I’m really looking forward to seeing a bit of a rock-paper-scissors game play out this year. It seems to me that a full court shooter sitting in its loading zone that can drain their alliance’s frisbee supply into the top goal is going to dominate this game most of the time in qualifiers. But in elimination matches, they’re going to get shut down if an opposing robot has the ability to extend their robot high enough to block those shots. If there’s enough defense out there, then climbing looks good by comparison since it’s hard to defend against.
So my question is, are there robots out there that have this capability to extend upwards for defensive purposes? It’s a risk to build something like that, but I think those robots are going to get snapped up in alliance selections this year.
Speaking from a team with (potentially) a full court shooter, I can see these types of defense bots being quite annoying. We could easily get shut down by a bot just sitting in-front of us, with a shield raised. But I could also see us potentially breaking a robot, just from our Frisbee speed/impact force.
With a full court shooter, a tall robot would put a damper to our strategy. If a tall robot does get in our way, we could easily move to the pyramid hot spot. It would just take more time.
Same with us. Our shooter caused my hands to sting when catching discs from over 75 feet away.
Our shooter is about 50% from the feeder station into the high goal (upwards of 75% when shooting into the middle). We are also about 75% into the top goal when shooting into the high goal from the pyramid sweet spot.
We had the idea of blocking full court shooters pretty early on. The horns at the top of the lift get to 83.75".
The robot is as stable as the robot I worked on in 2011 for Logomotion. It would tip if we accelerated full throttle (6 CIMS) at full height but not if a we were just pushed in the bumper zone. We also have bumpers plus 20 more pounds of weight to add to the frame.
We’ve noticed that many (most?) bots have their shooters pretty low. Our bot does not extend but it is 60" high and we think we will be able to interfere with a number of shooters.
Currently, we don’t have a good bearing on how accurate our shooter is, but it does seem to hit a foot to half a foot radius circle at 50ft. As for how powerful it is, we can put a pretty nice dent in drywall at 20ft.
It is incredibly hard to break a robot. I’d guess that a 1/32nd polycarb shield, swiss cheesed, and attached to thin angle, could hold against a 100mph frisbee shot no problem.
A risk? How is making a simple deflector that goes up and down a risk? In my opinion, an effective deflector can rise up, shut down a single shooter, and be on its merry way. No risk. No challenge. Maybe an hour’s worth of work on your robot. It’s no risk, and can make allow your robot to shut down the offensive strength (and possibly game piece feeding) of an entire alliance.
Break the robot? We did the ultimate test, not on purpose mind you. I’m trying to get my marketing team to let me post the video of our bot climbing to level 3, dumping the colored disks, then falling from above the top of pyrimid. The next video shows the bot being righted and going off to shoot more disks! We drank our own Koolaid and followed the Robot Delivery Life Cycle.
I think our robot is the best fit to this part of the game.
•Our shooter is mounted at 60 inches.
•We can shoot over one hundred feet.
•We have roughly a 90% accuracy from the feeder station into the three pt goal.
•We have many strategies for deterring blocker robots.
•We have near 100% accuracy from anywhere else.
•We have an effective, two sided, floor intake.
•We have an 84 inch blocker.
•We top it off with a quick, 10 pt hang, and shoot 4 last Frisbees wile we hang.
Unless I’m reading the rules wrong, (which I very well may be), wouldn’t an 84 in blocker be illegal per G22 simply because you wont be touching your own pyramid while blocking shots?
G22
ROBOT height (as defined in relation to the ROBOT) must be restricted as follows during the MATCH:
If in contact with the carpet in its AUTO ZONE and/or its PYRAMID, ≤ 84 in.
Otherwise, ≤ 60 in.