Full court shooting strategy

[NotaJoke]

Originally Posted by nikeairmancurry

I believe it may..

It didn't during the finals at Detroit. 314 and 1701 both attempted full court, and both were blocked, the field was still maneuverable, it just wasn't a walk in the park is all.

I think the 'blocking the flow' rule is really about intention. It would not be advisable to allow the FCS in the unprotected zone to continue to score all of the disks, and logically, pinning them away from the feeder slots would not effect the flow of the court, but just the mobility of said pinned bot.

Edit for clarification:

Crude paint skills aside, the field (for the most part) still remains accessible. Perhaps the rule implies that blue robots (in this situation) are not allowed to stop the red robots from passing the auto line, but the blocking of the FCS in question is perfectly legal.

[nikeairmancurry]

Originally Posted by NotaJoke

It didn't during the finals at Detroit. 314 and 1701 both attempted full court, and both were blocked, the field was still maneuverable, it just wasn't a walk in the park is all.

I think the 'blocking the flow' rule is really about intention. It would not be advisable to allow the FCS in the unprotected zone to continue to score all of the disks, and logically, pinning them away from the feeder slots would not effect the flow of the court, but just the mobility of said pinned bot.

I guess it's all up to what the head ref feels is a blockade..

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by faust1706

something the judges, at least at st louis, did not do well was the 84in rule for outside the auto zone. Wonder if that rule has been interpreted the same at other regionals.

Were they not calling violations for robots > 60" completely outside of the auto zone, or do you mean something else? I'm having trouble parsing your post.

[John Sabath]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Were they not calling violations for robots > 60" completely outside of the auto zone, or do you mean something else? I'm having trouble parsing your post.

They were calling them. I'm not sure what he means either.

[B Dot]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Were they not calling violations for robots > 60" completely outside of the auto zone, or do you mean something else? I'm having trouble parsing your post.

What he means is that a robot configured such as 3284 is so tall we are unable to shoot over them when they are in their auto zone and our head ref determined that our pushing him out of the auto zone was us breaking a rule and having the sole intent on making that robot get penalized when we were just trying to shoot over them

The refs were also not looking out for those robots and consistently said that they would do better next time after they were questioned about missing the calls

[Siri]

Originally Posted by B Dot

What he means is that a robot configured such as 3284 is so tall we are unable to shoot over them when they are in their auto zone and our head ref determined that our pushing him out of the auto zone was us breaking a rule and having the sole intent on making that robot get penalized when we were just trying to shoot over them

Were you assessed a foul, or did the tall opponent just not receive one? To the former, the G18-1 call is a judgement issue, but it really depends on exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you appeared to have a choice of pushing them a different direction, but you elected to push them out, I could see how a head ref might call that.

[faust1706]

We were given a technical foul, actually.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by faust1706

We were given a technical foul, actually.

Yes, so G18-1. Again, judgement call, though luckily you're allowed to Question Box technical fouls. There are certainly scenarios in which a G18-1 technical would be warranted doing what you describe. Perhaps we could all also ask at our respective next drivers' meetings.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Jeffy

I'm very surprised most teams aren't taking advantage of the 84 inch rule when making an "on the fly" wall bot.
Seems a bot with a wide appendage at 84 inches would block any shot.

It's a hard call to make on the fly, especially in between elimination matches if you want to do it legally.

A wide enough 84" tall robot in the right position is pretty much the end all be all to the FCS game. Even with a high exit point on the FCS (50" or so), the 84" wall would only need to be within 30-36" to render that FCS useless, assuming they're exit angle is somewhere less than 30 degrees from horizontal. (haven't seen something more steep yet)

That being said, there are some interesting trade-offs to this decision.

- Assuming it's something being done very quickly, odds are the 84" tall wall is going to be stuck at 84" tall. If it is, you've now limited your defender to playing on a third of the field... And of that third, you lose quite a bit of it to both the pyramid and your opponents loading zone.

- Assuming you're building blocker that can withstand repeated shots at point black range, it's going to have to be well constructed. Odds are, this is going to shift the CoG of the robot up quite a bit, which could make playing effective defense a bit difficult.

- If the opposing alliance has a capable floor loader, the FCS robot only needs to get discs to the other end of the field, not necessarily score them. In this case, shooting over the blocker becomes a viable option.

Now, if you can make the blocker removable and/or actuate into position, you can ignore a lot of this stuff. But, if you think about it, if your alliance is willing to sacrifice a machine to be an 84" tall wall then odds are, the opposing alliance is willing to sacrifice one of their machines to remove the wall from the equation.

