Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Boltman

I saw only one Outer works shooter in SD and they were off target I never saw a shot go in. There was another able to hit from 2/3 back but did it rarely.

Our choice to shoot from the outer works was in anticipation of defense. Once we got our intake working Saturday, we were in the region of 25% shooting accuracy from the outer works (with a camera and ~zero practise). Even if your shooter shoots exactly straight with the proper trajectory every time, it's very, very tough to line up your yaw (side-to-side) manually.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Team 359 was the only once able to do it from the outerworks here and there at lake superior. I think 4009 did it sometimes. We may have done it once or twice, but we were inconsistent.

They were really consistent towards the middle of the event. In playoffs they were off though.

[Anthony Galea]

Originally Posted by Boltman

I saw only one Outer works shooter in SD and they were off target I never saw a shot go in. There was another able to hit from 2/3 back but did it rarely.

At Southfield on Friday, we were having various problems that were causing us to miss shots (bottom prong on our shooter being bent, camera being knocked out of alignment from going over the defenses) or not take them at all, but after the last match on Friday, we fixed all the problems on our shooter, and Saturday, 100% of our outer works shots went into the goal, although two bounced out the side in QF 1-1. I was driving so I didnt see if they did it in a match, but I saw 3322 could shoot from (what was around the distance of) the outer works also on the practice field. 2960 and 548 both scored high goals too, but from close to the batter to on the batter, respectively.

The point I'm getting at is that high goal shooters from the outer works are rare. It just depends on the event how many there are. I expect more teams to score in the high goal as the season goes on, in order to stay competitive and raise the score.

[Boltman]

The way I see it from strategy perspective...an accurate HG outer work shooter could be awesome but its very hard to do...much harder than 42 point HP stackers of last year...hence the rarity.

We know the pitfalls of visual processing that is why we attempted zero HG shots even though we "can" but we really need the auto aiming. We could technically hit 16 feet every time as we did over and over in practice at home 100%... but not having auto aim is not worth it.

Some teams will figure it out. We will try again next week to get auto aim going.For us its mainly a camera placement issue(with unobstructed vision of the goal) on a low bot with not many great places to put the camera where it won't get destroyed or make us too tall. We don't need it to compete to win but sure would be nice...if we make it to WC we'll figure it out.

[Ginger Power]

Another question that I've been thinking about: Can a defensive robot be a first round pick? An early first round pick? Usually the alliance captain will be good at breaching, and in deeper events, the alliance captains will be good at breaching and scoring. There are a ton of teams that can breach effectively that could be picked up in round 2. So if there's an elite defender on the board are they worth a top pick? Let's assume this defender can climb and play spot offense (not highly effectively) as well.

I would say yes because an elite defender can prevent a capture, and a capture can be done by an elite robot being fed by a breaching 2nd pick. If you capture, and prevent a capture, you basically win.

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Another question that I've been thinking about: Can a defensive robot be a first round pick? An early first round pick? Usually the alliance captain will be good at breaching, and in deeper events, the alliance captains will be good at breaching and scoring. There are a ton of teams that can breach effectively that could be picked up in round 2. So if there's an elite defender on the board are they worth a top pick? Let's assume this defender can climb and play spot offense (not highly effectively) as well.

I would say yes because an elite defender can prevent a capture, and a capture can be done by an elite robot being fed by a breaching 2nd pick. If you capture, and prevent a capture, you basically win.

I would respectfully disagree. If you are a great breacher/scorer, there is very little reason to not pick another great breacher/scorer that complements you. I think that a team's ability to win matches is first decided by how strong they are offensively, and second by how strong they are defensively.

From watching a few regionals via webcast, as well as my observations from our practice field that several teams came to, I observed that it's possible to disrupt a team for maybe 8 seconds if they're shooting high goal, but it's very difficult to disrupt a team that zones in on quick low goals.

Against an expert defender, I think that the best way to play around them would be to have your first pick robot score a low goal, then play counter-defense for you, pushing their solo defender back as the captain takes a shot, and then both robots cycle back. This presents a problem for the defender, as if they attack the high goal shooter, they lose the low goal and then are pushed away by that robot to make space for the high goal shooter. If they choose to attack the low goal shooter, they fail to defend against the high goal shooter, and it's very difficult to play defense on a low goal robot anyways.

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Another question that I've been thinking about: Can a defensive robot be a first round pick? An early first round pick? Usually the alliance captain will be good at breaching, and in deeper events, the alliance captains will be good at breaching and scoring. There are a ton of teams that can breach effectively that could be picked up in round 2. So if there's an elite defender on the board are they worth a top pick? Let's assume this defender can climb and play spot offense (not highly effectively) as well.

I would say yes because an elite defender can prevent a capture, and a capture can be done by an elite robot being fed by a breaching 2nd pick. If you capture, and prevent a capture, you basically win.

No because there are no elite defenders and you can find "Hidden hybrid defenders" that can not only defend but score if needed also and possibly scale.

A defender no matter how good will probably lose you a regional with the sole exception of 179 so far

More important are boulder bots and scalers

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by Boltman

A defender no matter how good will probably lose you a regional with the sole exception of 179 so far

To quote myself:

Originally Posted by MikLast

Watch the PNW West Valley district finals. 4495 (top seeded backup) was a defense bot and replaced 4082(?) for the semis/finals and beat 5920/4061/4120 (1st seeded alliance) in the finals because of 4495s defense. It was amazing to watch

[TCMJ1816]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

They were really consistent towards the middle of the event. In playoffs they were off though.

