Defense

[ck114]

I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find any good defensive matches from any previous years. I was thinking that defense might end up being popular and I wanted to see how other teams try to stop and delay cycles. I went through around 140 matches in Newton, Curie, and Galieo at the 2013 ultimate accent, and didn't find to much in terms of a very strong defensive. If you know of any good defensive matches in any year, I would love to see them

[Canon reeves]

look up team texplosion on youtube, their video is called shut em down, I'm not on their team, but I know they won atleast one regional if not more, and they just did defense and hung a ten!

[Chris is me]

Good defense will be quite different this year. Last year, you couldn't touch a robot loading or shooting.

[EricDrost]

One of my favorite defensive robots of all time (869 2013):
http://youtu.be/qG38P2a6CJg

Best moment at 3:09

[Racer26]

48 has long been known for building strong defensive bots over the years. I remember in 2013 at least once (I think FLR?) they made an impressive run across the field to intercept a shooter at high speed.

One of the best defensive plays I ever saw happened at the 2004 GLR. 1241 (a rookie at the time) had built a robot that caught the 5 point balls as they fell out of the overhead compartment. Then it opened up like a refrigerator to pass the balls to their stellar human player to score them (he was on their school basketball team as I recall). 67 decided that to stop this, they would stuff a 2X ball down 1241's throat so it couldn't catch the 5pt balls. A brilliant play, and I'd love to have a conversation with the person who thought outside the box to come up with it. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=26857

[msaunders]

I don't know. I thought we (FRC 862) played good defense on HOT (FRC 67) during the 2013 Curie Finals. Pretty much shut down their full court shooting and caused another member of their alliance to spend time trying to push us out of the way.

And managed to score a few of our own here and there.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bL6r...a8NpaPO9C8KIHT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A-EC...NpaPO9 C8KIHT

[c.shu]

If you are looking for good defensive match videos I would reccomend looking at the 2010 Breakaway season.

As far as match videos go we have one. In this match our kicking mechanism was not functional. (which we learned during autonomous)

• Tipping of robots was not intentional
• Spinning at the end was due to a short circuit after crossing the bump

[Canon reeves]

Originally Posted by c.shu

If you are looking for good defensive match videos I would reccomend looking at the 2010 Breakaway season.

As far as match videos go we have one. In this match our kicking mechanism was not functional. (which we learned during autonomous)

• Tipping of robots was not intentional
• Spinning at the end was due to a short circuit after crossing the bump

wow... were any penalties called?

[Anthony Galea]

I know this may be a bit biased, but I think when we played defense against 469 at the Detroit District (Q77) in 2013, we did a pretty good job. If our shooter wasn't dead that match (darn those BAG motors), our auto shots would have won the match.

Here's the link for anyone interested.

[BrennanB]

Here we go...

From what I have seen over my past few years, every single game has had an aspect where defense can be played (within the rules at the time) and probably most teams aren't taking full advantage of the opportunities. Even games like last year where there were so many protected zones, several teams were able to significantly impact the score of the match (and in some cases completely shut out) teams.

Firstly, there are a few different approaches to defense:

Push em' around/T-Bone: This is perhaps one of the most dramatic and hyped up forms of defense. Also perhaps not very useful in most games cases. The idea is you push around the team on the field, or slow them down by causing a T-Bone where they can't break free. It was really interesting how much of a role this came into play in Lunacy, where the 2nd pick on an alliance would just ram/pin another stronger robot so that they would be scored on. Or in 2010 with the attempts to block 469's auton lock and load re director. Even last year with the pushing matches to clear the way for a full court shooter (Michigan teams were particular adept at this.) This match is a good example of this kind of defense. The reason this method my not be as successful as others is that good drivers well... just avoid you.

Specific Defense Mechanisms: The classic "net" or "blockers" I can't find the video right now, but there was a team in 2011 that had drop down sides to block teams from getting into their done easily. Last year there were the "air bag" teams, ore extending walls to block FCS. 111 in 2003 with their ramps to stop other teams from coming up the ramp. Perhaps this year we will see an effective goalie mechanism?

Positional Defense: What IMHO is the most effective way to defend (especially this year) which I wish more teams would do (except when they play us ) Take a position perpendicular to the other robot, and keep them from getting to the position that they want to go. From experience this can be brutal. The best part is, every team should be able to this. It's effective and it's rather annoying to the team on the other side of the glass. Unfortunately it didn't happen much last year at worlds. It was the cycler's worst nightmare Albeit if you have a slower robot, it is significantly harder to play good defense, but nonetheless is still annoying.

tl;dr There aren't many "Complete shutdown" matches, or "epic defense" simply because that is too hard. Yet there are a ton of examples of great defense from teams in any region. Just need to look for them.

[Max Boord]

look up 4814 on youtube. they seeded 3rd on curie by doing an 18 pt auto and unstopable deffence on teams like 2056, 1717 and 67without getting a single foul.

Here is 1523s final champs match where we where shut down by deffence: http://bit.ly/NiD5xz

Also, 233s technical foul heavy deffence can be seen in a few of there matches and is about as heavy as it can get.

MSC finals match 2-3 where 217 shuts down 67 and forces 2337 to
atempt to push 217 (unsucessfully). 67 was unable to cycle some of the time due to a drivetrain problum.

TeXplosion was a deffender from texas who could push any texas team around however, at champs they seeded 99th and went 1-7.

