Low Bar

[laplacier]

This is what I see the advantages and disadvantages of being against a defender.

Cons:
1. Your cycle time when shooting is increased. depending on the robot matchup (faster vs slower, taller vs shorter) this could be significant.
2. Your potential to challenge the tower for the extra point at the end of the match could be at risk.
3. You can have your boulder stolen from you in a race to pick up a deflected ball. This would be a significant time loss.

Pros:
1. Unless the defender leaves to accomplish tasks periodically it isn't contributing to its team's ability to meet the requirements to gain ranking points (barring W-L points).
2. A defender is scoring 0 boulders while defending. Assuming all robots have equal offensive scoring capabilities (a stretch, I know but for the sake of argument) a 3 robot offensive is still going to push out more points through goals unless said defender can impede the progress of more than one robot simultaneously and do it well. 2 unimpeded robots on the enemy alliance are not going to outscore 2 unimpeded robots on your alliance plus one impeded robot.

On that note, if anyone has some good footage of defensive robots impeding multiple robots during an FRC game where multiple robots can score at the same time (much like this year's challenge) I'm looking for them! I do think there will be some strong defenders and I need to convince the rest of my team they exist.

Now on the topic of "low robots will always be shut down by tall robots" I don't think that will be the case because:

1. You can close the distance between yourself and the tower where a robot can't maneuver in between yourself and the goal. Stopping you from getting to that point is difficult since the defender would need to give you enough space to start in their courtyard to not incur a foul when you are traversing the outer works.
2. Trajectory is key. If you arc your shot you can shoot over a tall robot. As long as you're not shooting from the front edge of your robot you have wiggle room to arc it.