Is Defense key to this game?

[Swampdude]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

For example, 1261 was by no dream of the imagination a defensive team. They were a pure offensive team, with a fast swerve and long-range shooter. Yet, pre-championship, they were ranked (statistically) as the 51st best defensive team, only allowing 20.33 points/match. By contrast, team 306 (sorry to pick on you Cody), a self-admitted defensive team (and quite a good one at that) was ranked 869th, allowing 39.39 points/match.
Some other primarily offensive teams of note, 1114 was ranked 195th, allowing 26.08 points/match, 254 was 136 @ 24.5 points/match, 968 was 67th at 21.13 points/match, and 384 was 86th with 22.4 points/match. Some other of the top notch defensive teams were 710 ranked 861st allowing 39 pts/match, 522 was ranked 750th with 35.81 pts/match, 1816 was ranked 883rd allowing 39.67 pts/match, and 1902 was ranked 629th allowing 33.54 pts/match. What does this mean? Even during a game that had a huge emphasis on actual contact defense, the best defense is often a strong offense.

I very much appreciate what your saying, and normally I'd agree completely. However I don't think this assesment is completely accurate. The defensive bots your metioning didn't have the capability of high scores. So they had to play more defense, and hence were not as much of a distraction during their "offensive periods". That % slant came from the offensive/defensive periods. If I wanted to commit to defense the whole match and forfiet shooting 3 pointers, I deffinitely am losing ground, thats a no brainer.
In this game however, 1 defensive bot can take 2 offensive bots potential scoring from 12 ringers down to 4 and thats actualy pretty easy to do from what our testing has shown. This is equivalent of that 1 defensive bot scoring 8 ringers.
Last year 1 defensive bot only stood to forfiet his offensive period, and then possibly slow the opponents shots down to maybe 1/2, and also lost this time to gather balls.
these are very different games defensively. I think this year more than any other year Defense is the key