Triple Cyclers or Defense?

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Therring610

@MrLim Do you think that a 3 high goal cycler alliance could be feasible in Stronghold? It worked in 2013 because of the many ways to get discs, but with one secret passage, do you think it'd work?

What [Thomas] was getting at in the stream was more a matter of ball supply and leaving your alliance susceptible to ball starvation.
Well, I completely missed the point of the question, but still a valid question.

My response starts here:
A question that came up in the chat for FRC Top 25 - Week 5, but I think it does warrant some consideration. With six weeks of competition under our belts, and Championships of both District and World varieties coming up, what do you expect the state of the game to be?

Obviously the "standard" for defense is playing courtyard defense with a cheesecake blocker.

3560, under the tutelage of 1241 and 610, showed a new kind of defense, where you defend the opposing secret passage. Mr. Lim talked about that type of defense on the show and indicated that, while it can be effective, it varies from alliance to alliance and requires a tremendous amount of driver knowledge that you simply can't teach in an afternoon.

East Kentwood Semifinals showed that, unopposed, elite robots such as 3357 and 2771 can put up simply massive scores. There are many, many robots this year that shoot from the outerworks and simply have a trajectory that's over 5' before it even leaves the perimeter of the robot. "The best defense is a good offense."

So that's where the question came in. 2013 is somewhat comparable to this game, where cheesecake blockers were a prime pick for alliances, yet the 610-1241-1477 machine swooped in and took Championships with triple cyclers. Do you think that this strategy could win again?

Obviously Ultimate Ascent and Stronghold are not directly comparable, with the lack of a low goal then and the ability to carry more than one frisbee per cycle, and longer shot distances.