how effective are the herders/dumpers?

[Kyle379]

When we got the game, our team (379 Robocats) designed our robot to be a good low goal/defensive bot. We thought that if we had the ability to stop a shooter well and then dump a lot of balls, we could do well ... we were right. We were in the finals at all three regionals, being selected in the first two and picking 6th at Philadelphia.

291 CIA has an awesome side goal dumper ... they won the Philadelphia regional.

[paulcd2000]

Originally Posted by Kyle379

291 CIA has an awesome side goal dumper ... they won the Philadelphia regional.

yes they did. also, CHUCK (84) was incredible! it just needed a weeeeee bit more torque. because they pinned it so much. because it was SO good! they would get all three human players to load it, and then it would run and dump like 30 balls in the corner. woooooooow it won the 2nd place team at phili many matches

[The Lucas]

The Herders and Dumpers were very effective at Philly. There were some really good dumpers like 84, 291, 716, 357, & 379. The top pure shooters were defeated with good team defense from alliances like 291 177 306 & 157 173 381 & 84 250 104.

[blaskay16]

the ideal alliance is 2 shooters and 1 dumper. the bumbers have allowed 815 to become the defensive powerhouse we have because it kepps you from getting penalties. hearders are very effective also. depending on their hopper size they can score 30 to 40 points at a time

[Martinez]

Thanks for the complements. Our biggest problem is actually battery drain. We have so much friction that even with a drop down caster wheel for turning it would get low occasionally to the point that we couldn't climb the ramp. Do not under estimate CRT ether. They had an awsome drive, hard for anyone to push against. Besides, it it took try three for them to finally "pin" us in.

[Macdaddy549]

Like I've said in a similar thread, our robot (LEW) consistently scored 20 to 30 balls a match. We had an excellent way of picking up balls and ejecting them. During autonomous mode we almost always dumped a full load. This worked so well we consistently won the autonomous round.
Team 549 finished the qualifying rounds in second place at BAE and Boston.

[Matt Kallerud]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

oh man...I got a story for you.

Dumpers are awsome...but never have two on a team.

At the end of the seeding matches at Buckeye...The first seeded team 965 (I think that's their number) choose team 123. Both these two teams are dumpers. When it came time to choose the last of their team, all they could choose was the Scarabian Knights 120 as the best shooter of who was left, and the shooter barely made any points at all.

The teams took the first matches by storm and ended easily on the platform, we thought we didn't stand a chance. But the dumpers have one very big flaw...they can only score in the lower goals. Thus, 272 and 174 stuck ourselves against the goals while 494 picked up balls during the times where the dumpers had offence. We took offence and all three of us too to the goal and loaded in about 40 points, and took to the goals again to block for the final period. By that time, there would be no chance for the extra 25 point bonus to even count.

I'd say a dumper is nice to have, but use caution when chooseing one.

I remember a match when the other alliance had three dumpers, and all we had to do was sit in front of the corner goals the whole time and it was an easy win.

[[527]phil]

I wasn't discounting dumping robots defensive capabilities. In some matches you guys gave us hell and we had a hard time shooting. I was just saying that flipping other teams or blocking them during their defensive period is illegal, flipping us while we are trying to shoot is totally legal. But if were only collecting balls flipping us intentionally isn't allowed. thats all i was saying.

[YonZ]

At NYC, herders were very important, with 395 and 348 taking the lead for much of the competition.
There weren't many reliable shooters there (there were some), and in autonomous, having herders dominated-- since shooters had to shoot 4 in the center goal in order to beat out a successful dumper (12 to 10), which I didn't see often. Also, the dumpers weren't easy to block as the shooters were, shooters sat there, so a quick ram did it-- but the herders were easily able to drive over to the corner goal to unload before anyone opposite them could get to 'em.
Also, the shooters were easily blockable from shooting in (unless you're 25 of course ), while unless you had the goals jammed up the entire round, the dumpers usually were able to push through and do their thing because of pin rules (I remember seeing some robot pinning 395 2Train as they had just loaded up from the human players and the referee was just counting pin time with his fingers, and the pushing bot had to constantly back away. Slowly the count required the duel to go beyond the corner goal/ramp area and 2Train began to be double teamed before it managed to get away and rush to the side goal to relieve itself of the 10 or 15 balls it was carrying.)

[Phoenixseeker]

Shooters are great, but i dont think a team of three will be as effective as some believe. From are one regional in Arizona Our team 1013 the Phoneix when we were paired with a good pair of shooters we dominated the competition and it really hurt are standings becuase we had no QP. We were 4-1 at the end of the day and in 15th place. We were able to push just about any bot there on the field and overall the 15 or so matches we had i think only 250 points were scored against us by other alliances.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Herders and Dumpers, or in my teams case a low shooter, have one ENORMOUS advantage. They nearly always win autonomous mode. The simple reason for this is that shooting all ten balls in the 1pt goal is far easier then getting at least 3 balls in the 3pt goal.

My team arrived at its 1st regional planning to concentrate on the 3pt goal. However, due partly to complications getting up the ramp, we scraped our entire 3pt-shooter/turret-assembly to make us less top heavy. Believe it or not we actually started doing better when we started concentrating on 1pt balls. By simply aiming our robot sideways before the match and firing up our 1pt shooter we were able to win autonomous mode on numerous occasions.

Winning autonomous mode was one of the primary abilities that squeezed us into the finals.