Tipping Point: an offense oriented game?

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Tipping Point (21/22)
#1

The game manual claims that tipping point is meant to be offensively played, but I can’t help but notice that it seems significantly easier to deny points rather than to score points.

First, as has been discussed to death already, possessing neutral mogos as early into the game as possible is going to be one of the most, if not the most important thing to decide the winner of a match. This is true not only because of the scoring potential the neutral goals give, but more so the denial potential it gives. A robot in possession of a neutral mobile goal (in their home zone) is only worth 20 points for their actual score, but can be worth way more for their effective score because possession of that mobile goal is denying the opposition from putting that goal onto their platform, AND denying them from putting any rings on the goal.

So a team can have some engineering masterpiece that can put 6 rings at a time on a high branch and climb with it without any of the rings falling off, but lose anyways cause some wack 600 rpm eight motor drive bot with a pneumatic claw grabbed the tall mobile goal .5 seconds before you. This is not even considering that a single bot could and most likely will go for and grab two or even three mogos during auton.

So after auton, would the best play be to try to score rings faster than the opposition and try to elevate alliance goals to score more points? Goodness no, where did you get such an outlandish idea of trying to score points? Obviously, the best course of action would be to push opponent bots around, and try to grab onto their mogos. By doing this, you’d gain a grand 0 points, but you’d effectively deny the opposition of a potential of 40 points per goal, plus any extra rings they were going to put on the goal. At this point, there’d be no reason to design a bot to be able to elevate because of how many points you’ve denied from the opposition. It would be almost impossible for them to make it up unless they too designed a bot centered around taking mogos and denying your points.

Because of this, I could see the meta devolving into robots that specializes in grabbing the neutral mogos quickly, and other robots specializing in trying to steal opposing alliance goals, while bots that can grab rings quickly would be purely reserved for skills. Thoughts?

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#2

I feel like some of this has been discussed in this thread, just phrased a different way.

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#3

I completely agree that some of this has been addressed in other threads, but I haven’t seen many people discussing the viability of taking opponent mobile goals, or the viability of hoarding 4+ mobile goals without elevating which is one of the main points of creating this topic.

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#4

I think you will have to elevate all your goals. If you don’t your opponent will and so if you keep 4 goals in your home zone, and your opponent elevates 3 goals, they have a 40 point lead off of mobile goals, and I don’t think it is very likely to get more than 4 goals in a match, as your alliance has two robots to rush 3 goals, it is do-able, but over time your opposition will try the same things you do if you are successful. And It is going to be pretty hard to play defense in the last 30 seconds, since touching a robot touching the platform counts as touching the platform.

Stealing goals I think is going to be really effective early on, but later in the year teams will develop better ways to secure the goals within their robots.

#5

The thing about descoring is that it can never be faster than scoring because it relies on objects to first get scored before they can be descored.

Also I really don’t see much descoring happening this year. I don’t plan on stacking any rings on neutral goals that I am not in firm possession of, and rings on alliance goals are safe. The platforms are protected in the last 30 seconds so no descoring goals from there.

However, defense will (as always) be a very major aspect of the game. Pushing your opponents around is always going to be effective, and I think there is some merit to stealing your opponent’s alliance goals if you can before they get to them (but be wary that you’re not allowed to spill any rings on them)

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#6

The only issue with holding 4+ goals is that unless the black base or colored “bowl” is not touching the field tiles, no points are scored.

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#7

They would count for points if you managed to park on the platform. Kind of an all in strategy.

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#8

I have three problems with mass mogo possession.

  1. if you can even grab 4 mogos with the other teams needing to grab at least one and there only being two for only your team and three to share between both alliances.
  2. once you have possession of that many goals the added weight could be enough that it would strain your drive to the point where you could be easily pushed especially if your goals are touching the ground.
  3. how are you going to stop teams from just taking your goals at that point
#9

Not if you have a 6 or even 8 motor drive.

Enclose them in your robot.

Ideally you’d be able to get 5 goals, or perhaps 4 in your robot and one for your teammates. They’d probably need to be your alliance ones and most or all of the neutral ones. That means that the opponents would only be able to use their alliance ones.

#10

How are you going to get four goals inside of your robot using only pneumatics because you have an 8 motor drive

#11

Pnuematically operated arm and claw that dump them inside of your robot.

#12

So far I’ve only seen four bars or forklift like things to pick up mobile goals so I think it could be pretty simple to design a piece to hook onto the bottom lip of an opposing alliance goal and take it away from them.

Even later in the season if people develop secure locks so the goal can’t fall out of their bot, hard defense like this could still have some merit cause if two opposing bots are locked onto the same goal, it’s going to turn into a pushing match and in that scenario, a 6 or 8 motor drive would most likely win against a 4 motor drive. If something like this happens, the 4 motor drive would have to either decide to hold onto their goal and slowly get pulled around for the rest of the match, or give up their alliance goal.

As far as I can think of, the only way to effectively counter this would be to completely enclose the bottom lip of the goal into a bot so a defense bot wouldn’t have anywhere to hook onto which could be a challenge to design considering the expansion limit.

Or maybe an offense bot can just drive kind of good to avoid a defense bot from getting near their goals; no one knows yet if it is easy or hard to grab a goal in an opposing bot that’s moving cause no one’s tried it yet. Unless someone does know or has tried it then in that case please tell me your secrets.

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#13

Good luck with that better you then me

#14

The hardest thing I see with a hook like that is accounting for variability in opposing goal lifts. Some goal lifts will go up some will tip the goal back both of these being demonstrated in this video. But you are right, if two bots fight over a goal, if one has a 6-8 motor drive it will likely force the opponent to give up the goal or get pulled around. So it is probably bot dependent, and we will see how things play out once tournaments start up.

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#15

wall bot time 20char

#16

a 36" wall bot (20 char)

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#17

Perfect to guard the snacks.

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#18

guarding da risers aka. hoarding

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