I watched a fair number of matches over the weekend, but one thing I did NOT see in the matches I watched was defenders:
actively trying to grab opponents cargo and hide it on the field
defenders holding 2 opponents cargo while defending
Did I miss an update and this is not allowed or has the thinking changed of this being a good defensive strategy as the season has progressed?
I seem to remember this being talked about a fair bit shortly after reveal.
447 grabbed 2 of our color balls in finals against us (I believe they did this all through elims). This was an effective strategy. It really did slow down our ability to score.
We had a few quals matches where our opponent appeared to be grabbing our color balls and moving them to the opposite side of the field where they were difficult for our drivers to see. This was also pretty effective in slowing down our scoring.
thanks for the reply
Saw many Everybots playing defense with empty intakes and wondered why they didn’t just pick up two cargo first?
Thought that might have become illegal and I missed the update!
This happened to us in Finals 2 of Kettering #1. Both defending blue robots held 2 red cargo balls each from us.
Our 8th alliance did this in Q1-2 against the 1st seed alliance while actively playing defense on their bots too. Really wanted to make it hard for them to make their crazy amount of cargo points. I think it worked pretty well. Still lost, but had fun making them work a little harder 
This was a strategy that was used by my team in the semifinals for week one, Clackamas (PNW district). No rule against it, the only penalty we got was for accidentally shooting one out of bounds.
This happened a couple times at glacier peak but it wasn’t a primary defense strategy. People should be doing it more often as its really annoying to find balls when there are less of them on the field.
I assumed everyone was doing it. We sent our defending robot 2531 to do this at the beginning of every match. See the video below for an example (and also the a very nice score of 125pts in elims). Our robot also grabs an opponents ball in auto and throws it in the corner (bottom right of the screen)
Check out 1678 auto at Port Hueneme…
Cool
There were a number of instances at Kettering 1 where I did see not-quite-fully-complete robots (unable to hold balls) shuffling balls to the far end of the field to slow down cycling for the shooter bots by making them drive farther to gather balls. It did seem effective.
1836 was also shuttling opponent cargo to the Terminal and Hanagar at Port Hueneme
Rick, whoever that 1836 team is really had some great ideas
Fouls were being called pretty aggressively in INKOK, so our drive coach was afraid to grab balls and then accidentally block an opposing robot from more, leading to a foul.
Keep in mind a significant number of robots playing defense in week 1 didn’t PLAN to play defense. Instead, they’re doing what they can with the robot they’ve put together by the first week. In many instances, this means they weren’t able to get their ball handling mechanisms working so they’re driving around to disrupt others from scoring.
A strategy grabbing opponent cargo wouldn’t work for these types of bots. I’d expect you’ll see a shift as the season goes on and defensive bots are more specialized versus a “let’s make the best of our event” strategy.
We took a loss in FiT Drippings Springs due to a cargo foul. There were 3 blue cargo against the driver station in our hangar (red alliance). No one pushed them there, cargo was flying and rolling everywhere in the match. No one was defending the hangar or intentionally blocking access to the cargo at any time during the match.
We lined up and started climbing just prior to the 30sec end game buzzer (probably at the 35 sec remaining if I had to guess) and went up to the traversal bar. At the end of the match, we saw the foul points and asked the head ref what happened. We were called on G404 for blocking access to the blue cargo in our hangar because we started our climb too early.
We have used this strategy in a quali match. It is very effective for defence, as the other allaince would be working with less cargos.
It’s not too difficult to pick up two opponent’s cargo, but if you want to play further ball defense, you need a plan with what to do with them.
To play continued ball defense you need to put those balls somewhere less convenient for your opponent. Per the blue box in G404, that place shouldn’t be your own hanger zone (although the specifics on this involve using the hanger contact protection to prevent an opponent from reaching them which is a slightly different thing).
Another good spot would be the side of the hub closest to your alliance’s driver stations, because it’s hard for your opponents to see there. However doing that also puts the balls in the way of fender scorers.
Another issue with it is that cycling your opponent’s cargo somewhere else takes a lot of time and potentially crowds certain areas of the field that you’d prefer to not be crowded.
I’m a big fan of systems on teams like 1690 and 1678 where they automatically eject opponent’s balls, at the very least making it more difficult for opponents to get balls, but those systems are difficult to add onto existing robots.
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