Feeding high goal shooters...

[Joe G.]

I do not think that low goal fuel, in and of itself, is a viable enough strategy to spawn robots that will make this a worthwhile attribute for high goal robots.

The 2006 A-bomb strategy debuted in the championship elimination rounds. It required two very effective robots, and a high level of coordination. I expect a similar dynamic to be in play this year, where it's largely only worthwhile at high levels of play, especially since doing so takes 2/3rds of your alliance off the task of cycling gears for a bit.

However, unlike 2006, I do not expect a class of elite, extremely high volume low goal scoring robots suitable for low goal level A-bombing to emerge this year. The point differential, difficulty in accumulating RP, mechanical difficulty compared to 2006, capacity limits of both the goals and the robots, and potential to feed your opponent with fuel that could be worth three times as much all stacks up to make this a relatively unattractive task. Certainly, teams will do the low goal, but I don't expect very smart, very strategically mindful teams who target being a world championship level role player like 4334 will do it, which means that I really don't expect any teams to be fantastic at both the low goal and the other tasks world championship caliber alliance captains will be looking for. Since I don't think the perfect partner to pull this off is particularly likely to be built, I wouldn't make designing my own robot specifically for the off-chance that one does come along a priority.

If a team designs specifically to execute the A-Bomb, they'll be able to either reverse feed at floor level or hopper level, where it can be assumed that most high level shooting robots can receive fuel.