At the beginning of the season our team decided that going for the gears wouldn’t be as valuable as going for the high goal. After multiple bumps in the road we ended up having a robot that, at bag day, was only able to do the low goal and isn’t able to put any gears in or climb the rope. Given that the fuel isn’t playing much of an impact on the result of the games so far and that we can’t climb the rope or do gears, is it a better idea to train our drivers on a more defensive strategy to prevent more points than we would be able to score?
What our team found after our first event is that after our 3rd rotor in a match, playing defense is the best way to continue match play to maximize point difference. However, we have predicted that fuel will become more important by Week 4. What we’ve been doing, is after 3 rotors, we try to have 2 robots play defense while a third focuses on fuel (this is assuming we don’t have enough time to even consider a 4th rotor).
At the least you need to get a climber on your bot to be viable as a defensive pick.
Think about it this way. You can’t really play defense against climbing robots other than preventing robots from getting across the field. So are you going to be able to stop an opponent from climbing reliably enough to make up for having a lack of a climber yourself? Chances are no.
Invest in a climber. Consider a passive gear mechanism, even if you can just place the preloaded gear and then play defense, that is still valuable.
Scrap the shooter, build a quick and simple passive gear holder and make a climber.
While defense will help you win qualifying matches, without a climber or a gear mechanism you’re looking at an early Saturday end.
Preventing your opponent from scoring is valuable.
However, fouls/tech fouls can be disastrous. In one of our qualification matches, an alliance partner played defense very well, blocking opponents from crossing center field, pushing them around, and just being annoying in general. Since they were unable to climb they didn’t need to be in our launchpad in the end of the match, so they planned on blocking our opponent from ever getting to their own rope. Good plan.
Unfortunately they entered the opponent retrieval zone three times, making contact with the opponent. That yielded 3 tech fouls, and 75 points to the opponent alliance. Worth 50% more than the climb they prevented.
Read the rules, know the rules, respect the rules.
I think given what you have right now, I’d try to get a little fuel in as a tie breaker, especially if your alliance has no other fuel bots. After that, yes, you’ll probably be more effective playing defense than scoring low goals, unless your robot is incredibly effective at low goals.
I checked on TBA, and you’ve got a week until your regional. There are some simple and effective ways to add a climber - do you have room in your withholding allowance? Hook side velcro on a drum will grab braided polypropylene rope very well, and a slip knot in the rope will allow it to wrap around securely before it lifts. By the time alliance selections wrap back around to the top few teams, a defense bot with a reliable climb can start looking like a pretty good second pick.
I personally believe that defense is actually really valuable this year. At the SE Mass District Event last weekend, team 4151 was in a pretty similar position to you guys (although they did have a climber), but off the back of some pretty impressive defensive play they seeded 3rd in qualifications and made it to the finals of the event. Just sitting in between the airship and the wall near the opponent’s human loading station is a really good way to mess people up and slow down cycle times. In many matches you can deny a 3rd rotor from spinning which can be huge.
There’s also a chance you guys could build a simple box (or climber, but that’s significantly more difficult) at the event if you wanted. There’s been a few examples of robots building one at the event, and doing quite well with it. Just defense and minimal gear capabilities would make you a decent 2nd pick for an alliance, especially if another team can cheesecake a climber onto you.
My team is living proof that defense is an awesome strategy. Be sure to know all rules related to defense before doing so! (Let me know if you want specific rules and I will provide them for ya!)
Stopping someone from placing a gear is just as valuable as placing a gear. (If you’re with a team who can pick up gears from the floor, then it’s even better. That team can start swiping gears from the team you are defending.)
Some key questions:
- Does your drive train allow for pushing? (ie mechanum is traditionally not good for pushing)
- Do you have any weight left to add a climber? Do you have any CIMs left? (Making an awesome climb is actually pretty straight forward and myself or someone else could shout out some ideas)
This video shows what decent defense can do. Im sure there are better cases of defense and we didn’t win the match due to a massive tech foul (not on us) and a failed climb. we held the alliance to 2 rotors and held the entire alliance down in a quarter of the field for upwards of 30 seconds.
I highly doubt a defensive/climb bot outweighs a competent fuel/ OK gear/climb one…so more valuable ? IMO no.
For the main reason…fuel can do same thing as a defender win games and likely with much greater consistency. Plus its added 40 reaching 40 (equivalent to a gear set)
You are correct that ultimately a premium Fuel bot that can place a gear and climb is the closest to a perfect bot for this game due to unlimited fuel nearby and maxed out scores otherwise. Fuel will alway trump gears at highest level of play. Plenty of competent gear runners for picks to complement a premium fuel bot. No need for a defender, overwhelm them with scoring.
I’d have to agree with those saying that a passive gear mechanism and a climber are very important. Passive mechanisms are very easy to implement, so I’d focus on that, and not shooting.
