How Will Logomotion Play Out and Develop?

FIRST General Forum
#61

There is only one rule with a 30 point penalty:

<G50> An ALLIANCE may not pin an opponent ROBOT that is in contact with a field border or TOWER for more than 5 seconds. A ROBOT will be considered pinned until the ROBOTS have separated by at least 6 feet. The pinning ROBOT(S) must then wait for at least 3 seconds before attempting to pin the same ROBOT again. Violation: 10 PENALTIES

Intelligent defense does not even pin. It just has to stay in the way.
It is like playing zone defense in basketball just cutting off the driving lanes to the goal. Only a much stronger or dramatically faster and more nimble robot can get around a robot that is just trying to dramatically slow down progress of the offensive bot to and from the scoring zone. And even the best robots will knocked off their scoring rhythm by effective defense.

Pure mecanum drives are doomed in this game. bots could be pushed back 3/4th the length of the field without being pinned- but that would pull a defender out of position: a standard mecanum trying to be a scorer or runner will just run into a good defender and won’t be able to budge it.

#62

Good luck with that.
Forget looking at 2007. Look at 2005 where a similar devastating penalty awaited teams who foolishly played defense near the loading zone AND THEY STILL DIDI IT!
It’s one thing to play Smash Everything With The Opposite Bumper Color Defense which teams will be cured of wanting to use with the first 30 point penalty levied against them and it’s another to be consistent at playing effective defense when FIRST is going out of it’s way to legislate it out.

#63

Then don’t play defense right next to the loading zone!

#64

Funny, alot of team did that and 2005.
And considering so many teams apparent natural aversion to actually reading the rules I expect them to do the same this year as well readily and often.

#65

But you don’t HAVE to. Teams are not required to play defense next to the loading zone. My team already has a map of where our defensive player will go, and what they will do.

We read the rules!

#66

We read the rules too but there are a whole lot who don’t and they’re gonna hurt alot of the teams who do. It happens every year and this year it’ll be more devastating than ever with that big point penalty.

#67

Could some of this be addressed before a match? If the 3 drives teams got together and made sure the other teams were clear on rules about pinning and defense, would that reduce the risk of defensive penalties? And yes, I’m aware that not every team listens to things discussed pre-match.

#68

It can… But will the people who haven’t bothered to learn the rules well suddenly start paying attention just before a match? I am dubious…

#69

It’s obvious that teams that don’t read and study the rules will cause significant penalties this year. This will greatly annoy good teams that spent the time and effort to understand all the rules and are hugely invested in their teams and their robots.

It’s quite another thing to imply that there won’t be MANY good defensive teams that will play be able to consistently avoid significant penalties.

The scrimmages so far looked like a defensive dream scenario.

The top offensive teams would like to strike fear in teams that want to consider playing good defense.

My assessment is that smart defense by strong robots will be so effective that the GDC will be looking to tilt the rules even more toward offense:

The GDC might consider allowing offensive robots to use the opposing alliances feeder lanes to get around defense or even move the protected zone all the way out to the caution line and move the caution line out to the towers or they could :rolleyes: redefine “pinning” as “just getting in the way or other forms of humiliation”.

#70

Do you really think that’s necessary?

Robots already can’t team up to impede the flow of the game… But robots CAN team up to confound single-robot defensive strategies… Unless you can block both sides of the bottleneck at the same time, by yourself, then defense will be at best a slowing strategy.

#71

Do you guys find it funny that on this one page of discussion, four of us will be at FLR.

We built a defensive robot, but have trained our drive team(s) to avoid pinning penalties: Remember, you can pin against other robots, as long as its not a field boundary.

We hope to have a pre-match strategy meeting with all of you, and I feel that everyone should listen and pay attention to those. We will be bringing a copy of the manual with our Operator Console everywhere, to clear up last minute rule debates!

EDIT: Thats the point pfreivald. If a robot has a 15 second cycle time with no defense, and a 30 one with defense, you have lowered that robot’s effectiveness by 50%. If that robot was acting as a feeder, then you’ve disrupted it’s entire alliance. The trick is playing defense on more than one bot at a time. The goal in Logomotion is not to block, but to delay.

#72

Logomotion feels like it wants to be a zig-zaging Overdrive. FIRST’s GDC wants to see as less defense as possible, similar to the defenseless Overdrive game. In a perfect Logomotion, everyone just goes back and fourth to get tubes and score and just spends the last 15 seconds to line up to, launch and place in the minibot race.

#73

And when it does happen, we’ll be laughing!

#74

Wow I actually saw a match just like that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxujTCgQPgg

#75

You won’t be if they’re on your alliance.
Most likely you’ll be scratching them off your list.

#76

…and if, in that time, the defensive robot has scored nothing, the offensive robot that has a good minibot deployment will still win.

My half of what it could be vs. your nothing benefits me every time.

I’m not saying that defense doesn’t matter – it most certainly does – but I would rather see three offensive robots than two offense and one defense on my alliance, and either on of those is preferable to two defense and one offense.

#77

Who says that said defensive robot doesnt have a better minibot? And because it was built to be defensive, it is able to power through your defense on it’s way to the tower.

#78

It actually does not need to, since the defensive bot would be on the side with their designated towers the whole game.

#79

We already have ideas of alliances. They know the rules.

#80

I think that MINIBOT is orthogonal to offense/defense.