Also, at CH, in multiple matches, the opposing alliance would send two or even all three of their robots after 225's FCS in an attempt to prevent it from getting to the feeder station. One of the things to remember when trying such a strategy, is that you can't win if you're not scoring points... Specifically in Semi 2-1, the Blue Alliance spent the first 45-50 seconds of the match playing defense against 225. During this time, we (341) essentially were playing offense on a completely open field which let us put up some solid points and win the match...

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by thefro526

One of the things to remember when trying such a strategy, is that you can't win if you're not scoring points... Specifically in Semi 2-1, the Blue Alliance spent the first 45-50 seconds of the match playing defense against 225. During this time, we (341) essentially were playing offense on a completely open field which let us put up some solid points and win the match...

Thus illustrating the true advantage of an FCS. Not that you can score points -- which will be vigrously defended against -- but that you're enough of a threat to open the field for your alliance partners.

[stuart2054]

Originally Posted by thefro526

It's a hard call to make on the fly, especially in between elimination matches if you want to do it legally.

A wide enough 84" tall robot in the right position is pretty much the end all be all to the FCS game. Even with a high exit point on the FCS (50" or so), the 84" wall would only need to be within 30-36" to render that FCS useless, assuming they're exit angle is somewhere less than 30 degrees from horizontal. (haven't seen something more steep yet)

That being said, there are some interesting trade-offs to this decision.

- Assuming it's something being done very quickly, odds are the 84" tall wall is going to be stuck at 84" tall. If it is, you've now limited your defender to playing on a third of the field... And of that third, you lose quite a bit of it to both the pyramid and your opponents loading zone.

- Assuming you're building blocker that can withstand repeated shots at point black range, it's going to have to be well constructed. Odds are, this is going to shift the CoG of the robot up quite a bit, which could make playing effective defense a bit difficult.

- If the opposing alliance has a capable floor loader, the FCS robot only needs to get discs to the other end of the field, not necessarily score them. In this case, shooting over the blocker becomes a viable option.

Now, if you can make the blocker removable and/or actuate into position, you can ignore a lot of this stuff. But, if you think about it, if your alliance is willing to sacrifice a machine to be an 84" tall wall then odds are, the opposing alliance is willing to sacrifice one of their machines to remove the wall from the equation.

Also, at CH, in multiple matches, the opposing alliance would send two or even all three of their robots after 225's FCS in an attempt to prevent it from getting to the feeder station. One of the things to remember when trying such a strategy, is that you can't win if you're not scoring points... Specifically in Semi 2-1, the Blue Alliance spent the first 45-50 seconds of the match playing defense against 225. During this time, we (341) essentially were playing offense on a completely open field which let us put up some solid points and win the match...

We have a nice deployable tall arm that is about 80 inches high when deployed. It is just a square tube within a tube with a cord that that pulls the inner tube up as the the whole assembly is rotated up by a pneumatic cylinder. It has a bungy inside to pull it back down when the cylinder is retracted again. It does not have much effect on our CG.

We only used it in the last of the Gull Lake district finals after our shooter feeder was damaged and it worked great. The problem is as several have mentioned that it takes you out of offense. We are primarily an offense robot and are loath to use this unless neccesary. I would like to see more defensive robots have someting like this and we have even talked about making something similar to retrofit onto elimination round alliance partners.

You can see this match here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1XVwRkKOlw

[Bryan1625]

At the Greater Kansas City Regional team 1806 (S.W.A.T.) was very effective as a full court shooter. Throughout the competition more and more teams tried to change their bot to be taller to block them yet only 2 or 3 teams were successful at it

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by John Sabath

Case in point: The St. Louis Regional and team 1706.

1706 plowed their way through qualifications (scoring 100+ points in almost every game they played in) and ended up on the 1st seeded alliance. However, they ended up losing in the finals due to 3284's defensive net completely shutting them down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHik1lx5PLw

Doggon, that drive train was ridiculous. Two offensive linemen and they STILL couldn't keep 3284 from blocking the shots. That's one beefy drive system.

[faust1706]

3284's drive train was one to take notes on. Very powerful. Throughout eliminations, they were able to completely shut down a robot from scoring and could easily push robots around as if they weren't there. Quite impressive.

[Zakreon]

Our bot wasn't really designed with defensive play in mind, it was mostly just figured to be a selling point, and our tank drive was just us attempting to keep the drive simple compared to the headache inducing swerve we did last year!

However, nets like ours don't necessarily invalidate the full court shooters. If we were on 1706's alliance (like we wanted to be) then we would be the ones pushing away any potential blockers, and you don't really have to push them very far to keep them at bay.