Good lateral defense , however Blue did not adjust was the main problem. They could have gone around and at the same time returned the defense as they went by on those red gear cycling bots… sort of a “stop banging your head against the wall, it hurts” scenario… that was on the Blue drive team coaches/drivers not adjusting to the situation.
Essentially Blue could have turned it into three gear cyclers vs two red ones with the defender hanging or having to split their decisions on who to defend.
Yes defenders may stop scoring potentially, at the same time they are not contributing to their alliance scores either.
With a loss, not the best argument for defense. Even with the cleanest defense you have to expect the occasional foul. It does show the importance of climbing. Expect all six robot climbing to be routine at higher levels of play. (Not to speculate the level of play at your district.) I also expect that defence will be a factor at higher levels of play.
The question you’re asking isn’t quite right. It’s not whether defense is more valuable than fuel; it’s which one offers more value for you to improve right now based on your goal at competition. I’ll assume that goal is to become the second pick of an alliance Saturday a week from now–preferably of the alliance that has the best chance of winning (now that you’re on it). This entails a few things:
- You have to climb. Forget about fuel versus defense or gears. Forget about everything else short of driving and not getting fouls. Nobody wants to play Saturday afternoon with someone who can’t climb. Achieving the best climb rate you can (at least
8/10 at the event) should be your 1 goal. It can take up all of your effort for the next week if it needs to. (Though it does depend on general preparation and spares for reliability–you can’t climb if you break your drivetrain in autonomous.) - Good defense is very good in this game. Poor
defense is significantly worse than no defense at all, in this game more than many. You need to be brutally realistic here. You have a week.
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What’s your drivetrain?
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How experienced is your coach? How experienced is your driver?
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How experienced is your driver with this drivetrain type? …Playing defense? …Using this robot?
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Do you actually have
a ready and reliable analog of this robot to continue training on? Do you have a good field analog?
Top-notch defensive training this year means playing with realistic sight lines against a real robot and with the field crowded by other robots (or possibly “robots”). Good practice doesn’t need to be quite that elaborate, but you still need to drill on field traffic patterns, not blocking your allies, and being useful without getting fouls. Both are very easy to screw up in this game and both are major problems in a pick list.
- If you have low goal capabilities, look at a low goal autonomous. 9-10 low goals and a mobility bonus every time will really make you pop as a second pick.
I agree with many of the above sentiments about climbing as #1 priority.
But I’m wondering if abandoning your original strategy is a great idea. if you focused your build season on low boiler, you might be really good at that. Do you think you could achieve the 40 kPa in the low boiler? those 60 points might be more than you could contribute by jerryrigging a gear manipulator.
Plus with a hang you’ve contributed 110 points… not shabby for a 2nd pick
A good alliance would probably have two robots that can get three rotors going by themselves. Then any additional gears you provided are worthless.
We aren’t able to climb though. And I don’t know if we’d be able to put a climber on the robot at all because we’re using every inch of it for the ball shooter and ball collector. We can hold 10 balls max and our best driver has around a 75% accuracy rate with the shooter. The fact that we didn’t attempt to build a rope climber at all this season, and dedicated all of our space to the shooter and collector for the fuel is going to be tough on us. That’s why I’m trying to find if we can focus on a strategy that will make up for the lack of a rope climber.
Can you run Gears by adding a Gear holder? Or is your strategy to take out the boiler and play defense? Or rack up HG after to the buzzer?
The boiler is equivalent to two gear sets 40+40/RP… so that’s good. But does not help get to 4 rotors which is bad for eliminations. So I think you need one more trick…D, Climb, Gear take your pick. Otherwise knock out that boiler every time and be best Fuel bot there and hope you end up with two solid 4 rotor gear bots that climb and get that 140 + 100 becuse everyone in elims will do at least three rotors.
Sort of boils down to your 40+40 vs their extra 50 and potential rotor bonus at 140 (3 v2) …from a captains selection perspective. If you indeed are a top Fuel bot you’ll be a captain… but need to find those two 4rotor climbing bots yourself.
We might be able to do one gear in autonomous, but after that we don’t have any way to do any more gears. Right now our strategy is probably going to be to get the 1 gear in if we’re able too, then do low goal / defensive.
Are you solid at 40KPa? Sounds like 7 HG per cycle what’s your cycle time? looks like you need 6 cycles to earn the RP/40
If you can get that 40 you’ll probably be a captain due to the half wins…I would look at adding 1-2 gear ability because you never want to be totally one dimensional. For defense do you you the weight/wheels and drivetrain to be effective?
Another option is be cheescake- able <120lb with room for a bolt on climber…you have options
I believe in practice we got somewhere around 20KPa consistently with our best being 30KPa