Feeder Bot

[r2davis2]

This idea has definitely come up in 294's discussions, the fear however is that you really need to get the full distance of the field to avoid your opponents stealing the tubes you've thrown, it will also be very hard to actually build this successfully. But the biggest issue we came up with is that unless you are able to launch at-least 3/4ths of the field you can probably count on a few human players being able to match your distance.

That being said, I do really like this idea from the stand point of a well-built alliance, and would definitely prototype it a little to make sure it is reasonably feasible.

[spiffyspleen]

In my opinion a well designed mechanism to throw the intertubes should outperform a human arm, the main thing that I am also worried about is the intertubes curving a lot and going out of the field, although you could probably minimize this as much as possible through trial and error with the throwing machanism.

[davidthefat]

Apparently throwing of any sort is out of the question for our team... They want full control of the tubes at all times.

[Stephen of REX]

Don't aim too high, you might hang a tube on the opponent's tower and ruin their chances of getting a minibot up.

[ThirteenOfTwo]

Darn, and here we thought we had a truly original idea. Anyways, we're strongly considering it, though overcoming the tendency of the tubes to not go straight is of course an issue.

Human players can and probably will do it at some point, but I think a bot could do it better if only because they're far more likely to actually reach the safe zone. The only problem is if it gets there and bounces out...

[Bill_B]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Apparently throwing of any sort is out of the question for our team... They want full control of the tubes at all times.

The team realizes they will be in a variety of alliances with other teams, don't they? The longer the time before an actual event that the team comes to grip with the A-factor, the better their strategy will be. Just ask the team how they will convince an alliance team who thinks throwing will be OK.