Defense? Spy Bots?

So there hasn’t been much talk about defensive robots or spy bots. So is there maybe one or two teams attempting defense or starting as a spy? Or will this be a purely offensive game?

starting as a spy has nothing to do with defense, because you start in the ENNEMY courtyard, ready to shoot.

If all goes well, we’ll have autonomous routines that have us start in several locations, including Spy Bot…

Something to consider, in 2013 most pool noodle blockers were not robots that were designed with defense in mind. They were just robots that realized they could effect the score differential in a match much more by blocking a full court shooter than by attempting to climb or shoot/run Frisbees themselves.

I think a interesting and very related question will be; which way will robots be able to help their alliance’s score differential the most? If some of the best shooters in a competition can be blocked, you will probably see some mid to low level robots repeat history as a vital piece of a winning alliance.

The answer will depend on what type of meta game emerges.

Yeah I know but it is still a possibility, very unlikely but still possible.

Very true and I really like that you brought this up. Maybe the 10% of robots not going under the low bar will be very useful in blocking low robots that try to shoot high goals.

We have both spybot and defensive options in our toolkit, but the baseline plan is to start in the neutral zone and score points, so I put neither.

Can’t you start as spybot with a ball inside and shoot right away when auto starts? You’d score points without even moving.

Yes you can. People seem to think the spybot starts in your own courtyard for some reason…

We expect to be able to autonomously find the goal after a crossing, but do not plan a multi-boulder auto. If we start in the courtyard, we’d have to drive out and back in to the courtyard to score auto crossing points. Unless it’s a way to damage the category C defenses in auto or some other alliance coordination tactic, we plan to start on the auto line in front of the low bar, B, or D defense we’ll cross.

As far as I know, and im pretty sure of this, you may NOT start with a boulder if you start as a spy bot.

Correction: I meant to say you can start with a boulder as a spy bot.

You can start with a boulder if you start as a spy bot. Any robot is allowed to start with a boulder and there is no rule that states spy bots may not.

Can you reference the rule that negates the strategy?

Sorry I made a mistake I meant that you CAN start with a boulder as a spybot.

Q563 states that the spy can start with a boulder
Q763 states that a spy can shoot the boulder it starts with during auto