A video guide to playing shutdown defense in Stronghold

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by lethc

Did you watch the videos? 4587 (an excellent high goal scorer) went from scoring 4-5 high goals per match to only scoring 2 with defense played on them. Defense forced them to play the role of outerworks shooter which they weren't used to, and they only made one of the two outerworks shots they took.

Defense against a robot that doesn't regularly shoot from the outerworks significantly disrupts their offensive flow and forces them to play the game in a way that they aren't comfortable with.

4587 was constantly scoring 3-4 RP per match with no defense played against them and scored 0 RP when 2461 defended them.

I guess I'm not understanding how good defense is easy to overcome if you don't shoot from the outerworks, most of the videos in the OP show otherwise.

Let's run a mixup!

Lets say that in Q72 a mixup was run where instead of immediately taking shots with boulders the blue alliance focused on breaching, BUT every time they crossed a defense to weaken it they also took a boulder and just plopped it in the courtyard. Until they are done with the breaches 2461s current strategy which is heavy batter defense is useless because points are still being scored and they aren't slowing anything down they are literally sitting doing nothing.
This accomplishes 2 things, it gets the breaching out of the way for those RP or in elims gives that nice point cushion and it also pressurizes the courtyard for a nice little explosion as soon as breaches are done.
As soon as those breaches are done though its 2461s time to shine by blocking shots right? Well kind of... You will notice in the flow of the match 2461 has time to posture properly for defense because the opposing alliance has to go retrieve boulders from the neutral or wherever it ended up in the courtyard. If you run the mixup where the boulders are flooded in the courtyard you give 2461 a lot less time to posture and be in the right place at the right time to block the right goals. 2461 only really had to block one robot at a time.
Do you notice how much time 4587 spends having to retrieve a ball and then park and then shoot? Can you see how much time they save where instead of having to constantly cross the outerworks they could just take a shot move a few feet pickup another ball and take another shot? Welcome to volume of fire where accuracy matters less because you have more to start out with. This is when you cash in the pressure and your 3 free robots start rushing shots into goals. You have 5 goals to choose from and one robot to defend them all, and that robot can't be everywhere at once and 1 defensive robot vs 3 offensive robots can get pretty ugly.
Thats only half the fun of creating that pressure though. If at any point in the match the red alliance finds that the only boulders left on the field that they need to take shots are in their courtyard they run into an interesting predicament. Only one robot is allowed in their own courtyard at a time and currently that robot is busy trying to stop a team who is spraying and praying with boulders.

What can the red alliance do?
If they try to regain control by taking boulders out they have to do it one at a time and they have to risk sending in one of the scoring robots into the courtyard where they can be pinned and suppressed by the 2-3 opposing robots.
If they try and respond by breaching then they are just trading time since the blue alliance has already done the breaches they need.

What would you do in this situation if you were on the red alliance?

TLDR: If you choose to play someone at the game they designed for expect to lose.