Value of defense

[Racer26]

As someone who comes from the region that 1114, 2056, 1241, 610, and many more call home:

I'm really used to planning for being up against the strongest possible teams. The number one thing those teams do is dissect the game and do what is necessary to seed number one independent of the skills of their alliance partners. In FIRST Stronghold, that means ensuring that they get the two extra points available in each qualification match.

To do that, they must DAMAGE 4 of 5 DEFENSEs by CROSSING them each twice, AND score 8 BOULDERS into the enemy TOWER. Conveniently, those two objectives mesh nicely. So long as you CROSS a DEFENSE each time you bring a BOULDER into the enemy COURTYARD and score them, you'll achieve both (assuming your alliance partners are at least functional enough to drive up onto the base of the TOWER to CAPTURE it).

For this game, I don't see any reason a single elite bot shouldn't be able to single-handedly achieve that objective, and I expect the top teams will probably do just that.

As in every previous year I can remember, I expect the top teams will CROSS two DEFENSEs in auto and score 2 BOULDERS. That means they only need to score 6 more in teleop. Totally doable.