Who is going to be on Einstein?

[JamesCH95]

I agree with the assessment that a FCS blocker will be very important to success on Einstein. Not a 'noodle bot' though, noodles and other soft disc blockers can still allow discs to travel the entire length of the field.

My anecdotal evidence: the one match at CT where we (95) went up against 195, arguably the best FCS at CT, we shut them down to something like 6 or 8 discs scored during the entire teleop period. 195 got two or four from full-court position, then only one cycle of 4 discs, with no time left for a 10pt hang. They were also unable to draw any fouls on us. In one of their other matches where they were un-defended 195 emptied their entire frisbee reserve including colored discs, scored most of them, got a 10pt hang, and their alliance set the first high score at the CT regional, something like 176 with no foul points.

We reduced their teleop scoring capacity from 100+ points to less than 20 points with 100% clean defense using our climbing arm. We were very surprised that no alliances picked us at CT to specifically counter 195, but were entirely thrilled to be playing with them in the afternoon.

In general I think the winning alliance will be a FCS, a ground pick-up shooter, and a defense/climbing multi-ability robot that can be assigned to protect the FCS, harass opponent shooters, and/or climb and dump for 50. 10pt hang is a minimum requisite for all robots. I think that a good FCS and ground loader can get basically every disc into the 3pt goal in a match (especially if undefended) which makes a 3rd shooting robot superfluous and a good defender/protector/climber more important. Ideally all robots will have an auton move and all available frisbees will be spent, of course.