What if...
 

Frank's post could be referring to a major change that we have never seen before: what if we will be REPLAYING Aerial Assist? It was a game with potential to be a sport, if only the bugs had a chance to get worked out. There were numerous threads last spring commenting on how FIRST has been moving in the direction of sport (as opposed to "game") for a while, and that sports generally work out their kinks over years and decades of high-level play. What if there were some rules changes, and a few new twists to make it impossible to re-use last year's bot and strategy, but the game remained essentially intact? Now THAT would be unprecedented.

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So reuse the fields, reuse the majority of rules, yet somehow prevent the use of old strategies? I'm intrigued, but I'm not sure if it's possible. I'd love to be wrong, though.

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No

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More than 1 ball in teleoperated, add the secret hanging endgame...

Edit: Since the goals are colored, we need neutral colored balls as well.

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What if....


.... we get a water game.

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Doubtful.

But a replay of an older game with some changes, or some kind of mashup of older games (shoot the tetra into the high goal...) is absolutely possible.

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ultimate ascent but with only one game piece played in the fashion of aerial assist

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Back in 2006 there was a rumor going around that the game would be "Triple Replay", a near-identical version of the 2005 game "Triple Play". Sounds like you think this year could be something like that.

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FIRST, as you all know, is designed to inspire students to enter stem careers. The challenge of designing a unique robot is a very important part of this inspiring. Without the uniqueness year to year, the challenge quickly no longer becomes challenging (repetition and all that.) Removing the uniqueness removes creativity which removes inspiration. I know I certainly wouldn't have fallen for the program quite the same way if my team was only improving on the previous year's robot during my time as a student.

Basically, I hope FIRST never reuses a game 1 for 1. If it became a trend I think it would subtract a lot from what the program has to offer.

Cheers, Bryan

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I'm not thinking one-for-one. I just wouldn't be surprised by an improved version of a game. And I can think of numerous ways they could redo AA without teams being able to reuse last year's robot design:

-add the end game
-smaller or larger balls
-shoot non-ball objects (spun inner tubes?)
-play on a field with 1/20 rise/run slope to the center of the field
-change frame perimeter

et cetera.

I like the mashup idea, or a replay of a game >4 years old, so current students wouldn't have any experience.

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While I certainly agree that this would be an unprecedented move for FIRST, it would also be likely to put rookie teams at a significant disadvantage, as they would be faced with an entirely new problem to solve whereas more established teams would only have to tweak certain ideas, and have an existing knowledge of which methods don't work.

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If they did so happen to play AA again...I think some of the districts who own their own fields would be quite upset seeing how most of the game specific field pieces are scrapped or sent back to the owner(truss).

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That's the case every year. Witness the number of teams this year looking at 2008. 2012 had teams reaching for their 2006 and 2009 designs. 2011 sent 'em to 2007. 2010 and 2013 were anomalies in that it was difficult to draw a parallel--but 2010 had some teams going for their catapult from '08, and others going from scratch, while 2013 had teams adapting 2006 and 2009 and 2012 ideas to frisbees.

And just to keep going...
2009->2006
2008->2004 (the last time previously there had been a large ball on the field)
2007->2005 to some extent, also 1997
2006 was actually pretty new. That was the first time there had been significant launch velocities allowed.
2005->1997
2004->2000, 2001, 2002
2003->no real comparisons here.

I think y'all get the picture. It's almost always possible to go back to a previous game and pick up SOMETHING that can be adapted. This is an advantage that all the veteran teams that were around in that year share, and the rest of the veterans who know something about that year have a slightly smaller advantage because they know where to borrow ideas from. A rookie team who sees the discussion may have an idea what to look at... but the "how did they do that?" is still a huge problem.

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Well the PNW still has all of our game specific field elements since there are 3 off season events still coming. Now of course we are likely going to recycle them before kickoff. I did hear from a FTA that he was told that we should keep the human player barrier for potential reuse in future years. Of course they aren't really that game specific since it is more or less a guard rail and we've always had restrictions on the human player's body parts not breaking the plain of the field perimeter. They may not reuse the portion at the center of the field but I could see the portion at the driver's station being used from time to time.

