Loose Balls

[Shu Song]

I must disagree with the above point. Teams will try to make their bots as basket like as possible to catch more balls thrown at it. If the bot is right up against the player station, it's almost a 100% chance to get it in the bot. There will be minimal balls on the ground from teams trying to get it to their bot. Throwing the ball to the vicinity of the robot and having it suck the ball up is much more time consuming than just throwing it <i>in</i> the robot.

So with minimal balls from misthrows to the robot, the only other way a ball can end up on the ground is if a robot misses a shot. I acutally expect a lot of those shots to miss. But the defence will likely be on ball collection mode as well as obstructing other robots. So a whole mechanism to quickly pick up balls from the ground doesn't seem cost:score (that's a ratio) effective.

So I dare say that a few of the better bots will NOT have floor loaders this year.