How to combat defense as a dumper? – Rules/Strategy

With how much info has come out on defending dumpers, have any teams actually found ways to fight back against it? Stuff like running an X-pattern with swerve while shooting, pinning against a wall to take away the defender’s leverage, etc. Has anyone seen dumper teams actually adapt or are defenders just continuing to widen the gap?

Don’t score very many points. That way, no one will want to defend you. Have tested and can confirm it works

While neither is entirely perfect, they have both have helped. Also, working off your opponents blindzones should be beneficial.

last 30 seconds, the tower is a safe zone because of penalties, so try touching the tower to shoot

I think your best strategy is to tag a wall with a bot corner and/or pick something to lean on to make your bot harder to rotate. Your aiming code may need some testing/fiddling to accommodate this! Plus driver training to remember to DO it before launching.

A potential software trick: automatically STOP shooting when you are far enough off to miss the goal. Maybe 50% overlap is the limit to stop shooting? That way a smack doesn’t mean you miss the WHOLE hopper load.

Another software trick: make sure the aiming utility is running while you are shooting, to actively pull back onto target. I suspect a LOT of teams aim and start shooting, but the aim routine only runs once.

Its the price you pay for raining down fuel

This is an easy one. Defense can win matches, and can lose matches.

So, dumper teams:

Am I right about the targeting thing? Do most of you execute a “target” operation, and then a “Shoot” operation? Or do you continuously target?

In CASCMP, the #1 allaince kept 3476 inside the alliance zone such that they wouldn’t face bump defense (where 3476 was the most vulnerable), and ran 4414 to cycle the neutral zone instead under one of the trhcnes. For the #6 alliance commiting 2 entire robots to pure pushing defense (and not a whole lot of counterfeeding), they didn’t actually deny as many points as 2 defenders should.

We continuously adjust aim while shooting but didn’t have time to implement an auto cut-off if we are rotated too far off target.

A passing strategy will take care of most problems. If you’re a heavy dumper but you don’t have to move much, since fuel is being fed to you, there isn’t as much a defense bot can do. Likewise, if you’re in the center passing, and the defense bot rotates you, the pass still works just fine.

I would also recommend adding the ability to pause mid-dump without stopping the shooter motor. If a defender is flying toward you, pause until they let off, and then let it shoot the second they move away. If you can stop shooting while being hit, you won’t lose much fuel (if any). Then, whenever they are defending you, your partners are scoring (and vice versa).

I can envision a big meta shift at champs where dumper teams fill start feeding their turret teammates from the neutral zone or other alliance zone. This will also starve the other alliance if done well.

Agreed, although it really depends on if teams realize the value of defense, or if they just keep running triple offense. Having 2 bots on your side of the field and 4 on the other gives you a big advantage when scoring.

But it’s going to be hard for the mid tier teams to play defense when they’ve been a good offense bot all season. Have you seen how tight those EPA graphs are? You might get picked just by being slightly better at scoring.

If teams do make the switch, then turrets will become invaluable. But if everyone just keeps trying to outscore each other, well, then, dumper is the way. We might even see different metas on different fields depending on if and how quickly teams make the decision that defense is the best way they can contribute.

If you want to see someone who’s been doing both all year, check out 1807 from FMA. They played defense a lot during their first two district events. Then tuned in a two wide shooter for DCMP and made it to finals. They were a do it all team and an easy second pick

Lining up next to the trench seems to be an effective strategy. Picking up under the tower and immediately cycle has seemed to work pretty well if you get good enough throughput.

But with all anti-defense measures, there is no better substitute for practicing against defense and learning how your bot can handle it. There is no catch all strategy