What are some defensive strategies that teams were using at the week 1 regionals? I’m been watching videos from TBA and that other site, but I can’t see any intentional defensive maneuvers happening consistently. Sure, there’s a quick impede here and there, or maybe a nudged or knocked off trackball, but I really see nothing like there has been the past 3 years.
I’m attending and driving at FLR in 3 days and if anyone has any insight regarding defense, it would be greatly appreciated.
Joe
There’s been quite a bit of ramming and defense in this first week–generally its simply more disguised. The most notable defense is the defensive autonomous employed by many teams.
Intentional defense between robot to robot interaction was tightly called at Oregon. Most penalties involved a robot trying to slow down or impede a robot. The only other consistent penalties that I saw were impacts outside the bumper zone (by an arm or something) and backing over a line (going clockwise) which I thought was called way too often for reasons that were above the intent of the rule.
But, for defense, they really made it difficult to do anything - wanting to keep the match moving I suppose. So, the best defense that we came up with was to keep the ball away from a hurdler, slow down a bot without the ball or one that had a ball but was in the opposite side of their home stretch, and get the ball down at the end of the match. All in all, I think our robot did very well with these but it was a learning process since we got penalized for some other strategies along the way.
Herding opponent’s balls into corners, pinning opponent’s balls against the vertical field elements (walls). Playing “keep away” slows hurdling and that’s a good defensive strategy. As long as the defensive robot does not possess (support or capture) the opponent’s ball, it’s legal. It’ll frustrate good shooting robots to no end…
Being one of the better hurdling teams at BAE, we were on the receiving end of a lot of defense (particularly in the elims). Most of it centered around teams trying to push the ball away from our robot, or trying to block us for a couple seconds to slow us down. We did get one team that parked in front of us for about 15 seconds to keep us from hurdling. They got a 10-point penalty for impeding for their efforts.
I only viewed through webcasts, but I believe there was still a good amount of defense present (and necessary for the best alliances). The defense, however, is guerrilla hit-and-run tactics as opposed to the all out pushing matches and pinning we’ve seen in past years.
If you want a good match for some defensive tactics, watch Midwest match 44 (I know, the final score was high, but with 33 and 1114 as part of the contenders it had the potential for more than that even). Perhaps two of the best moves I saw over the weekend were what 1675 was doing against 1114 part of the match. Twice during the match you can watch as they run on the inside of the track parallel with 1114, forcing them to slow down and have to maneuver around them to round the corner and adding a few seconds to their hurdling time. You can also see 1675 hit a a ball slightly backwards immediately after a hurdle, then trap the ball against a wall to prevent 1114 from grabbing it. They were able to grab the other red ball on the other side of the field so this only delayed them by a few seconds, but had they been with a partner who was using that ball to hurdle this would have robbed their alliance of 8 points. Also worth noting 1781 blocks the 2nd red ball from being knocked off in hybrid (though I think unintentionally), and 648 slows down blue alliance hurdling and lap running quite effectively at some points.
In matches where there are 2 good hurdlers (or herders) on each alliance and thus no spare trackballs, these defensive plays would have had an even big impact on the score. I think this type of defense, slowing down the opposition without impeding, and playing “keep away” trackballs, will prove to be vary valuable once elimination alliances all have at least 2 high powered scoring robots.
I think 48 also continued to play defense effectively even when everyone thought it would be almost impossible.
Does this mean you can pin an opponents ball forever?
Thanks for this awesome demonstration of defense. It will definitely affect play for my team’s alliances.
Yes. There’s no rule that says that you have to allow your opponent access to Trackballs. You can camp with a Trackball pinned against the wall to a limit a two shooter alliance to ~half their typical score. Evil enough?
We were alliance 8 up against alliance 1 (who one the regional), the first match we got slammed hard, both alliances were playing offense hard and they could just out hurdle us, so the second match one of the robots and us focused exclusively on just being in the way all the time, while our good hurdler scored points. The impact was dramatic, we ended up only losing by 6 points, if the last hurdle had made it over we would have won the match. On two occasions we knocked the ball away just as they were about to grab it. The judges watched this matched very carefully as it was one of the more aggressive ones.
So in the end defense made something like a 60 point difference.
Nothing is impossible. Although our drivers definitely have room for improvement/refinement of tactics. There’s that whole line crossing/lapping/hurdling thing too - what, you could score points in the first 2:00 of the match? Who knew? :rolleyes:
Evil? It’s positively heavenly. Although have you tried it? It’s not as easy as it seems.
Bumping trackballs clockwise past the opposing finish line is more fun anyway, and it lets you lap one quadrant ahead of the pack while the opposition tracks down that ball and drives it around again to get it into a hurdleable position. Meanwhile you’re right back where you started, ready to repeat the process, 2+ points happier.
Of course, you can combat this with a coordinated quarterback/receiver hurdling approach where the ball never hits the ground, but I’ve yet to see that… Maybe if they relaxed the clockwise line crossing penalties rules around the finish lines to permit reaching back and “crossing the plane” a bit to knock (?) /cap (?) /and receive trackballs from partners, you’d see more attempts at this. I think it would add excitement to the game, especially at the buzzer, but would probably upset some of those who designed their robots to the original set of rules.
And "camp"ing is such a negative term (if you’re a gamer). I much rather prefer a more strategic description of “hoarding opposing ammunition”.
Personally I think that pinning the ball up against the wall for long periods of time actually hurts your alliance more than it helps them. Think about it, its now a 3 vs. 2 and at some point you can’t help your alliance anymore.
Honestly, two of the best defenses that I saw actually weren’t defenses; Teams that had great communication were able to shut down opposing alliances like nobody’s business. Also teams that consistently had control of a trackball for most of a match seemed kind of hard to defend against.
Heres a link to the video. http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match.php?matchid=5132
I believe somewhere in the middle is where the defense was happening.
Here’s lower-scoring Match 29 where we tried to play D against them.
http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match.php?matchid=5117
It just now occurred to me that 1114 knocked our red ball off in autonomous - thanks guys!
I think we played the pokey pokey defense in this match (pushing the trackball clockwise). I think it worked once. They still smoked us.
Can anyone tell me why we didn’t get a penalty for crossing the line during the hybrid block?
I have been comtemplating a way to play defense. And from what I know it does not go against the rules. I will bring up to our driver and operator when Philly comes around. Unless they have a rule against it by than.
that seems to make sense, although you can not block traffic, and other teams can bump to pass.
You are only required to let them pass if the entire lane is blocked though, so if the entire lane is not blocked, you are free to camp.