Triple Cyclers or Defense?

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Therring610

@MrLim Do you think that a 3 high goal cycler alliance could be feasible in Stronghold? It worked in 2013 because of the many ways to get discs, but with one secret passage, do you think it'd work?

What [Thomas] was getting at in the stream was more a matter of ball supply and leaving your alliance susceptible to ball starvation.
Well, I completely missed the point of the question, but still a valid question.

My response starts here:
A question that came up in the chat for FRC Top 25 - Week 5, but I think it does warrant some consideration. With six weeks of competition under our belts, and Championships of both District and World varieties coming up, what do you expect the state of the game to be?

Obviously the "standard" for defense is playing courtyard defense with a cheesecake blocker.

3560, under the tutelage of 1241 and 610, showed a new kind of defense, where you defend the opposing secret passage. Mr. Lim talked about that type of defense on the show and indicated that, while it can be effective, it varies from alliance to alliance and requires a tremendous amount of driver knowledge that you simply can't teach in an afternoon.

East Kentwood Semifinals showed that, unopposed, elite robots such as 3357 and 2771 can put up simply massive scores. There are many, many robots this year that shoot from the outerworks and simply have a trajectory that's over 5' before it even leaves the perimeter of the robot. "The best defense is a good offense."

So that's where the question came in. 2013 is somewhat comparable to this game, where cheesecake blockers were a prime pick for alliances, yet the 610-1241-1477 machine swooped in and took Championships with triple cyclers. Do you think that this strategy could win again?

Obviously Ultimate Ascent and Stronghold are not directly comparable, with the lack of a low goal then and the ability to carry more than one frisbee per cycle, and longer shot distances.

[BrennanB]

2013 three cycler alliance played defense on Einstein finals.

I think defense is and will always be a key tool for pretty much any game, especially this one. Especially if you are outgunned.

[Thomas610]

Originally Posted by CalTran

So that's where the question came in. 2013 is somewhat comparable to this game, where cheesecake blockers were a prime pick for alliances, yet the 610-1241-1477 machine swooped in and took Championships with triple cyclers. Do you think that this strategy could win again?

What I was getting at in the stream was more a matter of ball supply and leaving your alliance susceptible to ball starvation.

The reason that 3-cyclers worked in 2013 was mainly that we had 2 different feeder stations to go to for discs. In Stronghold, once the field balls have been exhausted, robots will have to go after the secret passage to get balls. With 3-cyclers, all three robots are going to have to be perfectly in time with each other so that nobody is waiting to get to the passage for a ball (something that we ran into at Waterloo with 1241 ).

But what I'm getting at is the enormous scoring potential that you have with 3-cyclers. Because your alliance is scoring at such a fast rate, the opposing alliance is forced to throw balls out of their castle and flood their secret passage leading to a starvation for your alliance.

Issue is that if you don't have a defense bot and the opposing alliance does, they can easily park that bot in front of your secret passage shutting down all scoring robots and starting a starvation.

What you're looking for is to reach a point that we did in 2013. Where you're scoring so much that the opposing defense bot has to start scoring for its alliance to try and keep up on the scoreboard. Keep in mind that this is basically a situation that can't be found anywhere but at champs at Einstein levels of play.

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

2013 three cycler alliance played defense on Einstein finals.

I think defense is and will always be a key tool for pretty much any game, especially this one. Especially if you are outgunned.

To be completely honest, the way I remember Einstein 2013, 1241 and 610 started playing defense because we ran out of discs to cycle

[Jash_J]

There are a couple of key differences in both Ultimate Ascent and Stronghold that need to be re-stated.

1) There is only space for one robot to collect a boulder out of the secret passage at a time where as in 2013, there were three locations to collect disks.
2) In 2013 as long as you were touching the pyramid, you were warranted as protected, in this year's game you can only be protected from the outer works which typically depending on line-up is only useful from the 3 and 4 positions.
3) There are less boulders than there were disks, even if you take into account that in this year's game you can only hold 1 boulder and in 2013 you could hold 4 disks per team.

That being said, I believe that defense will always be played, in some form. Whether it be a starvation strategy, neutral zone defense or the classic courtyard defense, especially in this year's game. Mainly due to the fact that the lesser scoring robot will be starved for balls and having them fight for a ball over another partner of theirs who scores faster/more accurately may not be worth it. It may be wiser to play a form of defense to decrease opponent cycle time.

1241 ran the 3 cycle strategy a couple of times at North Bay, just to see how it would turn out and it did work somewhat efficiently at the beginning when balls were in the neutral zone. After the first 30 seconds had passed and the balls were cleared from the neutral zone, there were only two locations to obtain balls from and that was the secret passage or the opponents secret passage. The game then turned into 1 robot cycling through the low bar, the other bot feeding the robot who remained in the courtyard who would shoot into the high goal.

It all comes down to the opponents you are facing, if there is no clear indication of weakness, then defense may not be worth playing and 3 cyclers may be more efficient, especially with the abbreviated 1 robot cycling, the other feeding the courtyard bot. However, most robots have weaknesses and if you exploit them correctly, there should always be a form of defense that can be played.

