Is Defense Finally Viable

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by E Dawg

True, but you might as well design for the top goal anyways. That way you can block the bottom ones as well if you need to.

You're assuming top goal defense is as easy as defense was last year. You need to design a mechanism that's going to extend 3'-4' out the top of your robot, linearly, not swinging around a pivot, that can withstand (presumably) multiple exercise balls hitting it at speed. Or you can spend you time designing a floor pickup, launcher, dump, etc. I think top goal defense is going to be too unimportant to top-rank offense/defense robots, and too challenging for most lower-ranked defense-only teams. I think I'd really rather that lower rank teams focus on a ball manipulation system than a defense system that's going to be useless 95% of the time.