an odd bounce. As a starvation strategy, pushing tubes into your own feeder lanes prevents the other team from using them (without incurring a penalty). This would clear away any tubes near the opponents scoring zone, forcing them to travel farther to find useful tubes, giving your defensive robot more room to get in their way and slow them down.

I would say this is only viable for a defensive role... you don't want to take someone who is scoring points away to attempt this.