How Much Defense Can You Play?

[DampRobot]

I doubt many teams will shoot full court, as I have stated in the other thread. While I will admit that it is a whole lot easier to shoot full court than last year, I just don't think it will be an effective strategy.

We've seen in year after year that effective robots often get really close to the goal, especially when shooting is involved. 2012 saw many "fender bots" that nevertheless were extremely successful (971, among many other teams, specialized in close range shots). In 2006, many effective robots got on top of the ramp to shoot or even just dumped into the low goal. Lots of teams like to focus on long range shooting, and forget that the most accurate (and highest percentage) shots are those that are taken from close to the target.

How important will defense be? Very. Will there be many robots that try to block shots? I don't think so. We saw very few robots last year that actually tried to block shots, and I don't see them being a huge factor in 2013. It's hard to block other robots shots compared to keeping them from aligning in the first place. In 2012, effective defenders kept robots from getting to the fender, the place where they were most likely to make their shots. If a robot can keep other robots out of the area under the goals, they will be a lot more effective than a robot that tries to block shots simply by putting a net in front of other robots.