Over the weekend I was with my team at the WPI regional, and the fender shooters dominated the elim rounds. Key shooters still didn’t have their accuracy down, and nobody was playing any defense. But in the elims, this changed greatly, as teams started playing defense and drivers got a hold of their key shooters. The finals was dominated by three key shooters (3205, 2067 and 228). Did people notice this at other regionals? Or are there other trends?
We didn’t try to do defense during the qualification rounds because we had hopes of being a good shooter. In the elimination rounds we felt a little outgunned, and switched to defense. If we couldn’t out score our opponents in baskets, we would try to shut them down. I’ve always heard those who can’t do, play defense. That was the case with our team. In the eliminations we went against some Fender Bots, and we were successful at pushing them away from their scoring spot. We didn’t go too far with this strategy, but it was fun:D
This was certainly the trend at Superior; the fender bots weren’t completely equalized in the elims but the shift to key scoring was certainly noticeable.
I predict that we will see a further progression where key shooting becomes the norm and perimeter shooting becomes the exception. Key shooting is safer but being able to shoot from anywhere would reduce time between loading and shooting.
I see this splitting up current fender scorers into three categories:
-Fenderbots who continue what they were doing as the metagame goes along and eventually loose all power
-Ex-fenderbots who give up shooting from the fender and become key shooters
and last, but not least
-Fenderbots who adapt to the metagame and learn how to continue to be successful fender scorers even with defense.
The fenderbots that fit into the first category will be left in the dust. The fenderbots in the second category will range from successful to unsuccessful, all depending on how they built their robots. The fenderbots in the third category… We’ll have to see how they play out. May be successful, may be not. All depends on the iteration, strategy, and how they play the game.
Fenderbots have shown to be extremely successful not only in the qualifying rounds but also the eliminations. My team, 1592, was solely a fenderbot at the Orlando Regional. Our drivers were able to consistently score 8-12 balls per match in tele-op even through persistent defense by the opposing alliance.
According to this we would fall into the 3rd category above; we stuck with what we were good at(top scorer at the Orlando Regional), shooting from the fender and later winning the regional.
1592 was simply unbelievable with their shooting. with the right strategy fender bots arent so easily phased
The other side of 1592 of course being 86 which pretty much did have fender shooters nailed down in the elims. By the semis, there were more bots making shots from the key, but if you were not on that key, you had major problems scoring. The most memorable match of eliminations for me was QF 3.2 when, after scoring 12 points in autonomous, the entire alliance was held to 6 points for the rest of the match.
I think the difference between fender bots who were fender bots the entire season and those who became them after they realized how inconsistent their key shooting was is really demonstrated in the eliminations. Those who have planned for it the entire season have come up with little things to keep themselves successful despite defense and those who haven’t have fallen apart at the hands of the defense.
I haven’t seen 1592 in action yet but one team that I saw really come through with these little things during eliminations was 2056, they stayed successful despite being hounded by defensive robots in the elimination rounds.
An alliance needs a skilled robot that can get down the field and play smart tough defense in order to disrupt the fender.
The evolution of robots who are more one dimensional with scoring is to take the game across the field. Of course this assumes a versatile drive train and the ability to cross the middle in a reasonable time frame.
Team 93 at Superior is an excellent example, They struggled with offense in the quals and then put forth an amazing defensive effort to upset in the quarterfinals (6th seed v. 3rd seed) and hung very tough in the semis (losing each match by single digits).
There are not enough balls in the game to keep three good offensive robots busy; someone needs to go across the barrier just to dissipate traffic.
With the electrical problems in our shooter, we ended up going pure defense + bridge throughout the qualifiers. Not to toot the octocanum horn too much, fender bots didn’t stand a chance once teleop started. 340 used an alliance robot to pin us long enough to get past us, and scored three balls (6 points) in teleop once – that was the most successful fenderbot against our defense. We reduced 191 to three and zero points in two qualifying matches, where without defense they were getting 20-ish points from the fender (plus bridges).
Against key shooters all we could do was passive defense – ball denial – and we got some penalty points for our team a few times doing that (while incurring no penalties ourselves throughout FLR). It’s worth noting that 191’s ability to shoot from the key got better and better throughout qualifiers.
It’s most especially worth noting that we lost in the quarterfinals specifically because passive defense isn’t enough to reliably win games against even reasonably good key shooters.
So my experience agrees with your analysis: defense cripples fender bots, but it’s simply not enough against key bots.
Team 58, The Riot Crew is a fender bot. Being 3-4 inches from the rim has a tremendous advantage. With the use of mecanum wheels we are able to score from the front or the side. If a robot tries to defend the front we will simply slide to the side. Once there, there is no way to defend. Our robot had an accuracy of 95% in Hybrid making 169 out of the possible 180 points the bot could of scored. During the elimination rounds the bot was so consistant that our alliance partners fed us balls and kept the opposing alliances from grabbing the balls on our scoring side. IMHO Fender bots will have a huge impact in this competition provided they have an accuracy of 90% or higher.
You can check some video of the bot in action on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E-msxyuIkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ukAVPI7Gyw
Our robot was a 3point fender bot. We were scoring very high at Traverse City, however we also have a catapult which is a little slower, but can shoot from the key.
Off the cuff, I think we were averaging >20 basket pts per match in quals, and all of our elimination matches had 40+pts (IIRC) and our autonomous (which used this catapult) was shooting 90%+ by the end of the day Saturday.
My only complaint (as the programming mentor) is that we didn’t use the catapult enough outside autonomous to get a feel for using it later when we were being defended (though our alliances defender bot did an awesome job on guard duty).
We did the same thing in the quarters and semis of Horsham. The quarters were against 2 fenderbots, that put up a grand total of 11 teleop points in 2 matches (5 and 6). We had a very quick route to the fender planned exactly, and once we got there scoring for both bots was basically over. Double teaming, side shooting, pick setting, all of them seemed even easier that we thought they’d be to counter.
Are there any videos of 1592? I’m curious how they managed to dodge the defense. I saw a few fenderbots at Chestnut Hill get through, but mostly from uncoordinated defending.
Even short-range shooters can be shut down well. The main scorer against us in the semis (a short-ranger) put up 9 teleop points the first round. We upped our game a little more, and the only got 2 the second round.
Key defense is much harder. You need a strong drivetrain, skilled driver, smart coach and a little luck, but it still doesn’t work as well.
We are working on getting most of the video we have out there.
Here is a video of us during the semis at Orlando. This is the only video I have at the moment.
The original post is almost exactly what happened to us, FIRST Team 1625. We shot succesfully from the fender through quals, ended up third seed.
Eliminated in two matches of Quarter Finals, a significant factor being FIRST Team 93’s excellent defense against us. We have pneumatic wheels, got pushed/bumped enough to nearly completely upset our targeting.