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by Edxu

To be completely honest, the way I remember Einstein 2013, 1241 and 610 started playing defense because we ran out of discs to cycle

1477 played defense on 469's fullcourt

[Ozuru]

Originally Posted by CalTran

[b]What [Thomas] was getting at in the stream
3560, under the tutelage of 1241 and 610, showed a new kind of defense, where you defend the opposing secret passage. Mr. Lim talked about that type of defense on the show and indicated that, while it can be effective, it varies from alliance to alliance and requires a tremendous amount of driver knowledge that you simply can't teach in an afternoon.

Can you expand on this please or provide any videos?

[CalTran]

Not a great video, but here seems to be one of the few current videos of Waterloo Finals. Keep an eye on the blue bot in the neutral zone; that would be 3560. Note how they're "stockpiling" balls from the Red Human Player as well as getting between the robots and their Outerworks.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Not a great video, but here seems to be one of the few current videos of Waterloo Finals. Keep an eye on the blue bot in the neutral zone; that would be 3560. Note how they're "stockpiling" balls from the Red Human Player as well as getting between the robots and their Outerworks.

Does this look like a G25-E violation to any of the referees out there? Or G38-C?

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Does this look like a G25-E violation to any of the referees out there? Or G38-C?

I don't think it's G25-E because it's not happening in the secret passage, it's all happening in the neutral zone. They're preventing access from the neutral zone to the secret passage.
At around 3 minutes in that video, the Portcullis makes it a little difficult to tell, but I don't believe they're actually pinning boulder(s) against any field element; since they're accessible from the secret passage side.

[RonAyyyyyyyy]

I think another viable strategy, that was also used a lot in 2014, is "counter-defense", where your third bot shuts down the opponents defense bot. This can free up teams who are huge offensive threats unopposed but struggle when defense is applied.

For example, in the Midwest finals, 111 was arguably the best shooter there unopposed, but could not get over the defense played by 3352. Because the first seed's main scorer, 2451, scored from the outer works, they were virtually undefendable, and so 111's alliance did a triple cycle strategy, but if 4241 had focused on harassing 3352, 111 arguably would have been much better off.

The obvious downside here is that a courtyard with 4 robots can be very cluddered, but that's the same downside as doing triple cycles with defense anyway

[Louisiana Jones]

Originally Posted by CalTran

I don't think it's G25-E because it's not happening in the secret passage, it's all happening in the neutral zone. They're preventing access from the neutral zone to the secret passage.

G25 A ROBOT may not attempt to stop or impede the flow of the MATCH in any of the following ways:

E. isolating BOULDERS in the opponent’s SECRET PASSAGE from opponents while not contacting the carpet in the opponent’s SECRET PASSAGE

I think the point of G25-E is that it's illegal to block robots from entering their secret passage from the neutral zone to retrieve boulders. It's only legal to isolate the boulders from your opponent if you enter their secret passage (which can only be done from the courtyard), and then your opponent can force you out at the risk of penalty if you don't get out of the way quick enough. If our alliance played against a team that parked their robot in front of our secret passage we would certainly have brought this to the question box if it wasn't called to get clarification. If this doesn't violate G25-E then I don't know what would?

[jijiglobe]

Notably, there are very few teams this year that would prefer to shoot from the outer works. Any team that doesn't score from the outer works can be defended. I think it's going to be very difficult to put together alliances that have 3 outer-works shooters, or even two.

A perfect example of effective defense would be quarter finals 1 at South Florida last weekend. Our team was able to effectively shut down a clearly superior alliance. While we were only able to scrape a single win, I could definitely see this kind of defense swinging matches at championships.

Quarterfinal 1 Match 1

Quarterfinal 1 Match 2

Quarterfinal 1 Match 3

While we did not end up winning quarterfinals, a stronger alliance, with a better defensive robot, could have used defense to pull a victory. I think that, at the top levels of play, teams will be able to capture even with the best defense being played on them, however, if both alliances can reliably breach and capture, every boulder counts.

[Chris is me]

I don't know what you guys are talking about - triple cycling is defense. You have to break this paradigm of "are we gonna play defense (push people) or are we gonna play offense" because the best third robots don't fit such a clean paradigm.

If you drop your ball in the courtyard and fight to control as many of the midfield balls as you can right after autonomous, is that offense or defense?

If you are going into your own secret passage to guard against opposing scorers getting balls while also feeding your own balls out to the neutral zone, is that offense or defense?

Pushing people can be important with particular types of scorers and scoring, but ultimately ball control is the most effective way to prevent a capture and to ensure your own, which is absolutely the name of the game. While a weak event, we won Rhode Island with three robots that all scored goals, all denied balls to opponents, and all played some level of defense at times. Three cyclers, right?

[Lil' Lavery]

Not having a presence in your own courtyard allows the opposition to poach balls out of your secret passage.