What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

Taking a bit of inspiration from this thread, what did you like about Aerial Assist?

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

It ending.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I thought the focus of working together as an actual alliance compared to last year was really good. Last year the teams were on their own, build the quickest shooter and you'll win, build a consistent climber (who can or can't dump) and you'll win kind of attitude. As an alliance last year you had to talk about who shoots from where and what side you'll climb on if you do and if you're on your way to reloading and someone on the other alliance is trying to shoot you can bump them out of the way.
Whereas this year you needed to really strategize and work together and make sure everyone is doing something and playing their parts to win the match, defending whenever they didn't have that single game piece. It also helped you realize what teams were best organized with strategy and working with alliances to who would make better alliance members if you were to be able to pick.
It wasn't my favorite game, but the working together aspect was a lot better and game more of an alliance feel to it in a way. It still frustrated me a lot when teams wouldn't pay attention to what our strategy was or if we had to change it spur of the moment they wouldn't listen or cooperate. I'm still glad it's at an end, though.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

The strategy. The value of an effective strategy and driving ability in eliminations this year was huge - and there was enough diversity and development throughout the season to keep things interesting.

In quals, due to limited time, chemistry, and robot ability, putting together a strategy can be less than exciting; however, when elims hit - it's a whole new game.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I like how for once alliance partners were to cooperate as a fully fluid team. I also loved the depth of strategy and seesaw elims matches. I loved aerial assist and I'm sad it's over. Although it had its flaws, overall aerial assist was a great game.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

When played at a high level, arguably the best spectator game FRC has ever seen.

The dynamic where every team, no matter how offensively strong, needed to be able to provide defense at key points in matches.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

Agreed. Because every game piece meant something. Games like Ultimate Ascent are hard to keep track of. With a game where there are only two game pieces it's easy to follow a "scoring drive." And every score is something to celebrate. There's a build and tension akin to playing a "real" sport that many spectators are familiar with. It's very impressive to watch at a high level. In previous years spectating went something like this:

1. Mayhem on the field
2. Game pieces flying
3. ????
4. SCORES!

Though the rules of Aerial Ascent are convoluted and complicated and difficult to explain, the gravity of moments on the field were not compared to previous years' games.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

While others may disagree with me, I think this is possibly one of the best games FIRST has come out with. The true alliance dynamic needed to score meant that a powerhouse team could not just go in and do all of the scoring, as has happened in the past and was the case with ultimate ascent, for example. The alliance needed to strategize (which also meant that scouting was more important than ever) and really work to each other's strengths while trying to mitigate the other's weaknesses. This allowed pure defense/inbounding robots to be very valuable to a team, and really gave rookies and low budget teams a fighting chance to make it to a high level. I've seen someone say that FIRST has rookie awards to get rookies to St. Louis for inspiration; I'd go as far as saying this year's game was designed to do the same ... and boy has it worked.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I would definitely agree with you - it was pretty darn entertaining when there were two high powered alliances on the field. I don't know which game I liked best - AA or UA.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

The fact that 99.99% of the game relied on the entire alliance rather than a single team carrying everyone else. It left everyone (hopefully) with a feeling of companionship and teamwork. I hope they continue the concept of working together in this manner. It is something that was executed beautifully.

Only discrepancy was the refs. They can only do so much in a game as complex as this. They should have gotten more refs to allow for fewer errors.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I loved aerial assist. Not only did it make alliances more important than games from yesteryear, it also made each game piece extremely important. The game made it impossible for teams to win by themselves because there was no "each robot has a game piece". Defense and Offense where both important elements this year!

Most of all however, I think this game was so amazing because it allowed for so many different designs. Though FRC does allow for quite a bit of originality each year, I think it was taken to an even higher level this year because of the lack of an endgame and because of the set goals. We saw shooters, catapults, sling shots, rams, and even dumpers this year!

Overall, this may just have been the best frc game yet.

