That rule has been in the rulebook as long as I can remember. I would say that it’s there to keep a battle-bot from being entered.
Good defensive strategies have done very well in year’s past. Watch last year’s finals. 494 played outstanding defense.
Im about 100 mb from going over my bandwidth limit so Im not watching any videos for another few days… 
I see that rule as prohibiting you from installing a circular saw on the front of your robot and cutting through the chassis of your opponent. That’s all.
I’m going to add a little bit of more information and years to Holtzman’s list.
2004 -All of the alliance’s that made it to Einstein had great offensive robots in their alliance(469, 71, 67, 175). What set 71, 494, and 435 apart, was defense. 494 could play defense till the last 20 or so seconds then go hang.
2003- wildstang would get a lead in autonomous mode, then sit at the top of the ramp and defend their lead till the buzzer. 469 and 66 played defense the whole match as well.
2002- SPAM came very close to beating 71 by getting to the goal first. However, 71’s strategy was fairly defensive as well, grab the goals and make sure no one else gets them. The offensive robots that year would have been the ball grabbers, like 173, 121, etc.
2001- wasn’t a whole lot of point to defense here(four on none). However, there were many teams in the division finals that didn’t ever score more points then the points for getting back to their end zone. I’d say those drive-train robots are similar to other robots of other years.
2000- 25 would move balls from the opponents goal to their goal with ease, and won the national championship.
1999- The finals were a battle of team 1 and 45 fighting over the puck and once one got on, keeping the other people off.
1998- 45 would remove the opponents balls off the ladders early on, and then load up the center. This was the last year before alliances, and a very balanced strategy won.
1997- 47 would shut down the center goal until the last seconds of the match. They made it to the finals doing this, and only got beat because Beatty was a little bit faster.
1996- From what I understand, 73 was a very offensive robot and won, but I don’t know about the other teams around them.
I’ve been reading this thread for the past few days (… okay, so I skimmed the last few posts!), but…
Even though defense MAY be a good strategy, I don’t necessarily think it’s wise to build solely for defense. My team was leaning towards the defense-only strategy and I… became very annoyed, very fed up.
What’s the point of building a box on wheels?
That’s all I really have to say. Build for offense, but make your robot sturdy. Make your chassis strong. That way, you have two options and you’re not so limited - if your alliance doesn’t have enough offense, you can contribute; but if you have too much offense and not enough defense, your robot can STILL DO defense. … Whereas, if you built a box on wheels… you’re not going to be able to contribute much to offense, whether you want to or not.
I agree, people on my team want to build soley on defense too, and I think its stupid, defense ,IMO, is a last resort when you go to comp. and you find out your lifting device is ineffective. Plus, you’re relying on the fact that your partners are not soley defenders as well, like football, you can’t with all defense and no offense. Plan for offense, if ineffective, play defense.
Exactly. Anyone can play defense, but only offensive bots can play offense. Keep your options open. Hey a tetra manipulator should make a good defensive “tool” anyway.
Well, in my personal experience, low scoring defensive robots can work very well. In team 25’s history we have focused alot on defense. In 2000 we had a bot that reached into the other teams goal and stole the balls away and in 2003 our sole purpose was to push robots out of the way. Last year we had changed our theory to offense, and it came out poorly during the season. However, we did manage to get to two quarterfinals in regionals. In our first offseason, we had a major problem with our arm and could only drive around. So we decided just to play some good defense. We end up winning 5 qualification rounds just playing defense, and then going to a thrilling 3 match quarterfinal vs 222 and losing by just one ball(ironically having no offense came back to hurt us :rolleyes: ). So we decided to keep this strategy for the rest of our offseasons. We ended up winning 3 and placing 2nd in the other, playing pure defense.
We did have help from offensive robots though. So it really depends on the game, and on the balance of what is now a 3 robot alliance. In the past games you could get away with one main offensive robot and one defensive, now, I think you will have to blend the robots better. A pure defense with no manipulator, may not be very practical, because some teams will be able to break through the defense easily. It is basically vital to have something to move the tetras around this year, no matter where you place them.
