Inbounding or Hoarding Balls

[ThirteenOfTwo]

Originally Posted by rich2202

Hoarding

One hoarding strategy is to hoard the balls on your bridge. Once placed on your bridge, it is hard for the other team to get them without creating a foul. You could park a bot on the alley side of your bridge, and have it hold the bridge level.

I would argue that the placing of the ball on the bridge is controlling the ball, but once you let go, you are no longer controlling the ball. Thus, an unlimited number of balls could be on your bridge and not be considered controlled. To wit: The competition starts with 2 balls on your bridge, and no bot is considered to be controlling those balls.

I would also argue that controlling the bridge (keeping it from being tilted by the other team) is not controlling the balls.

If placing the balls in a location where the other team is penalized for attempting to retrieve them isn't "controlling the ball", it should be. Rule revision would be excellent here. Besides, if you got enough balls hoarded the other team would probably just eat the penalty and grab whatever's on your bridge. And I don't think getting a ball to stop nicely on the bridge will be very easy.

All of this hoarding discussion is great, but I think you guys are missing a rather fundamental point. Which is that hoarding balls is a bad idea.

Guys, your whole strategy is to lose on purpose. You are allowing your opponent to score while you deliberately refrain from scoring. In order to come out of that with a lead, you need to already have racked up ridiculous numbers of points, i.e. be better at scoring than them. If you are better at scoring than them, why are you not scoring?

There is literally no situation in which you can start hoarding and still be close enough to them to win by 3-robot-balancing (to their 2-robot-balancing) unless you are already winning. In which case you could keep it closer by continuing to score than by hoarding.