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

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by Negative 9

I wonder how many teams can shoot at the pyramid goal accurately from the feeder station. Those guys are going to be the real winners.

Why do you say that? You're limited to just 30 points (6x coloured discs at 5 points each) doing that. Plus, not all of them will score every time, so you better have a floor pickup as well.

At that point, why not sit on your scoring side of the field and score tons of points from all the missed discs strewn about from the full court shooters? With a floor pickup and a deadly accurate shooter, shots from that close should be easy. If you can score 10 discs that way instead of 6 in the pyramid, you still get the same 30 points, but your upper limit is much higher.

[bduddy]

I'm just wondering if anyone built the mythical fan-bot - even a small blast of air to a long-distance shot will probably cause it to miss. That may be the best defense against these kinds of robots...

[dodar]

Originally Posted by 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.

Was 469 "bad" for Breakaway?

[Donut]

Originally Posted by dodar

Was 469 "bad" for Breakaway?

I think that answer is going to vary with the individual. That goes for all "chokehold" or "game breaking" robots.

From the perspective of an average team facing off against a robot like that, I'd say yes. It's one thing to get steam rolled by an elite team because they just execute so much better than you do; it's quite another to know before the match the starts that your robot is physically incapable of beating an opponent regardless of execution. I think this is more applicable to a bot like 71 in 2002 where the match was over in the first 5 seconds if you were slower than them, at least 469 had to have a partner start scoring for them before they were unstoppable.

If very accurate (75%+) full court shooters are seen at regionals you have the same scenario as 2002 as a possibility. For an average alliance that cannot extend above 60" the match is over if they can't stop their opponent from reaching a feeder station in the first 10 seconds. For an elite alliance you have the potential for a very entertaining match as they now try to be more accurate than the full court shooter in the 3 vs 2 game they get to play. You could see a 150 to 180 match score if that happens.

[Anupam Goli]

I'm still not convinced of full court shooters being very effective. It takes just a simple amount of pressure to force the teams to misfire. From what i've seen, there's not much room for error either when full court shooting. The reason 469 was so effective was because there was room for error and it was actually hard to block their shots and/or pressure them. The teams that try this and don't tune their other systems will be ineffective once defense is applied even a little bit.

[EricLeifermann]

I've said it before and I still feel this way, unless full court shooters are against an alliance who are all too short to block them, they are going to have to be opportunistic. Get to the feeder station if no one is trying to block them start shooting full court until the other alliance notices, then fill up with 4 discs and drive to a closer/un-blockable location next to the pyramid. Then rinse and repeat.

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

I've said it before and I still feel this way unless full court shooters are against alliance who are all too short to block them, they are going to have to be opportunistic. Get to the feeder station if no one is trying to block them start shooting full court until the other alliance notices, then fill up with 4 discs and drive to a closer/un-blockable location next to the pyramid. Then rinse and repeat.

And this is coming from a team that appears to be incredibly accurate with full field shooting.

For what it's worth I agree 100%. The truly dangerous teams will be the ones who can pull off the full court shot while left alone but then when defended can quickly score 4 on the field. They will also preferably have floor pickup to reacquire the missed full court shots and not leave them for the other alliance to take out of play.

[Kevin Sevcik]

The protected zone in front of the double feeder station is only 20" wide. A decent first attempt at blocking a full court shooter is going to be beating them to the feeder station and camping sideways there so they just can't get to it. Then the defender has pinning rules on its side. A well designed and driven robot will eventually be able to get past this sort of defense, probably drawing a foul in the meantime, but it should cut a good 30 seconds or more off the time available to shoot.

Also, it's perfectly legal for a full court shooter to draw a G30 foul on a blocking robot by driving forward and touching the robot while still in contact with its loading zone. G30 doesn't care who initiates the contact. Mind you, this will throw off the full court shooter's aim, and the defender can get back into position while the shooter is lining back up...

[dodar]

Is the feeder zone like last year's lane, where there is an invisible wall projected upwards and you are considered protected even if you just have part of your robot over the zone?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by dodar

Is the feeder zone like last year's lane, where there is an invisible wall projected upwards and you are considered protected even if you just have part of your robot over the zone?

You're only protected if you're touching the carpet in the loading zone. That was actually the rule last year as well, you had to be in contact with the lane, key, or bridge.

[rsisk]

We will be happy to sit down court and scoop up all those missed shots and score them.

Originally Posted by rsisk

We will be happy to sit down court and scoop up all those missed shots and score them.

Now I wish we were going to IE. I'd love to be allianced with you guys as we shoot full court (or 3/4 court to avoid defense) and have an awesome robot pick up missed shots. It's a surefire way to know every frisbee entered into the field is scored.

[Feroz1325]

Though this strategy (full court shooting) is not a choke-hold strategy, if executed properly it could be close. Consider the elimination round alliance of a full court shooter, a robot with floor pickup and a third pick defensive bot....we will call them the red alliance.
The full court shooter could fire discs at the goal while the floor pickup bot could collect the missed disks. If a blue robot comes to block the shot, the red defensive bot could simply defend the blue defensive bot. This would require two robots from the blue alliance to defend the full court shooter and essentially make the match 1v1.
Do full court shooters ruin the game? No. They just add a new level of strategy, i know my team will be brainstorming ways to defeat (and work with) teams like this.

[Arpan]

I think that effectiveness will vary based on other factors. Many full court shooters i've seen are less than 30 inches tall. Another important factor is bouncing- it is extremely difficult to shoot full court shots with just the right amount of power so that they do not bounce from the goals.

Our team's been throwing around the idea of using off-the shelf items to build a 60 inch box around our alliance's defensive robot during elimination ( if we make it that far).

"Here, put this box on your robot. It'll make you better."

XD

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by dodar

Was 469 "bad" for Breakaway?

I'm not sure this is a direct comparison. The 469's robot was hard to come up with and hard to design/build. Not every average team could have done it. The fact that there was one amazing team (and maybe 2 other very good teams with 51 and 125), that had the design makes it different. We have already seen/heard about countless teams that have sucessfully built full field shooters. Seems too easy for a potentially huge payout.