Effectiveness of Defense?

[E Dawg]

Hey all,

I have seen several matches in which goalie bots have been effective (as well as some where they are not). I was wondering what people's overall verdict was on the effectiveness of defense.

[Canon reeves]

I've always taken it as would it be better to score 10 points or block 15? If a team is smart about their driving and their robot can preform, than they can be super effective. There is only one ball per alliance so One defensive robot can stop an entire cycle and alliance! Defense is more useful in this game more so than any other game in FRC history in my opinion. I think a lot of people underestimate the power of a good defensive team! I'm kind of iffy on the goalie bot just because they can be counter defended so easily, but I'm sure they will have some effectiveness. But I believe an aggressive defense bot would be more successful because they can really stop a shoot before they even have the chance to shoot, and if they have an extension they can block shots right up on the shooter. just my opinion, probably wrong in a few places, so I'd love to hear from other people on the subject as well!

[Akolbi]

I believe that the goalie bot idea is one that was put in to appear tantalizing, but i don't think that it would be very effective at all. you are so pigeonholed into your role as a goalie, you're better off being an offensive bot first, and pulling to defense if you need to.

[notmattlythgoe]

I think the key to playing defense this year is going to be disrupting the opponents while you are not doing anything offensively. The trick is not to get so pulled into defense that you lose track of what your team is doing offensively. Field coaches are going to need to be very high level thinkers this year and not get sucked into what their robot is doing.

[IronicDeadBird]

Between the lack of end game, auton', one game piece per side, and cycle based scoring I find defense is insanely strong. Lets run a scenario.
Red Team comes out of auton' with all robots getting the hot high goal and only 2 robots getting mobility putting them at 70 points ready to begin the first cycle.
Blue Team has 1 robot land a hot goal auton' and another robot attempt a 2 ball auton and one ball gets in the other misses and lands back into the field. Only 2 robots on blue get mobility. This puts them at 50 points.
Red is winning right now so they have no reason to play offense yeah maybe they get a truss shot to keep the edge and have one robot running around getting single assist goals, but with only one game piece that leaves 2 robots free to engage however they want. When one robot goes to get a ball and suddenly they have to get through 2 robots its going to get messy.
So in this situation where blue has one ball they still need to score in order to move onto cycles and red can do whatever what happens when red sends two robots to delay the start of the first cycle?
Blue can counter by sending one robot to help assist the robot that gets the game piece but red still has one robot running in the background and scoring and with the current pinning rules when only one robot is there to stop another robot unless the driver skill is incredibly slanted in favor of blue eventually red's robot is going to get away and score some goal furthering the lead.
So what if blue sends two robots to delay the scoring cycles?
That leaves one robot against two attempting to clean up an auton' cycle and that isn't exactly going to be easy.
In past years endgame was the last ditch attempt at closing the gap between winning and losing, if you had a sloppy auton' you could make up for it with the end game. Without that winning just boils down to staying ahead. The best way to stay ahead is to be safe when you are ahead and not take any risks that you don't need to take. As long as you have more points you win, be it 5 more points, or 500 more points (shout out to any team that can do that) winning is just about having more.

Think I covered everything.

Cheers!

[Damiaen_Florian]

Disrupting your opponents ball by just simply keeping it out of their possession seems like it'll be a pretty effective form of defense. Any team can do this too, by simply bumping it around the field or not allowing another team to intake it. As far as I'm concerned if the other alliance doesn't have the ball with them then they have no offense being played.

But to answer your question I would say that yes, defense is a very effective strategy to utilize this year.