(Though, Lunacy could have been so good if hadn't had so many flaws :p *

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I loved every bit of it except for feeling sorry for the poor refs who needed to watch everything at once. This game was a blast to play and great to watch as well.

Bravo, GDC! Please don't stray too far from this model next year.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

This may have been one of the worst games to watch at the regional level, and play at the regional level. However, the Division eliminations and Einstein play was beyond phenomenal, and when you have such great teams work together, it truly created what was oneo f the most exciting games to watch. But there lies our problem: It's only exciting when you have the best of the best play it. At the regional level when you have partners that can barely move and assist, the game fails, and tournaments are decided by the random number generator.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I also thought that the volunteers were an affect in how quick and effective they were when helping out with balls in the match, I've been in and not in matches where the ball has gone out of the field and the volunteers take a couple seconds too many to get the ball back to the human player and that could even change the outcome of a match. Given they are volunteering, I applaud all of them for working so hard and putting their time into it, it just seemed the ones at our Regionals were slower than the ones who got the balls back in within a second at the Einstein matches I was watching.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

Pro
-designed to icorporate all 3 alliance partners, giving each their own role
-fun to watch, exciting for spectators
-really high scores (when done well)
-possible for 3 good bots that communicate well to bring down a powerhouse

Con
-nearly impossible to officiate, due to the amount of things the refs must watch simultaneously
-when only 1 member of an alliance can pick up a ball and shoot, it is very difficult to overcome not being able to get multiple assists.
-the foul points. Enough said

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I loved the last second shots. Last year, people cheered after the score went up, because they couldn't tell who had won. This year everybody in the stands knew that Curie would win if 254 made that last second shot, and everybody knew Newton would win if they missed. The tension was crazy :eek:

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

It is easier for me to state the 2 things I disliked about this game than to state the things I did like (just about everything)

Things I did not like

*Logistic issues. From FMS to reffing troubles, this was easily 99% of the reasons anybody has issues with the game

*no end game. While I appreciate the GDC trying something new, I like the last second challanges. When reasonably easy for low levels to do (bridge balancing vs >10pt pyramid climb) it makes a tense last few seconds.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

When referees weren't involved it was a fun game at times.

Could have been a great game.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

The cooperation among st teams was not doubt one of the leading factors in this years game. Coming from last year, where the idea was to build a good robot, and try to do the best YOU could do, this year was very different. It was all about how well you could do with others, and that led to many different strategy options which were always nice to see :) . From what I saw week one, I never would have thought that the game would evolve into such a massive amount of teamwork from the matches I saw later in the season. Loved this years game and hope to see more like it in the future.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

Not having an end game was cool in some ways. The game is about scoring points with the big exercise ball for the entire time, which I think makes it more comprehensible. Even though the end games have been cool in their own ways, they always seem to be mashed together with their respective games in a way that doesn't make intuitive sense. Shoot frisbees + climb a pyramid; hang tubes + deploy minibot; shoot basketballs + balance on ramp. I'm not saying we shouldn't ever have end games, but I think the absence of a discordant end game lends simplicity and elegance to Aerial Assist.

An end game would have been somewhat disastrous this year anyway, because it would have resulted in even more teams that are nearly incapable of possessing the ball. Shooting mechanisms were enough of a fatal distraction to a lot of teams.

Edit: I could see doing an end game that is still focused on scoring the ball. Like being allowed to introduce a second ball, or being allowed to score the opponent's ball, or something like that to make the game swing more at the end. It didn't seem like this game needed any more of a swing at the end, though, because each cycle can be worth a big chunk of the final score as it is.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

This game has given me more truly exciting moments than any other game I can remember. Truly a team game, where every robot on the field mattered.