The archamedies alliance fielded 1519 in a FCS/ deffender setup handing off with 469.

Look up any match of 973 on Einstein in 2011 and you'll see some of the most amazing Tbone defense in FRC.

[jee7s]

Originally Posted by Canon reeves

look up team texplosion on youtube, their video is called shut em down, I'm not on their team, but I know they won atleast one regional if not more, and they just did defense and hung a ten!

Actually, it was:
Hub City (Lubbock) Finalists (w/16 & 4063) Week 1
Lone Star (Houston) Winners (w/118 & 148) Week 2
Alamo (San Antonio) Winners (w/2468 & 4063) Week 5 (I think)

Here's the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCPZuWQtUvI

If you are going to look into how we played, you need to watch some whole matches after you watch the Shut 'em Down video. Pay attention to position and orientation as well as driver skill. A big part of playing defense in our style is to understand both the rules and the opponent's robot. We do a LOT of work to understand both of these.

FYI: Our drivetrain last year was a 4 CIM skid steer, 12:1, with the 2008 FIRST Wheels (6") from AndyMark. For 2014, it's a 6 CIM drop center with timing belts, 12:1 transmissions, and AM roughtop (6") for the center wheel and 2008 FIRST Wheels (6") on the ends.

See you at Alamo and Dallas!

[BoilerMentor]

As a mentor and drive coach for a team that has played defense to great effect I feel I may be able to offer some advice.

First off, the 2014 field is very different than previous years. There are no protected zones during teleop. There are no major obstacles to avoid, and therefore no choke points. During the 2013 season HBR played defense primarily in the open midfield section in order to minimize the potential for fouls.

In my mind the most important things a team playing defense can do are:

Not be penalized.
Not damage opposing robots.
Maintain an oppressive presence (no one on the opposing alliance crosses the field without interference)

Often alliances will become so frustrated that they will have a member try and play counter defense. This is a good thing. That means a robot from their alliance isn't scoring AND you can continue working on one of the remaining two. Counter defense is a difficult task and hard to do cleanly. At BMR in 2013 in the finals the blue alliance basically threw away the two matches that had to be played, because one of their partners incurred a technical foul in BOTH of the matches. It is still my belief that the robot in question was intentionally attempting to damage HBR's robot and thus the technical fouls occurred. You can watch the video and judge for yourself. I personally believe that when an alliance or member of an alliance has become so desperate as to try and damage your robot to prevent further defensive play you are playing defense correctly.

Some notes regarding this field we'll be playing on and the game we'll be playing in:

No safe zones + for defense
Open field, no choke points - for defense
Delicate, difficult robot to robot interaction + for defense
Necessary changes of possesion that will often involve an uncontrolled ball for a period of time + for defense
a single game piece + for defense

All in all it is a great year for defense, but I'm really hoping that we don't have to resort to that. Generally HBR builds a drivetrain that can play defense well and develops an offensive mechanism on top of it. This allows us to keep defense as a fall back in years where it is a reasonable, permissible strategy.

It is immensely important that your drivers absolutely, without question, know the rules regarding defensive play. Every instance where a technical could result.

If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to help you out. Watching and coaching defensive play is a blast and the audiences and announcers notice and react. If you play well, you put on a good show in addition to winning some matches.

[cglrcng]

With all the many robots choosing the Ri3D lean out type top roller collectors this year (and there are so, so too many for my tastes, from what I saw last night). I'd think any simple rookie team built box on wheels (w/ a great drive team), playing defense w/ a simple articulating 19.5" long 2"X4" that is about 14"-18" off the floor could have a great time just sliding it between the attempting assist passing robots this year, to put a big bosh on the ball in those assist attempts (even better if it articulated out 2 ends giving a quick choice of less bot turn around time).

My opinion is, those able to gain assists & pass that huge (single game piece), ball, robot to robot (or w/ the human player as an intermediary assist element, that I have already seen being practiced well), without using the floor at all, will have a supreme advantage in that situation of course. The year of the "claw" maybe? Or a robot w/ short soft pop-up passes and some great catchers on the alliance teaming up, will reign the field this year.

Shutting down the defensive screen can be done w/ the shooters alone if controllable shooting / catching is available. (And it will be!)

The action along the sidelines will be fun to watch. And penalties galore called weeks 1 & 2 I predict after the recent sideline safety zone changes (most will be very accidental, but will be called for human player safety reasons alone!) Inbounding will be tough now, w/ that "no mans land" added (& trying to keep the ball up off the carpet, while just learning the inbounder ropes I think during the heat of the battle).

Inbounders will now be forced (I suspect), to roll the ball off the shelf rather than toss it in, in most instances just to keep themselves from entering that safety zone w/ the hands. That will create some very early loose ball problems all on its own.

Those depending on (a great auto session alliance score), then a quick repeated inbound, truss pass, high score using only 2 bots (w/ #3 playing dedicated defense), will find their meager points every 3 cycles of offensive play actually shut down (and evened out), by a single high scoring opposing alliance cycle of all points possible scored.

This won't be quite as easy as it looks from the current single bot practice perspective by any means. Those (lucky ones), that have an opportunity to practice together in large groups of bots early, will have a supreme advantage in the early or even later weeks.

Don't you just love the late "bag day rules changes." The whole game actually changed and most were not even aware of it that day. But the GDC gave a lil', and took a lil'....It was quite fair.