Best/Strangest Defense Techniques

[Herodotus]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Erm, you can't do that. The Q&A covered that one even before regionals started. A team can't be forced into a penalty by an opposing team. So while what's done is done, don't expect that to work in Atlanta. Especially against teams that know the rules.

In the same link they also state that if the blue team does not return to the home zone they will be given the appropriate penalty. They(our drive team) weren't even thinking about the penalty at the time I don't think, they just wanted to make it so the other team couldn't get up the ramps. The penalty was just sort of a side effect.

Edit: Now that I think about it I don't recall if they actually received a penalty or if it was simply the other team not getting up the ramp that won it for us.

[Aren_Hill]

this year in the quarter finals at st louis we were up against a ramp bot that started oriented so that there partners had to enter from outside the end zone so i basically just went and parked the robot at the end of that ramp and sat there they didn't score we won.

[pakratt1991]

I drove for my team at UC Davis,
We did "body Guard"
and teams tried to knock over rings in our home zone, but we cleared them, that has never worked, also teams tried to park against our side to stop our ramp from deploying, also that did not work, we deployed and one side fell down, that side got lifted, when they moved the other side fell down and we lifted that side also.

I've also seen teams just get in front of the rack on the opponents side and block teams from scoring, although I don't know how effective that was.

[CyberWolf_22]

I am personally a fan of trying to shake the rack enough so the other alliance can't score. Doing this in autonomous mode is even better.

[Brian J. R.]

Originally Posted by Chris Marra

-Breaking the field to force a match reset.

(Yes it happened, but I'm sure not intentionally.)

That happened in Las Vegas, interestingly enough, it was a pretty good autonomous round for our alliance.

[efoote868]

Be wary, though. 829 does this, and at BMR, they got stuck. Spent pretty much the rest of the match trying to unstick themselves.

[danshaffer]

Originally Posted by Brian J. R.

That happened in Las Vegas, interestingly enough, it was a pretty good autonomous round for our alliance.

yeah, the break was not intentional. if you guys watched all of the other qualifyings, we were just driving forward and swinging our arm over. that autonomous was written after lunch on saturday, and modified between matches. i was pretty hopeful that we'd get to play that one over, because that 1425 ringer was too sweet. oh well, you guys had us outclassed.

[nuggetsyl]

Originally Posted by Stephi Rae

Just curious...

What are some of the best or strangest defensive techniques that have been seen this year?

ones that win

there is not one way of winning

[DanDon]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

ones that win

there is not one way of winning

Whatever strategy helps my alliance most

Seriously, there are so many ways to win this year that there is no best strategy, it's all based on the robots that are in play and on the situation out on the field.

[Joe Ross]

There was a team at Las Vegas that grabbed a spoiler in the opening seconds of the match and then played defense the rest of the match, not ever really trying to score the spoiler. It confused the opposition the first few times.

[Spider-Man]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

By FAR:
- Placing tubes on opponents ramps. It renders many ramps useless or takes too much time to take off the ramp. We thought it didnt count in Boston (read the Q&A thinking that it meant if the RAMP were resting on a tube... not a robot on a tube on the ramp)

And in the same match in Boston:
- Without "Grabbing", a team slid part of their gripper under the ramp and tried to flip the ramp up, knowing the other team only had one chance to deploy it.

As far as the non-"grabbing" of the Queen's ramp in that match, I still believe that intentional entanglement should have been called. If not that, then at least intentional outside the bumper zone contact. The arm in question was put underneath the ramp and attempted to lift/push the ramp. I did not like the call on this; however, I think it really didn't play much into the results of the match, just wasting the time of the offending robot.


As far as interesting strategy, some on our team though of pushing any early deploying one-sided ramps ramp-first to the end of the home zone. If the ramp and platforms are on the sides of the robot and there is no swerve/holonomic/meccanum drive, the robot cannot reposition without either raising the lift mechanism or risking 72" penalties.

[Zach Wydick]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

There was a team at Las Vegas that grabbed a spoiler in the opening seconds of the match and then played defense the rest of the match, not ever really trying to score the spoiler. It confused the opposition the first few times.

Ya, that was our team. We scored it once or twice i think, and it does cause some confusion with the other team. We tried it Week 1 at Portland and had 2 other robots focus in on us while our teammates scored. Works pretty well.

-Zach Wydick

[Stephi Rae]

Originally Posted by Zach Wydick

Ya, that was our team. We scored it once or twice i think, and it does cause some confusion with the other team. We tried it Week 1 at Portland and had 2 other robots focus in on us while our teammates scored. Works pretty well.

-Zach Wydick

To add to zach's comment. Yeah that was us, and we scored the spoiler three times during the quarters, semi's, finals... then we also almost scored it another time on an empty spider leg, but we were able to get it off and keep going with it... that was pretty interesting. Holding the spoiler made it easier to block more area because we have a stationary arm with a rotating jaw (grabber). In portland it was like a magnet, we were automatically double teamed everytime we took out a spoiler, giving our alliance partners free reign over the rack. In vegas that didn't happen quite as often, but as I said, it gave us more blocking power, and we could score the spoiler when the time came for it. All in all worked pretty well.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Stephi Rae

To add to zach's comment. Yeah that was us, and we scored the spoiler three times during the quarters, semi's, finals... then we also almost scored it another time on an empty spider leg, but we were able to get it off and keep going with it... that was pretty interesting. Holding the spoiler made it easier to block more area because we have a stationary arm with a rotating jaw (grabber). In portland it was like a magnet, we were automatically double teamed everytime we took out a spoiler, giving our alliance partners free reign over the rack. In vegas that didn't happen quite as often, but as I said, it gave us more blocking power, and we could score the spoiler when the time came for it. All in all worked pretty well.

Since our robot seems to play a defensive role even though it can score well, I think I'll be adding the "skunkworks spoiler" to my bag of tricks for galileo.

[Zach Wydick]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Since our robot seems to play a defensive role even though it can score well, I think I'll be adding the "skunkworks spoiler" to my bag of tricks for galileo.

I hope it works well for you. Just remember to pose a threat and not wander around aimlessly lol