I also liked the absence of the end game. Two examples why:
1) the Archimedes match where 27 pushed the red robot with the ball back half the distance of the field for the last 15 seconds to deny them any scoring chance. That moment of total drivetrain dominance couldn't have been possible if an end game were in place.
2) the final match (I believe) on Einstein where Newton scored their final complete cycle with 10-some odd seconds left and all three robots rushed down the field to play D on 254. 254 scored anyway and won the match for Curie.

Both these moments were so clutch and inspiring to watch. You could feel the moment swing with each completed cycle in every game. It was awesome.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

If a alliance members robot stunk, get ready for your stats to drop a bit

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I agree wholeheartedly. This game has had some incredible matches, often in which if it were anything other than Aerial Assist, would have a different result. For example, in Quals 5 @ Hatboro Horsham (MAR); 1712, 4954, and 87 defeated 103, 25, and 1640. This is a match that we had no historical right to win, and would have lost in any other game. Even in the context of aerial assist, this was an upset. One low goal bot, one H.P. trusser, and a robot was broken faced a catcher/finisher, and two high goal robots (one a soft lob) and won.

EDIT: This was also a first week event. Perhaps that makes it less impressive, perhaps more so, but I'm pretty confident it's relevant.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

This was a game designed to be played at a world championships level. When we got there, it was awesome. At championships eliminations, you were almost guaranteed to have a good inbounder and trusser that will get the ball to the finisher in a decent amount of time. Sure, some were faster and more reliable than others, and defense made a difference, but there was no anguishing over a ball that is stuck in the back half of the field for half the match. And so what happened was now the finishers got to really show off what they were made of. To some extend, we were back to where really good robots could dominate. And I was inspired to see a showdown between 2 amazing finishers, 254 and 1114. Because they built amazing robots that really shone above the rest. That is what made champs awesome for me.

I don't think FRC was ready for this kind of game though. There are still too many box-of-rocks on wheels at the regional level, and nowhere near enough teams with the capacity to shoot the ball. Maybe if they made the ball smaller so that more teams would be able to handle it, then this game would have been OK. But even then, I think we would be better off just going back to the days of every robot doing their own thing and giving every robot the chance to show off what they brought to the competition (i.e. being able to use your shooter even if it is really inaccurate). If FIRST is insistent on coopertition, something like 2012 would be awesome; coopertition is valuable but not the only way to win, and almost any robot could do it.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

This game, more than others, left more to strategy in determining who would do they best which I liked. Although this might have been one of the best finals I have ever seen, other games overall have been more interesting and exciting.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I understand the frustration of having weak robots on your alliance pulling you down, but a large part of it is how you could use these robots, even if they were unable to pick up the ball. Herding counted for possesion, and many succesful strategies involved the best team on an alliance in quals to be the "middle-man", transfering the ball between the weaker teams, and still getting the 3 assists. Overall, I thought it was such a great game because the only thing that really limited you was the quality of your strategy.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

At the SF regionals at least, I found that while weak teams did make a match harder to win, it was mostly teams that refused to follow strategy that made teams lose. Our robot was unable to pick up the ball from the ground, but we where a very consistent truss passer, allowing us to get the 6th seeded position. In matches that we played with team that weren't the best, we simply made them play defense *and that tended to help quite a bit*, but teams that refused to do that much where one of the reasons we lost the 3 matches we did before the elimination rounds. In short, I think that FRC was alright with encouraging rookie teams this year, but could have been better. Perhaps 2 game pieces per an alliance would be the best way to fix any issues with teams that don't listen to strategy and teams that aren't the best. :)

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I think people really would've called FIRST out if they did that. There were enough similarities to 2008 as it was.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

Well I don't mean THIS year! :p

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I think the ten-second autonomous period was exactly the right duration. It wasn't so short that most teams couldn't do something useful, and it wasn't so long that spectators could get bored.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I agree. I think the challenge of time pressure for teams that wanted to do more then the basic actions was an added bonus.

Re: What was good about Aerial Assist?
 

I really liked how defense was allowed during autonomous, a bit sad nearly no teams tried using goalie poles during autonomous though.