Once more…the offense versus defense argument.
A team which designs specifically for defense will be very effective in this competition. A box on wheels which can’t do anything else is not a good defensive robot.
That having been said, the purely defensive robot, this year, is not going to do as well in competition as it would in years past. Why? It is possible to play defense against two robots simultaneously, freeing your alliance partner to score. However, three robots at once will take its toll on the purely defensive robot.
Match after match, making contact and disrupting, will leave most purely defensive robots severely compromised come eliminations.
The other two issues this year that make pure defense a difficult proposition…the kit drive train and the 30 point loading zone penalty.
Even a six motor drive system bot will not be able to effectively fend off TWO kit bots much less three.
If the driver of a defensive robot gets hung up near an opponent’s loading zone, the thirty point penalty will negate the most effective scoring strategy.
Who cares if boxes-on-wheels do well in the tournament? They’re boring to build, boring to run, and boring to even look at. Winning isn’t the only goal here. I’d rather see the students in our team field something with eight really cool features that they can be proud of than a first-generation Battlebot that goes to regionals.
This year game is not only complex as far as technology goes, but also about the strategies teams have to use winning the game.
This year game heavly depends on the kind of strategies each team will use. even with the heavy technology, eaach team have only one option ;;;;; to be defensive or offensive. In either of the cases… the ccommunication among th teams will dominate the whole 2 mintue session. The scouts, captians, coach and the drivers have to use their 6th sense in figuring out a way in and out of the field, with as many points as they can score.
“Think in terms of what you can think by not thinking what you can’t think, but you can also think about the fact that you are thinking about something which somebody has already thought off.”
I donno, I was thinking that building this year would be easy, but today we realised just how much torque is needed to move one of those tetras.
makes me glad that my team is always critisized for an “overly-powerful” drivetrain 
yes, we had an overly powerful drive train last year… This year we are going to be adding bumpers a much better drive code to stop it lol.
I think the game will probably run really defensive - everyone blocking each other, or really offensively - mad stack . I dont think it will be possible to have something in between…
yup defense does help we saw a lot of people get whooped by the grease monkeys :ahh: :eek: i saw them ram into Robonauts and knock off their arm
Note to self: don’t build an offensive robot that falls apart upon impact. That would be quite a site. :yikes:
NEVER underestimate defense bots. Last year, we won almost all of our nationals rounds (except the first, which 71 won for us) in qual matches by playing really good defense on the bar. One of the reasons our alliance lost the semifinals was because another robot knocked us off the platform before we got into defense position.
–Eric
I think FIRST did an excellent job this year of making a game where simple-minded box-bot strategies are effectively worthless. There are, however, certainly defensive strategies that could be very effective. Fortunately, those strategies will require a bit more thinking than just “getting in the way.” Such strategies might include closing off parts of the field, using part of one’s robot to cover the top of a goal (or more than one), etc.
Defensive strategies this year will require robots like the one Team 25 built in 2000 (which to this day is the most impressive, well-designed robot that I have seen).
The reasons I think box-bots will be ineffective this year:
-6 robots, 9 goals, you do the math.
In recent years, the number of “goals” has always been limited (1999, 2000, 2002) and/or centralized and immobile (2000, 2003, 2004). To see that these set ups were prime for defense one need only look to military history: successful defenders defended the smallest, highest area possible. The field this year presents no true center. And a robot doesn’t really have to travel very far in any direction to be find a goal.
-Take a look at the field:
http://www2.usfirst.org/2005comp/Section_3-The_Arena.pdf
As soon as a robot is done getting a tetra from the loading station they can 1) get another tetra, 2) turn to the right and go to a nearby goal, 3) turn to the left and go to a nearby goal, 4) go backward for a few feet and have 6 goals immediately nearby. The only one of these four options that a box-bot could legitimately “defend” would be #4, as it cannot hit a robot in a loading station, it cannot pin the robot up against the wall for (10 seconds?) and it cannot touch a tetra being held by another robot. Looks to me like the box-bot hasn’t got a chance.
Cheers to offensive and defensive solutions,
Andrew