On the other hand I bet FIRST has already sent most or all of this year's game specific elements to be recycled since the reality is that they just don't have that much storage area that they could stock pile elements from multiple seasons.

The trusses were rentals and are industry standard parts so it wouldn't be a big deal to rent them again.

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2004 on ice.

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The idea of a 3 year cycle has been discussed within the game design committee, according to the Popular Mechanics supplement a few years ago and former FRC director Bill Miller's FRC Blog. The idea, I believe, was that the game would be slightly modified in years 2 and 3 to keep things fresh and only create a completely new game every three years. One of the advantages is that spectators would be able to figure out the games more easily from year to year.

Aerial Assist would make a decent candidate for a carry-over game design. It's reasonably spectator friendly, and it's simple enough that they could add something to the game without making it a huge sprawling mess of unrelated game pieces and field elements.

2 year cycles wouldn't bother me as long as the games were good. That probably gives us a simpler game and a more complex game in alternate years, which I think is ok. Any student that participates for at least 3 years would see at least two different games.

Continuing to refine a concept from the previous year would be an interesting spin. I'd be willing to try it and see how it goes.

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Aerial Assist, with the 2010 bumps!

But seriously I think whatever game is next year will require that we throw last year's drivetrain out the window. There will be some difficult obstacles to drive over, that our superflat robots won't be able to handle

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Perhaps the transition will be to a competition more like many Olympic events; where alliances are competing against the clock versus directly against one another. Before my time, but I understand there was such a game in the past.

Perhaps an improved version or alternate format of such a game as used in the past. The game could be structured to require alliances to cooperate on the completion of tasks, independent of the activity of another alliance. It could be that time remaining becomes a bonus and the first alliance to complete the tasks may assist the other alliance in completing the task, earning additional bonus points.

Perhaps the field will become 50% bigger at the championship event and there will be four team alliances throughout the competition.

Perhaps, at championships, the field will double in size and there will be four three-team alliances per match. Eliminations would be wild.

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Reuse fields: For the most part, they currently reuse fields, with the addition of game-specific field pieces.

Reuse majority of rules: The Robot Rules are, for the most part, reused from one year to the next. There might be a couple game-specific rules, and rules are updated as needed, but it's very recognizable as the same rules. Even in the game rules, you'll see very similar/identical rules reoccurring over the years. Pinning, for example, or grappling with field elements, or hitting someone inside their frame perimeter.

Prevent the reuse of strategy: That's what a whole new game is for!



Anyways, I could see them reuse old games with small tweaks. I heard that their "backup game" for Rebound Rumble was basically Aim High. The point of doing a repeat would be to make sure that the year's being repeated have enough differences (control system, allowed motors, etc) to make it a truly new engineering challenge. Imagine playing a game from the mid 90's now - the control systems are much, much more advanced, we have orders of magnitude more motors available, COTS gearboxes that weren't even in people's dream's back then... I think you would see the robots and the games play out very differently!

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254 copies... 254 copies everywhere

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And said game is either #1 or #2 on the list of games you don't bring up. It depends on whether the person(s) bringing it up actually played it or watched it (#1) or not (#2).

2001: Diabolical Dynamics. 4v0. The faster you finished, the more points you got (multipliers...) And the reason that the Estop rule now notes that the Estop doesn't affect match timing at ALL.

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That was not an overwhelming success the first time.

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That would be super cool. If you made the pyramids with 2 levels in place of 3, then it could be possible to shoot a 24" ball through it (or at aleast bass through it without getting stuck).

OC, keep in mind they design the games I think 3 years in advance. Plus, reusing a game would be way too "cheap" for the victors of this year. They could just reuse their old bots (1114 would be doing it for the 3rd time). I highly doubt they will be reusing this game for a long time, if at all.

I loved this game though. Teamwork was an aspect I liked quite a bit.

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So what's the alternate #1/#2, Lunacy? Hard to disagree, really... I thought 2011 was pretty bad and everything I can find about 1993 (not much) looks pretty boring, but Lunacy was something else.

