Championchip Defence Tips

[pilleya]

Originally Posted by C.Lesco

Stock KOP 4 motor and gearbox arrangement
Triwheels make it so we can only drive half speed (2:1 gearing)
P

The AM14U3 came with a 10.71:1 reduction as standard, you can change the gear ratio to gear your robot faster or slower depending on what you want.

There are quite a few different ratios available 5.95:1, 8.45:1, 10.71:1 and 12.75:1

http://www.andymark.com/tbmini-optio...inioptions.htm

[IronicDeadBird]

Before we even get into defensive driving we should talk about things you can do when you don't have access to your robot. This years game is brutal if you know you are going in as a bruiser before you even hit the ground make sure the right people on the team know the right things about the robot. A good drive team can diagnose from the driver station what is going on with the robot and at the end of a match they need to be debriefed so when a robot gets to the pit possible kinks can be found and quickly eliminated. This is where a practice bot comes in really handy if you have one, otherwise its just about knowing your design.
If you don't have a practice bot you always have information you could brush up on (besides what lies in the rule book). With the amount of matches being recorded going up year after year there is no end to videos you can learn from about what good drivers do. A good understand of the game is crucial to understanding what you can do that is defensive while also still being valuable to a team.
When people say defensive bot most people jump to a wall bot but being a successful defender doesn't begin with just blocking shots. The safest way to stop a team from scoring isn't by letting them take a shot and by you blocking it, its by not letting them have access to those shots in the first place. You don't need a wall on a robot to stop shots if you instead stop an opposing team from even getting boulders in the first place then they can't take the shots anyway. If you do commit to a wall or a structure then make the most out of it.Never get too bogged down playing defense on one robot to lose sight of the entire match.
For scouting if you are doing a lot of focus on defense pit scouts need information on drive bases and stand scouts should be looking for patterns in driving you can exploit.

All this being said a perfect defensive robot is in the others teams way all the time but never in the way of their own team.

[GreyingJay]

Congratulations once again on winning Rookie All Star! You guys deserve it. I know you were disappointed by the hand you were dealt at North Bay but you took it all in stride and everyone was focused and got the job done. Robot issues aside, you impressed everyone with how well put together your team is.

As others have said, your priorities for defense are:

1 - don't let them near the batter (play Pong - drive back and forth across the defense line, blocking their way in). Make them waste time trying to dodge you.

2 - if they get past you, bump into them, disrupt their ability to drive to their preferred shooting position. You don't necessarily need to pin, just give them a good shove to knock them off and force them to realign over and over again.

3 - All the high goal shooters I've seen so far take a while to line up their shot. Generally they need to position themselves just right, then it takes a few seconds for some kind of aiming system to find its target, then spin up motors, then fire. Learn how long this takes. After slowing down access to their favourite spot, then forcing them to realign again and again, leave them alone for "not quite long enough", then give them a good bump just as their shooter fires. Make them waste a bunch of time only to miss the target when they finally are able to fire!

4 - If one robot has come in and already fired its shot, and is on its way back out, and another robot is inbound, don't bother continuing to block or bump the robot that's leaving. Let it go, and focus on the incoming one. Of course if it's just the one robot in the courtyard then feel free to block it, incoming and outgoing - slow it down as much as possible.

5 - train your human players to either get the boulders as close to the defense line as possible, for your offensive robots to have easy access, or to keep them inside your secret passage, where it is riskier for the opponent robot to waltz in and grab one. If they do go into your secret passage, go after them and bump them around. They will get a penalty for your contact! (Check with the ref before you do this, but according to the rules and the Q&A, this seems like a valid defense strategy)

6 - if they miss a shot, beat them to the ball, push it into your secret passage. Deny them the opportunity to grab it back and retry their shot.

7- as others have said, another way to play defense is to attach a nice tall opaque wall to your robot, not necessarily just to block/deflect flying balls but also to obscure the driver's vision of their own robot. Maybe a big version of your team standard with the word "Checkmate" clearly visible?

Best of luck and have fun at Worlds - hope to see you guys again!

[C.Lesco]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Congratulations once again on winning Rookie All Star! You guys deserve it. I know you were disappointed by the hand you were dealt at North Bay but you took it all in stride and everyone was focused and got the job done. Robot issues aside, you impressed everyone with how well put together your team is.

As others have said, your priorities for defense are:

1 - don't let them near the batter (play Pong - drive back and forth across the defense line, blocking their way in). Make them waste time trying to dodge you.

2 - if they get past you, bump into them, disrupt their ability to drive to their preferred shooting position. You don't necessarily need to pin, just give them a good shove to knock them off and force them to realign over and over again.

3 - All the high goal shooters I've seen so far take a while to line up their shot. Generally they need to position themselves just right, then it takes a few seconds for some kind of aiming system to find its target, then spin up motors, then fire. Learn how long this takes. After slowing down access to their favourite spot, then forcing them to realign again and again, leave them alone for "not quite long enough", then give them a good bump just as their shooter fires. Make them waste a bunch of time only to miss the target when they finally are able to fire!

4 - If one robot has come in and already fired its shot, and is on its way back out, and another robot is inbound, don't bother continuing to block or bump the robot that's leaving. Let it go, and focus on the incoming one. Of course if it's just the one robot in the courtyard then feel free to block it, incoming and outgoing - slow it down as much as possible.

5 - train your human players to either get the boulders as close to the defense line as possible, for your offensive robots to have easy access, or to keep them inside your secret passage, where it is riskier for the opponent robot to waltz in and grab one. If they do go into your secret passage, go after them and bump them around. They will get a penalty for your contact! (Check with the ref before you do this, but according to the rules and the Q&A, this seems like a valid defense strategy)

6 - if they miss a shot, beat them to the ball, push it into your secret passage. Deny them the opportunity to grab it back and retry their shot.

7- as others have said, another way to play defense is to attach a nice tall opaque wall to your robot, not necessarily just to block/deflect flying balls but also to obscure the driver's vision of their own robot. Maybe a big version of your team standard with the word "Checkmate" clearly visible?

Best of luck and have fun at Worlds - hope to see you guys again!

Hey thanks! It was really awesome to meet you guys! You were so super nice to us the entire time and our media girl loved you guys since you did so much colab with us online! In the final two matches we did try the pong meathod against 1241 and it seemed to work pretty well so we will be playing with that again, rifining it a little. And the designers are aleready talking in hushed voices sbojt a sort of bulldozer just to be able to push the ball into the secret passage so thanks for these tips we're diffinately going to take them to heart! And we hope to see you guys again soon!

[rich2202]

As part of your holdback (30# of fabricated items), build a Boulder Blocker to make your robot just shy of the 54" height limit. Bolt it on when you get to Champs. IMHO, but it on all 4 sides of your robot, and put a cover to keep boulders out.

For low robots that shoot the high goal, the Blocker may be all you need. The rest you have to push around.