Los Angeles Regional Finals Match Defense

[Wes2443]

We (team 2443) played a similar defensive game in our eliminations finals run in San Diego. Funny thing, we initially only played defense because our intake arm broke in QF causing us to not be able to shoot (the reason we got picked). We played the opposite spectrum of the game, defense, great in my opinion, letting us beat alliances we previously thought were unbeatable like 3255's second seed alliance. Our defense mightve been the reason we made it so far and we even took a decisive game in the finals, but in the 3rd match we got penalized for pinning (arguable, but totally the refs judgement). The match was totally even in scores except for foul points and loss by 5 pts.

We found defense to be really hard to play against since vision is already a problem, driving around more defenses which if you don't have an experienced driver brings a second challenge. Probably if we didn't play defense, the finals wouldn't have been as in our favor. I feel if robots only have one definite shooting position they may be more vulnerable to defense. It matters where but a robot could block and force ill advised shots. Then again, you can't not have a shooting position because you can just get pushed around. The perfect shooter will have multiple comfortable shooting positions where they can be flexible and accurate.

Happy for TorBots' alliance for pulling it off in the finals. Unfortunately we couldn't watch it because the stream was down.

[bobl]

This is quite a hornets nest. I have always felt that high speed ramming/tipping is not a defensive strategy but a strategy to disable/damage.

Consider a robot traveling the length of the field at full speed to hit (supposedly to defend) an opposing alliance member. Is this good defense or is it trying to cause damage? I am not saying that aggressive defense should be penalized, you can be aggressive without damage. This is way it is such a hard rule to enforce, was there intent?

Think about the events you've attended. When a robot crossing a defense carrying a boulder pushed another boulder through as well did the referees pause to think "Was that intentional? Was the driver able to see that there was a boulder in his path?" No. They assess a penalty and move on.

The referees have enough to do already without having to make this determination.

One last thought, Remember Gracious Professionalism. Act like your grandmother is watching and think about how you would feel if it was your robot was put out of commission.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by bobl

This is quite a hornets nest. I have always felt that high speed ramming/tipping is not a defensive strategy but a strategy to disable/damage.

Consider a robot traveling the length of the field at full speed to hit (supposedly to defend) an opposing alliance member. Is this good defense or is it trying to cause damage? I am not saying that aggressive defense should be penalized, you can be aggressive without damage. This is way it is such a hard rule to enforce, was there intent?

On the flip side this punishes teams that scout out drive bases and drives in disruptive and not destructive ways.
If someone makes the call to full speed clip another robot in an attempt to spin them out to someone who doesn't know whats going on it just looks like a missed full speed tbone. To the driver it was a perfectly executed pit maneuver. Intent is truly a weird thing.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

I have been thinking about this too, after seeing 3316 tipped during the playoffs in Israel. Without any "true" safe zones for teams to take advantage of, this sort of scenario is inevitable for tall robots. While it should not be the goal to tip your opponent on its back or side, defenders shouldn't have to show any less agression towards tall robots. Teams should design accordingly...

I am concerned about many of these tall robots and I expect to see a lot of rebuilds done before DCMP's/CMP.

Touching the outerworks is the safe zone that we we designed for specifically (as well as the extended shooter to remove the possibility of getting blocked in that spot). In the 2 QFs we got 25 penalty points in that spot (and still made the shots). The refs at CVR were good about calling that foul.

[AdamHeard]

Bummer of a situation, both tips looks worty of red cards based on historical precedent (or at least the second one). Not saying the tips look intentional, but I've seen similar ones called before.

330 has been on the wrong end of this call (or no call) twice now.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2007cmp_sf2m1

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by bobl

This is quite a hornets nest. I have always felt that high speed ramming/tipping is not a defensive strategy but a strategy to disable/damage.

Purposely damaging/tipping another's robot is unacceptable and against the rules. That being said, defense and ramming is part of the game. Build your robot robustly

Originally Posted by bobl

Consider a robot traveling the length of the field at full speed to hit (supposedly to defend) an opposing alliance member. Is this good defense or is it trying to cause damage? I am not saying that aggressive defense should be penalized, you can be aggressive without damage. This is way it is such a hard rule to enforce, was there intent?

Distance traveled is (should not be) the deciding factor. Penalties are (and should be) situational. A full field charge can be far less damaging the, say, a 'little push' on a robot that is almost tipped on the polycarbonate barriers.

Originally Posted by bobl

Think about the events you've attended. When a robot crossing a defense carrying a boulder pushed another boulder through as well did the referees pause to think "Was that intentional? Was the driver able to see that there was a boulder in his path?" No. They assess a penalty and move on.

Intent is not part of those rules, but is part of the 'vigorous robot-to-robot interaction' rules.

Originally Posted by bobl

The referees have enough to do already without having to make this determination.

One last thought, Remember Gracious Professionalism. Act like your grandmother is watching and think about how you would feel if it was your robot was put out of commission.

I'll say this again. Gracious professionalism should be used to measure your own actions, not someone else's. If my robot was 'put out of commission' by a legal hit (even a full field charge) I'd look at my design to see how I can make it more robust.

BTW, I have had my robot 'put out of commission' that way.

[1452-Leo]

Originally Posted by TheFineLine

You can see this during the 3rd final's match when 1452 was easily harassing arguable two of the best shooters at the regional (before their robot lost connection ).

Unfortunately, it was a bit worse than that .

Here's a play-by-play using this video of what I'm pretty sure happened:

• 1:30:55 - We collide with an opposing robot, which takes our bumper off and drags it to the rock wall.
• 1:31:10 - Opposing robot drives back over rock wall, dragging our bumper with it into view.
• 1:31:38 - Refs notice the bumper and emergency stop our robot
• 1:31:47 - Volunteer wearing black at the top right side of the video tells us what happened.

I (the driver) didn't even notice the bumper until the volunteer told me about it. Here's a photo of our bumper attachment point afterwards (it was an 8" bumper so we only used one bracket, a mistake we won't repeat). As you can see, one wood screw was sheared off and the other ripped straight out of the wooden backing. Use more screws people!

Anyway, just wanted to post this somewhere because not many people know what happened and how important bumpers are!

[YoshiCity]

In regards to cards for aggressive play... A team at North Shore was given a yellow card in their first match of playoffs for an aggressive hit while attempting to score a boulder in the enemy courtyard on an opposing robot playing defense. The two robots pushed head on into each other until the defense bot was lifted up so that only its rear wheels and rear bumper were touching the ground. The offense bot backed away before the 5 second mark that would cause a pin. It was fully within the right of the referees to call what they deemed excessive aggression, but this scenario was at least worth mentioning. Seems to be just one more thing referees are inconsistent on between events.

One more thing worth noting is that the entire situation was not visible to the offense robot's drive team, considering there was a sally port in defense position 2 blocking all view of what was happening.