i see kind of like to play the best defense you need to have the best offense.
I agree. For a team that normally does middling-well, this might not be a big improvement - and a lot of mid-tier teams prefer the “build for Einstein, even if our odds are not great” strategy, and find that more inspiring. But I think a lot of struggling teams would do well to try your strategy, they’d experience more success (which can be inspiring itself, if your team normally does poorly) and build a solid base of experience to build on the following year.
Technincally, Defense could just be last resort,
Our team eventully mid compatition just took our arm off and tied down two boxes of bolts. I say, dont rely on it, but always keep it in the back pocket.
What leads you to conclude that a defense only bot is a good way to go? How many examples of successful defense only bots have you seen vs examples of successful bots with simple scoring mechanisms? Is your team limited in it’s ability to design and implement effective scoring mechanisms? If so, what is your team doing to expand it’s abilities?
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Check out team 9106, The Spires. This year we played dominate defense at 2 competitions.
Good job making it to the two semifinal rounds. That is the problem though. Not enough to make it to finals with D
Poor team selection at our final competition. We did our best. It was tough but we tried until the last second.
You ranked 14 and 15 and Ended up Alliance Captain 8 and second pick for Captain 7. This is why you did not acheive better picks as most of the good ones were gone already That is why full on defense is not necessarily a good way to go as you fail to rank high enough to build a strong Alliance that can get to Finals and win them. Its is possible a higher Captain would have put you in a better alliance. That is easier when you are the higher capatin yourself or good enough to get on their radar. Good improvement though in one year , keep it up.
9106 played some of the best defense I’ve ever seen. If they had been picked up by a more powerful offensive team at Battle Creek I think they may have gone pretty far in eliminations. I think this shows why defense only bots are extremely unlikely to win early events or get to champs on defense. At the district/ regional level you will get matches without any strong offensive bots and if you don’t have offense you will lose those matches, and you will struggle to rank well. 15/40 is a very good rank for defense only bot, but it is likely to get you on the 7th/8th alliance and an knocked out early.
The OP asked about why people say that defense win championships, but very few teams build defense only bots. I think its pretty simple, game dynamics change across the season, and defense can only win a championship when paired with a very good offense. Early season, teams will have lots of matches without a good offensive partner and a really good defense bot won’t be able to rank highly enough to progress to DCMP or CMP. A bot that can play really good defense but has enough offense to make it though to DCMP/CMP then they can focus on showing off their defense and get picked up by an alliance with two really good offense bots where a third offense bot would cause too much traffic.