Is Car Nack Right?

[Manoel]

Originally Posted by Matt Adams

What is terribly important is the order. If you lose autonomous, you're on offense first. Here's the problem: What exactly do you plan on shooting?

Each team will presumably start with all 10 balls in their robot. If you loose autonomous, you're heading down to the side of the field where there are most likely more balls strewn about because the losing machines were inaccurate. 5 machines are on that side trying to pick up those balls, so likely the offense will get only 60% of what was missed. Keep in mind, they're using this time to refill as opposed to score points shooting. Even if the defense doesn't play any defense and just picks up balls, or sits and gets refilled through a top loading mechanism under the human player station, they are NOT wasting time gathering the playing field balls during their 40 seconds of offense in the second round.

Second round, the team that wins auto now has picked up some balls, and ideally their back bot is full to the brim. These three machines do not need to spend any time loading their machines. I'm going to venture to say they have 15 or 20 more seconds of offense than the team that lost autonomous.

The last 40 seconds, the team that lost auto now needs to move to the other side of the field to score, while the team that won does not.

Matt

Great post, I agree with all of your ideas.

The 11 point advantage really isn't much compared to the greater control you'll have over the number of balls available for scoring in each round, not to mention the advantage, as you pointed out, not to have to cross the field to score.

The greater advantage, in my opinion, is that, if you get to the last round with a decent score, you can defend with three robots, something that I believe will be very hard to deal with AND, most importantly, you will have all your three robots close to your platform, for an easy 25 points, while your opponents will have to cross the field (once again).