Shooting full-court: The uprising of the human-loader shooters

After this long weekend of scrimmages and week 0 competitions, I've found that robots that can shoot full-court from the human-player stations to be not only common, but really well-done as well. Accurate robots with the ability to dry out a human player of their 45 frisbees in about a minute and a half were everywhere (maybe it's just me, but they were very common).

Now that there's a larger portion of teams able to make full-court shots, how special will it be to do so? Will shooting full court be a commonality found in a lot of robots? Will blocking shots from said teams become a viable strategy?

[tomy]

My team can do full-court shots and we found that if anyone tries to block us they end up touching us which is a penalty and if they stay the penalties add up and double for pining

[cmrnpizzo14]

Being able to block those shots will be a viable strategy in my opinion. It will be very tough, especially if the shooting teams are clever, but a robot that can extend up will be important. The question isn't necessarily CAN you shoot full court but HOW WELL can you do it. I see some teams supposedly being able to do it but not hitting more than 50%. If there is a team that can hit 80% or higher, they will be extremely deadly.

It will come down to the other things that those alliances can do, namely auto and climbing. Floor acquisition could be a game changer, especially in auto. A 30 point climber with a dumper could also be a huge deal. I don't think we have seen enough in week 0 to really tell how the game will go. I know, at least in the Finger Lakes area, that there are still a lot of teams looking extremely mediocre and probably several that are not showing their hands yet.

Also, how many teams have you actually seen in person shooting reliably full court?

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Now that there's a larger portion of teams able to make full-court shots, how special will it be to do so? Will shooting full court be a commonality found in a lot of robots? Will blocking shots from said teams become a viable strategy?

I think it still will be special since with the robots seen over the weekend were not a significant representation of all 2000+ robots involved with FRC.

If I have a defense bot on our alliance that would be who I would recommend blocking, that being said if I had 3 robots who were 3 point scorers, that would mean we would only need 10 disks scored a piece to completely offset all the points the full court shooter getting all 45 into the 2 point goal (since that is where most of the full court bots I saw shot.)

[Rangel]

I think their will be a lot of teams capable of shooting full court but it will be very special to do it accurately. I also think that their will be a special place for them on an elimination alliance. For example, two full court shooting robots would end up being the same as one full court shooter and a regular shooter assuming they are both accurate and consistent.

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

Also, how many teams have you actually seen in person shooting reliably full court?

I've lost count of the teams able to do full-court shots. While this does include a lot of teams with a 50-60% accuracy, I've seen many teams reach 90-95%, my own included (and we don't usually do that well).

One observation I've seen is that from the robots that have been shown (or that have been observed at private scrimmages), even average-joe teams can learn to make full-court shots easily once they tune their shooter.

[Donut]

A question on this since I didn't make it out to a scrimmage; how tall are most of these robots? Are most of the full court shooters already coming out around 60", so a team would need to raise up to block them? Or could a tall robot just park in front of them to block shots like this?

I still question how much this will happen in competition until I see it in week 1 (you know, defense and all), but I'd like to start brainstorming on an extension mechanism for our robot now after build ends rather than Friday of the regional if it's needed.

Originally Posted by Donut

A question on this since I didn't make it out to a scrimmage; how tall are most of these robots? Are most of the full court shooters already coming out around 60", so a team would need to raise up to block them? Or could a tall robot just park in front of them to block shots like this?

I still question how much this will happen in competition until I see it in week 1 (you know, defense and all), but I'd like to start brainstorming on an extension mechanism for our robot now after build ends rather than Friday of the regional if it's needed.

I've seen tall ones, I've seen shorter ones (such as ours). It all varies.

[XaulZan11]

Does anyone else think these full court shooters are 'bad' for Ultimate Assent?

That being said, I've never been one to turn down a boring or ugly win.

[cjl2625]

So could someone just simply lurk in the corner and intake/fire frisbees nonstop?

[mikemat]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

Does anyone else think these full court shooters are 'bad' for Ultimate Assent?

I could see a match with 2 of these teams in a face-off becoming boring, but once teams realize how deadly they are, we'll see plenty of teams trying to block them. Personally, I can see these robots loosing effectiveness as the season progresses.

[Anupam Goli]

If teams are relying on this for their strategy, then they will have a bad time. Any robot that is sufficiently tall just has to stand in front of them to put some sort of pressure on them. Heck, my team has an arm that can be raised to the height that most shooters sit at.

[mikemat]

Originally Posted by Wing

If teams are relying on this for their strategy, then they will have a bad time. Any robot that is sufficiently tall just has to stand in front of them to put some sort of pressure on them. Heck, my team has an arm that can be raised to the height that most shooters sit at.

I think many teams went away from this strategy for that reason. I'm curious to see if the "Cross-court blocker" will become a robot class come selection time.

[JohnSchneider]

Originally Posted by mikemat

I think many teams went away from this strategy for that reason. I'm curious to see if the "Cross-court blocker" will become a robot class come selection time.

It doesnt need to even be a class. "Robot with sufficient space to mount a blocker over lunch" is the class

Originally Posted by Wing

If teams are relying on this for their strategy, then they will have a bad time. Any robot that is sufficiently tall just has to stand in front of them to put some sort of pressure on them. Heck, my team has an arm that can be raised to the height that most shooters sit at.

We've found with our relatively short robot, if anyone wants to get close enough to block us, we can easily rapid-foul them.