They seemed to shoot mainly like a foot from the outterworks, under very heavy defense they would shoot from over the outterworks. In SF they were hitting about 50% from there. Towards the end they started having some accuracy issues.

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Another question that I've been thinking about: Can a defensive robot be a first round pick? An early first round pick? Usually the alliance captain will be good at breaching, and in deeper events, the alliance captains will be good at breaching and scoring. There are a ton of teams that can breach effectively that could be picked up in round 2. So if there's an elite defender on the board are they worth a top pick? Let's assume this defender can climb and play spot offense (not highly effectively) as well.

I would say yes because an elite defender can prevent a capture, and a capture can be done by an elite robot being fed by a breaching 2nd pick. If you capture, and prevent a capture, you basically win.

I get what you are saying. But if you are a higher up alliance captain I wouldn't risk it.

If I was a lower seeded alliance captain at Lake Superior (seeds 6-8) I probably would of picked the top defensive bot first then picked the breacher/scorer... but that's just me and that possible situation.

[GeeTwo]

With the protection offered to robots transiting the outer works, a good sapper 'bot should be able to breach the defenses solo, or only with the support of its alliance partners cycling boulders through their favorite defense. You can only get points for ten defense crossings; there is very little reason to have a second robot with a primary mission to breach defenses.

The only "unlimited points" (that is points limited mostly by cycle time) are boulders. Once breach is assured, the next pivot point is scoring boulders, with the major benefit of weakening the tower so that it can be captured, but an essentially open problem as far as "how many" points you can score.

The next pivot point is defense. As we expected, this is only a significant consideration during elims in early weeks. I predict that it will slowly become more important during quals through week 5, but become rather important in week 6 and quite important during district CMPs and CMP.

I expect that in later weeks and at CMP, that there shall be a designated defense robot and two robots focused on the breach and weakening the tower. At lower levels, there will be one robot assigned to each function, but at the higher levels, breaching will be a side effect of weakening the tower. This should be especially effective as the two offensive robots are able to run interference for each other against the defensive robot of the opposing alliance. I expect that at the very highest levels, teams will coordinate their crossings to further reduce the effect of defense.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Team 359 was the only once able to do it from the outerworks here and there at lake superior. I think 4009 did it sometimes. We may have done it once or twice, but we were inconsistent.

5172 was absolutely deadly from the outer works over in Northern Lights. I only remember them missing maybe one shot the entire regional from the outer works. Based on their stats, their alliances averaged 40 goal points per match, and almost all of that was them shooting from the defenses. They'll be deadly at Iowa and Champs.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

They were really consistent towards the middle of the event. In playoffs they were off though.

We were off in the playoffs for several reasons.
Manual aiming because issues with our IP camera. This is also why our autonomous shooting was all over the place, being very inconsistent.
The other was the way our catapult is mounted at the fulcrum. After a while we noticed it started shooting weak, and tried to bump up pressure (using a diigital pressure gauge accurate to the 100th of a PSI in set increments. The culprit was the temperature of the event, especially after they opened the roll-away doors for teams packing up and leaving the event.
How do we know? During the playoffs, we started using a blow driver to heat up the arm joint. We started to overshoot the goal.
Without going on the practice field and doing guesses, there was really no way for us to test other than during the match.
Overall, I'd say we did OK.
As for the 1 match where our shot got blocked, it was due to our appendage not being down. It is not possible to block our shot legally if a 54" robot is up only against our appendage. Our operator forgot to bring the arm down with a defender. In the match that followed, we successfully shot two right over defenders.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

I get what you are saying. But if you are a higher up alliance captain I wouldn't risk it.

If I was a lower seeded alliance captain at Lake Superior (seeds 6-8) I probably would of picked the top defensive bot first then picked the breacher/scorer... but that's just me and that possible situation.

I would agree with this if we were a lower seeded captain.

Our alliance discussed in detail how we would address defense. We did this after the initial annoucement that we would decline 4009 and create our own alliance, then later deciding to accept.
If you watched all of our matches, we played no defense whatsoever at all.
We understood that shooting other than the outerworks with a defender would be tough......but with all 3 robots attacking the castle, a defender can only do so much.
Other than that 1 match where we missed "capture" by 1 boulder, we did it in every single playoff match including the DECCer, often getting negative points for "over-capturing."
As the weeks go on, capturing will be automatic for regional winning alliances, and a requirement if you plan on succeeding in qualifications at championships, IMO.

[GCarnes]

Originally Posted by jlmcmchl

There was a great semifinal match between alliances 4 and 1 at Kettering for just this. Previously, 1 had put up over 150 points in a match, but then got completely shut down once 4 applied killer defense, and still put up 130 points. It doesn't look like the match video is up just yet, but if you can find it I highly recommend giving it a look.

Alliance 4 did a great job playing defense. Not only did it shut out 5114 from scoring but it also distracted me from breaching the defenses. It was a good battle in that semi-final match up, taking it to the tiebreaker third match. I hope the crowd was entertained! Thank you to alliance 4 for a tough competition!