Having watched many of the “high scoring” elimination matches over the weekend, it strikes me that too many teams were focused on getting the “50 points” from hanging - and ignoring the fact that their opponent was racking up huge a score by accumulating/herding 5 point balls and capping with the 2X ball. The teams that were good at this seemed to be able to do it unencumbered. No one seemed to be running interference. There was very little defense. And teams didn’t adjust their strategies to cope with it. You could almost predict what each match was going to look like. Did anyone else observe the same thing?
There were a lot of teams who tried to defend against 177 scoring small balls in the Philly finals. All day friday and into thursday we had been racking up small ball points (up to 90 in a round where our partner did not work at all) without once having the goal capped. We went up against some pretty fierce hangers in the eliminations (most notably 341) who tried to prevent us from getting the small balls. The only problem was that we were so efficient with them that we would score our points, then procede to keep the team which had previously been defending us from hanging with our beefy drive train (thanks to 45)
Yeah, it was very odd when teams didn’t [often] try to stop teams like 16 at Annapolis even after it had its amazing 210 point round were it herded, capped, and hung. It would have defenitley been more effective to take 70 or 80 points from them than get 50 for yourself.
I full hardly agree with you rourke it is so easy for a good multiplier to win over a hanger that goes stright for the 50. Say they hang right away and they have a good HP that sinks all three that is 65 points. You get a good multiplier and even in the mobile goal you can score 120 points enough to beat 2 hanging robots and 3 HP shots and that sint even counting the other robot if it can do the stationary or hang.
Also it seems that as the CD board focuses more and more on highger and hgigher scores to say “Yea, look we just scored X points!!!” they are forgetting about their amounts and the game is turnign very quickly into the pure offense that it was predicted to be like in the pre-season. I am glad my team was able to go to one of the earlier regionals where teams focused on defense just as much as hanging.
Anyway that is just my .02 and of no opinion of my team (521) as a whole or individual
At UCF, lots of teams would defend from us catching the balls. However, at the end of matches I agree… few teams play defense. Unless the other team shoots in 5 more balls and caps it with a 2x though, getting the bar will count as more, making it more important… and I think with the time it takes to grab the bar, once teams decide to go for it… they run out of time to swap back and play defense. That’s my personal guess as to strategys though.
At VCU during the first week of regionals I saw several teams push the goals to block the ball corrals, especially against team 33, who ended up being champions. Most herders weren’t very efficient, so teams didn’t bother blocking them. Teams only usually bothered to block teams that had a hopper and could deliver many balls very quickly.
the problem is that while you are on the other side of the field trying to stop the other team from scoring, you are racking up ZERO points for yourself
and if the other team sneaks some by, they only have to beat you by 5 points
and they may decide to play the same game and keep you off the bar, then you spent your whole match doing what? nothing
you get no points for being defensive.
177 was just insane, like I said in a previous thread we couldn’t ignore them or they would rack up 100 points with balls alone… so we pushed both goals in their ball chute and hit them just as the balls fell… it worked until we went to hang and realized while we were tussling with 177 our hook fell off :/, so we went and sucked up some balls… Their nice drivetrain was able to dislodge the mobile goal, and both of us filled up our goals until the buzzer. two penalties did us in, and we lost 60-70, but I’m proud to say we lost to the winning alliance of the Philadelphia Regional, because nobody could stop them from delivering all those balls.
What amazed me most was 177’s drivetrain. I would’ve thought that with two omniwheels they wouldn’t be strong, but they were pushing around other robots like rag dolls during the rest of the playoffs. Just wait until they get their hook working… scary thought, eh?
This probably isnt the best place to ask this, but is there a rul that says you cannot pick a team up off the bar and move them?
pick them up?
there was a match at buckeye, I think 340 was on the bar and another team hooked on, and their bot could move sideways on the bar - and they were trying to push 340 sideways, so they let themselves back down with their wheels on the platform and pushed back
and the other team pushed backed again
and 340 pushed them right off the end of the bar.
sad part is, for all the other matches I saw 340 was happy to get on the bar and mind its own business - the other team started the shoving match
and lost.
very very very true. in the first match at pittsburgh, 188 was playing defence against 808 to try and stop them from hanging, and rode up on a 5 pt ball…despite a 1.5" ground clearance ! :ahh: , and that prevented us from stopping them and they zoomed around to the other side of the field and hung. had we ignored them, herded and capped, we likely would have won.
that being said, a defence shouldnt be excluded from any strategy whatsoever. in fact, it may be simplify things alot for your crew =D
I remember 279 and 378 were battling to get on the bar and both hooked on and 279 did that way cool clamshell thing it does and toppled 378 right over off the bar.
There is a rule that I am too lazy to go look up that says that your robot may not INTENTIONALLY go and pick up, flip, impale, burn other robots, etc. You get the gist of the rule.
though you are allowed to try and knock robots off the bar with 5 pt ball shots.
even with our bot, some little frame-bot was getting in our face while we were gathering and delivering balls, thought they had us boxed in the corner, and with our triwheels we just ran right over it
got it on video - didnt realize what had happened till I looked at the tape
along this topic (although it may be a little off-track) I noticed more and more teams are modfiying their hook to make it more foolproof. At chesapeake very few teams had to really try to get their hook off, but at Philly many had to stick poles up to remove their hook. I know we, for one, had more trouble getting it off than on. It took a guy on a ladder 5 minutes to get it down, but if it took him that long I guess we aren’t coming down anytime during competition 
I dont know if they were disqualifying teams for tipping bots over
I saw one match where a team was trying to cap a goal, and the other came over and rammed it in the side, knocking it right over
im not sure, but I think they were disqualified for that match - I thought they had more points but they lost
but I didnt hear any matches where the announcer said a team was disqualified for tipping a bot intentionally.
One more thing as far as defense goes… A lot of this years robots were built for finesse because they game called for them to be able to do so many different things. Without the great strategy and defense that 177 played keeping robots away from the bar (because we couldn’t hang ourselves) we would never have been able to win. However, there was a big price to be paid for playing such violent defense. Anyone watching the philly finals knows that we had a lot of problems with breaking our basket among other things that were quickly repaired, but will need to be further tweaked at nationals to get back to 100%. We actually managed to break a weld on our conveyor, pull our kicker roller out of its bearing, AND sheer the tube on part of our basket TWICE all during finals. It would have been a lot less work for us if we could have just let our oppenents hang, and then also hung ourselves and won that way.
Well i was at BAE. Out whole objective their was defense and and hanging…it was successful for us…but i looked around and not many other teams did this…alot of teams tried to score high…with this years game it seems that winning is more important than points…i think it was once said: Winning is winning…whether you win by a mile or an inch…its still winning.
-Pat