What we learned from week 1

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Care to explain what 1126 did? Also does any one have video of 48's defense? I would love to see it.

1126 made a robot that was small enough to go under the pyramid but had an amazing drivetrain. The lurked under theirs and when their opponents (two slot loaders) came to get discs, they would pop out and waylay them like crazy. At one point I was worried that they were going to get a blockading the gameflow penalty when their alliance partner was lined up to shoot and the entire field was blocked.

As for 48's defense, I don't know if there is any FLR match footage yet but if I remember correctly, they scooted out from auto and pushed 1559 out from under they pyramid before they could begin their climb. It was crazy.


From what I've watched at the regional, the field is incredibly cramped around the pyramid and feeder stations. Defense is incredibly viable though somewhat contradictory - you want to be tall enough to block shots but short to go under the pyramid. If someone can do both and be pushy and fast, they are the ultimate third round pick.

Two shooters one defender is a better alliance than three shooters since the field gets clogged with people going from feeder station to goals and the scoring positions are somewhat limited. Uncoordinated alliances almost end up playing defense on themselves when one robot is driving from the feeder slot to the goals and another is going from goals to feeder slot. I think the ultimate alliance would be one full court shooter, one ground pickup shooter, and one underpyramid defender. Any shots missed by the full court shooter could then be picked up by the ground pickup and scored, as they are now on the right side of the field. However, at least at FLR, there is very little in the way of ground pickup. And when I say very little, I mean none. It looked like 48 and 1507 both had mechanisms but didn't use them, instead opting for feeder station.

A word of warning for anyone putting on lunchtime shot blockers: 578 put one on and their driver, not used to playing with a tall robot got a red card for contacting a robot climbing.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the GDC change points to 10-30-40 or even 0-30-40. Climbing seems to be under powered in relation to how difficult a task it was.