Simulated Season

[548swimmer]

I'm thinking about re-running an old season over the summer as a design exercise for new recruits. What season would you guys recommend, and where can I find the rules for that game?

[Andrew Lawrence]

If you're trying to train new recruits, try Breakaway. It's easy to know how to play robot soccer. This'll teach controls. and will help with rules. If you want them to learn about penalties, try doing this year's game!

[548swimmer]

If you're trying to train new recruits, try Breakaway. It's easy to know how to play robot soccer. This'll teach controls. and will help with rules. If you want them to learn about penalties, try doing this year's game!

I'm more interested in a season that is unfamiliar to everyone on the team, so pre-2008. The ultimate goal is to have a group of students that's already gone through a design challenge together without our current leadership, so that in the absence of this years seniors, they will be able to be competitive.

[Zach O]

We talked about doing this at one point in time. It's a good idea, if you have the money and the supplies to do it. You'll need a full field to actually run matches on if you plan on having everyone build robots, too. It's no fun if you don't get to see how your robot does!

Make sure you have plenty of support from mentors or alum if you want to try it. That kind of knowledge will be helpful.

Here are the rules for all games, dating back to 2002.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=4094

[548swimmer]

We talked about doing this at one point in time. It's a good idea, if you have the money and the supplies to do it. You'll need a full field to actually run matches on if you plan on having everyone build robots, too. It's no fun if you don't get to see how your robot does!

Make sure you have plenty of support from mentors or alum if you want to try it. That kind of knowledge will be helpful.

Here are the rules for all games, dating back to 2002.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=4094

We need to check with our sponsor to see if we can build robots, but we have half a field built in our workshop at school we could run on.

I was picturing the entire team working to build one FRC robot, but it sounds like looking at multiple, smaller robots might be a better idea.

[Conor Ryan]

If you're trying to train new recruits, try Breakaway. It's easy to know how to play robot soccer. This'll teach controls. and will help with rules. If you want them to learn about penalties, try doing this year's game!

I second that, compared to many games over the years breakaway was a fairly simple concept to grasp, plus the fact it was recent helps a lot.

I might recommend the rule of not using any mechanisms that you guys used on your robot (that way people do something new)

[Bjenks548]

We need to check with our sponsor to see if we can build robots, but we have half a field built in our workshop at school we could run on.

I was picturing the entire team working to build one FRC robot, but it sounds like looking at multiple, smaller robots might be a better idea.

Maize craze? although were gunna need to buy some corn kernels... Also for small robots we could use a FTC or VEX game.

[Conor Ryan]

Vex might be a nice way to go also, its even easier and can easily be done in somebody's basement.

[Andrew Lawrence]

If you still have your FTC KOP from this year's game, you can try to make some kind of robot. Or you can get another FTC/VEX kit. I heard that FRC teams get a discount on parts.

[EricH]

1999 would be a good one. There is a dominant strategy in that one.
2000 and 2004 are also good choices for non-dominant strategies.

IIRC, FIRST is working on putting FRC history on their site. The Technokats History Project should also have that information.

[BrendanB]

Hmmm. 2005 might be your best bet for a recent game with rules and a simple strategy of picking up and object an scoring it.

[Zach O]

I was picturing the entire team working to build one FRC robot, but it sounds like looking at multiple, smaller robots might be a better idea.

I would suggest FLL/VEX. FLL would provide allow your students to work though the design process and work with sensors and programming (it's fully autonomous). VEX it a little more expensive than FLL, but the game would be more exciting (IMO).

[Alex Cormier]

Hmmm. 2005 might be your best bet for a recent game with rules and a simple strategy of picking up and object an scoring it.

Indeed! Also a pretty easy game to design in vex.

[BrendanB]

Indeed! Also a pretty easy game to design in vex.

Yeah I use it all the time in FLL.

[Chris Hibner]

2000 was the best game ever, IMHO.

[Lil' Lavery]

For a more "modern" game style, I'd suggest 2005. It's 3v3, has one primary scoring object, and has autonomous. Biggest variance compared to recent games is the lack of bumper rules. There also isn't a real end game that you have to design for, just a positional bonus that any alliance with reasonably sized robots and functional drivetrains could accomplish.

For a completely different experience, you could reach back into the 2v2 era. I particularly like 2004, with its multiple scoring aspects, important end-game, and significant human player role. It's really different than the games of the past few years and can (and has) been scaled down the Vex scale.

[JamesBrown]

[QUOTE=Lil' Lavery;1058618]For a more "modern" game style, I'd suggest 2005. It's 3v3, has one primary scoring object, and has autonomous. Biggest variance compared to recent games is the lack of bumper rules. There also isn't a real end game that you have to design for, just a positional bonus that any alliance with reasonably sized robots and functional drivetrains could accomplish.
QUOTE]


I loved 2005 and initially I was going to reccomend it as well. The field is easy to mock up, game pieces can be built easily, and the field was pretty much flat (some teams got stuck on the raised plastic triangles).

However I was thinking since we are coming off of an Arm/Elevator game year it might be more valuable to try something different like ball manipulation. Every few years the GDC seems to include herding balls, teams that can do it quickly have a huge advantage.

[Pjohn1959]

You could use the game pieces from last years VEX game (Roundup) and play a game similar to this year's FIRST game or the 2007 game, Rack & Roll.

I like using the VEX products and game field based on cost and size. You could put it almost anywhere.

[Boydean]

Has anyone thought of creating multiple off season events with this in mind? Put together a fake build season starting at the end of May using one of the past games from FIRST and let it run until October or so. Then have competitions around the areas.

I think it would prove to be very valuable to all teams, and the increased time span would allow teams enough time to train any new kids who jump in during build season. There also wouldn't be a time crunch so teams could still focus on their typical off season schedule.

This might be something to seriously consider.

[Jon Stratis]

I know that, for my team at least, affording to build an off season robot like this would be a stretch... However, we do go through the planning/initial design phase every year before kickoff. Pick an old game (http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=4094) and give it to the kids like it was kickoff. They spend several hours planning and talking about the game strategy, and (time permitting) can even work out some basic design ideas on paper. Once they're done, we go find some video's from that year (preferably from Einstein) to show them how the game ended up being played (how close were they on strategy?) and what design aspects were important in winning robots. It's easy and cheap to do, and helps create that leadership framework you're looking for.

[akoscielski3]

I would definitly recomend 2006 "Aim High", in my opion it was the best game to play, with a pretty good end game. the constant scoring of balls going into the top net made everyone cheer constantly! This was also my first, FIRSt competition i attended (in gr 4).

[Matt C]

I'd suggest using Vex kits, splitting students up into subteams, re-run a past "Savage Soccer" event. Past rulesets can be found in the archive section.

Savage Soccer (http://users.wpi.edu/~savage/)
We had Über-tubes before there were ubertubes!:D
http://users.wpi.edu/~savage/Archives/2004/rules.html

[Mark Sheridan]

Perhaps if cost is too much of an issue, you could just CAD the designs. We are hoping to do this summer, where students try to CAD their dream robot. We are focusing on the 2011 game to learn from our mistakes but we way also try the 2006 game to get students used to designing robots that can store multiple gamepieces. Our goals are slightly different, mine is to teach as many students CAD, improve their skill and use it with design methodology.

[artdutra04]

Definitely redo the 2005 FRC game Triple Play with Vex; it's very easy to scale all field parts down to 1/3 scale and build Vex robots to interact with them.

http://www.team228.org/gallery/36/slideshow/nmtc-05.jpg (http://www.team228.org/media/pictures/view/1488)