Fuel Vs. Gears

[Azelf482]

Originally Posted by NShep98

I think a lot of teams are going to prioritize gears over fuel. My concern with this is that gear-specific robots are a lot easier to defend against. There is no key to provide any protection, and your only choice to acquire gears is to traverse the field multiple times. I doubt we will see more than 2 rotors activated early on.

There is, however, a tech foul given to an opposing team if an opposing robot touches your robot with any part of it inside your retrieval zone, regardless of who initiates the contact (Rule G13). If your robot can reach the retrieval zone with a reasonable amount of speed, most robots won't be able to defend against you obtaining the gear. Even if they try not to touch you, in the retrieval zone, bumping them to still gives them a tech foul, because no one can touch you in the retrieval zone.

While it's true an opposing robot can just prevent you from reaching the retrieval zone in the first place, that's a lot harder to do, and depending on the robot, not worth the time and the points they could be scoring instead of preventing you from scoring.