Don't Ban Can Battles in Offseasons

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by DareDad

It may put an extra strain on the refs, but what I would suggest is that no team may remove a container from the step unless all containers on that side are already scored on top of stacks and only one container may be removed from the step at a time.

That removes the can battle deciding the match in the first 2 seconds.

It benefits fast stacking teams or teams that strategically place containers on short stacks.

Sadly, it could be bad news for Wave (probably the best robot of the year) since their partners wouldn't be able to grab from the step until they'd capped their third stack.

But overall I think that's a significantly better solution than the "let's throw more containers on the field" plan.

If this were implemented at the beginning of the season, tons of teams would have completely different robots.
It makes traditional-style can grabbers near-useless, makes capping far more valuable, and makes for some other interesting play, like (lets make 3 stacks of 1 so we can get the cans, then pick those up and turn them into stacks of 6).

I don't think its a useful rule change for an off-season, especially not a high end one.