Defense

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

Is defense going to go over looked this season? Thoughts and/ or opinions?

2

No. Not at all.

Unlike most years there are no safe scoring zones for robots especially when raising up high.

So … week 1, every alliance who draws a box-on-wheels with traction drive as a partner will send them to the other side to smack into the “good” team attempting to precisioningly put pieces in their rocket.

I have a strong feeling that this strategy is going to prove to be very useful this year.

4 Likes
3

Blockading is completely legal for all areas except the protected HAB zone. Maybe this means FIRST actually will have a spectator game this year with all this permitted robot interaction.

4

Absolutely not. Defense in this game will be the deal breaker in some matches. Say a quals match has 3 really good teams, one of the with some good drivers can go reck havoc on the other side. Counter-Defense will be huge too. If an opppnent tries to bully you on a rocket, have a bot defend them. That other alliance cant come save them. I think in Weeks 1-3 defense won’t be as huge but as teams see how to play it correctly, any good defender could destroy a bracket.

2 Likes
5

Almost not. Rules have restrictions on the number of defenders。
GameManual: 8.2.3
G9
【One (1) defender at a time.】 No more than one ROBOT may be positioned such that its BUMPERS break the plane defined by or are completely beyond the opponent’s CARGO SHIP LINE.

【Violation: FOUL,】 plus an additional FOUL for every five (5) seconds in which the situation is not corrected. If G10 is also being violated, additional FOUL escalates to TECH FOUL.

6

I can’t see how this will stop defending, the only thing it will stop is having more than 1 robot defending, since this game has a rather limited source of points you can score it is huge if you can prevent your opponent from scoring.

7

Defense is throttled in that only one robot can do it, but pretty open in what that one robot can do. Considering that most of the time defense was mostly one robot’s responsibility at a time anyway, I expect it to be just as significant as most other years. As all non-foul scoring is capped, it may be even more important than normal at the higher levels of the game.

I have never yet overestimated the impact of defense.
Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results.

8

There are several things I like about defense.
I like teams talk about its impact very early on in the season starting well before most teams are revealing designs and even before the Q&A is out preventing people from clarifying rules that interact with defense. You can only theorize what you are defending against. In theory the best defensive play makes you hard to deal with but pulling off defense means having great field awareness, driver skill, and being in a matchup where you don’t just get pushed around. Choosing who your playing defense on isn’t cut and dry, if you defend against a robot that’s a low threat that’s a waste so people talk about shutting down the teams that are scoring the most. Generally at higher levels the teams scoring the most are these powerhouses that have drive practice, multiple events and decent drive bases and that’s not easy to play against. All this and you can still do it wrong and get fouls in a game with limited scoring…
Let’s answer the questions though.
No defense isn’t going overlooked.
But I don’t see a heavy focus to the point teams trade out practicing scoring for defensive drive practice.