pic: Inverted CIM 2-Speed Gearbox

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

Interesting...I would have classified 2014 into School A given the prevalence of defense and the fact that just about every team would be playing D at one point or another. That is to say, sustaining a pushing match for 15+ seconds would be more valuable than shaving a few tenths of a second off of a 10 foot sprint. But like we were saying before, depends on which criteria you're aiming to meet.

(Apologies, just noticed this comment)
It seemed to me that the better defense for 2014 was a 'pillaring' technique. Pillaring is a tank warfare term, where the tank drives back & forth perpendicular to the cannon's aim. It requires planning & setup, but it makes the tank much harder to hit while making it relatively easy for it to maintain sighting on a target. This is prevalent in the Battlefield series of games.

This same concept works for defense on the FRC field. Sprint into position, then pillar back/forth and force the other team to either push you sideways or drive fast enough around you to get to their goal. The likelyhood of them pushing you is high - yet it's time consuming and usually not as effective as one would thing since it still doesn't solve the problem of them getting to their desired spot for an open shot.

Faster low gear speeds on an open field also give more opportunities to clip/turn a corner of a shooting bot - much more effective than raw pushing.