Is shooting frisbees at other robots a legal defense technique?
I think it would be very hard to argue that shooting frisbees at another robot isn’t intentional damage. I guess it might depend on what you aim to accomplish by shooting frisbees at a robot, but it sounds destructive.
If you are able to shoot frisbees wouldn’t it be a better idea to put time into scoring them instead of wasting them shooting them at an opposing robot in hopes of disrupting them and possibly getting smacked upside the head with a technical foul and angering your alliance partners?
Agreed. If you want to make a defensive bot, one way to go may be a taller profile, with something like a net to block/complicate shots.
How disruptive would a Frisbee be, anyway?
Unless you are able to time and calculate an intercept trajectory with the Frisbee they shoot out…
I think he’s trying to get fouls by adding >4 frisbees onto robots.
That is also illegal, due to the new team rules update.
Depending on what you are specifically trying to do, some or all of the following may apply.
G16
TEAMS and/or ROBOTS may not employ strategies that use DISCS to either aid or inhibit a ROBOT CLIMB.
Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL. If the DISC(S) inhibits an opponent’s CLIMB attempt, the opponent ROBOT’S ALLIANCE is awarded points for a successful Level 3 CLIMB.
G18-1
Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE .
Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL
G28
Strategies aimed at the destruction or inhibition of ROBOTS via attachment, damage, tipping, or entanglement of ROBOTS are not in the spirit of the FRC and are not allowed.
Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL and YELLOW CARD
i would be willing to bet that any strategy using disks for defense will be highly ineffective due to the fact that you will be imputing disks onto the field giving the opposite alliance more disks to use for offence also its alot less complicated to just ram and force the other teams shooting robot to recalculate and adjust its shooter and waste shots trying to accomplish this. During this ramming assault you will also be making their life more complicated when they try to pick up disks taking more time off the clock. Because of this the opposing team to get less shots off and less accurate shots off.
I agree with what others have been saying. I would employ a much more effective defensive strategy then wasting discs that you can shoot, and focus on either hanging and making it more difficult to view down the field -or- playing some more typical man to man defense.
I’ve coached “defensive” teams in the past, and never has any of the teams I’ve worked with used a scoring component to defend a robot. You are wasting points that either you or your alliance partner could be scoring. As I said before, employ some more conventional defense techniques and always avoid penalty opportunities when playing D.
That’s not to say it doesn’t happen.
One of my mentors long ago told me a story about how creative FIRST teams can be in playing games. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the team numbers but the situation was as follows:
During 2004 (First Frenzy: Raising the Bar), one of the teams had a net in which they could catch all the balls from above when they dropped. They were very good at what they did, and their robot seemed unstoppable.
Until another team figured out they could drop the doubling ball in their net, thus jamming the robot and preventing them from catching any of the balls.
If any of you were around long enough to witness this, please let me know who was involved. I’d love to see it on Youtube (if it exists).
I remember seeing this, I believe in Chicago…
There isn’t really a strategy similar to that for this game. I will agree that’s one of the few times that using a scoring object for defense was a good idea.
I think this may have been 461 Westside Boiler Invasion. We hung around with them quite a bit at Champs that year as our robot miserably failed and their matches were much more entertaining. I know they had a net to catch the falling playground balls and they attended the Midwest Regional that year. Unfortunately I don’t have video links to it.