I certainly don't see them doing it for 2001's game, but I seem to recall hearing multiple times from GDC members that they have considered reusing, in part or in full, former games. Maybe not the immediate year after, though, that would be a pretty big shock to rookie/returning teams... Maybe 5-6 years later, updated with new bumper rules and so on? I've always wanted to see what something like Stack Attack would look like with some "protected zones" (maybe the one game where they would really help a lot...)

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If Aerial Assist was replayed, I would quit.

Frank talked about GDC "improvements". Aerial Assist was a mediocre game that was preceded by two awesome games, and one very good one. If the GDC decides to draw inspiration from a previous game, why not use a more popular game?

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Why do you dislike it? It was something totally new and awesome in terms of coopertition.

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What about levels? I never see anyone on hear mention different levels in the playing field.

i envision a three level field with balls entering the field on the top tier. One alliance member needs to push the game piece to a hole where it falls to the second tier. Another alliance member pushes the game piece to a hole where it falls to the bottom level. The third team member scores the ball.

Obviously, this is just a crazy idea that I haven't spent much time thinking about. But while we're throwing crazy ideas out there, does anyone think different levels could be in our future any time soon?

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Well, last year was 1114 copies everywhere. Copies gonna copy.

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I don't know about you guys, but after a season of FRC, I am burned out. After spending so many hours working on that robot and thinking about that game, having to go back to something even similar would just feel awful.

I was there, we did that. I think you need the competition to be refreshed every year to make all the time worthwhile, I know I need it to be.

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Aerial Assist Coopertition is when teams on opposing alliances cooperate to score. As played in the kickoff video and at the championships, perhaps there were new levels of cooperation in AA. However, at our regional, and the others I saw on video, most alliances wound up consisting of one robot playing offense and two on defense. Alliances with two good offensive robots would put two on offense and one on defense to get the truss and assist points. I don't recall anyone at our regional successfully using a 3-assist strategy.

As long as a working drive system can mount a defense, defense and playing against defense will be a major factors in the game, at least at the regionals. This is why Rebound Rumble was the most recent game in which offenses were largely unbothered by defense.

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Really? Where'd you guys go?

At San Diego (which then was a Week 2 regional) the minimum was more like 2 robots assisting, and 1 playing defense. I will note however in matches like this one, sometimes, but for the most part it was generally 2 assists, even if it was a slow match with only a couple cycles on either side. However, this may have just been because we were matched with/against some pretty good teams who could assist in some way or another.

But in AA you were usually supposed to play defense if you didn't have to currently do anything related to the ball.

In the Elims, it was always 3. 1 inbounds into another, that one trusses, one after that scores usually, which was why robots like 3250, 4574, 4583 and 4486 were such good strategic picks.


All in all, I think we can all agree that the simplicity of Aerial Assist was its strong point and it's downfall. On one hand, the game was fairly easy to follow, and even if you didn't understand what assisting was you could still get a basic grasp of which side was winning based on general activity, like in Ultimate Ascent, or Rebound Rumble. On the other hand, to engineers it wasn't very challenging, and there were only so many designs that could be innovated. Plus not to mention the sometimes speculation-based rules, and the lack of a 2nd objective (which lead to a heavy focus on a single game piece).

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Judging from the kitbot extrusion drawings that were released, I doubt this.

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Can you expand on why you think this please?

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Well think about games like Ultimate Ascent, the whole "pyramid climbing" goal.

Sure, it wasn't worth very many points, but to have a robot that actually did that was eye candy for spectators. Everyone I talk to about Ultimate Ascent outside of FIRST cites the Pyramid as the most amazing thing about the game, because of the complex mechanisms robots had to do them. Like, this and this.

In terms of shooting frisbees it was just a spinning wheel with a piston to push the frisbees in, with varying input methods like floor pickup or human player feeding. Though the latter was easily a larger source of points, it was still easier to engineer, whereas the former was a harder, but more visually appealing task.

With this game, all the robots really had to be successful was have a consistent way to hold and release the ball. You didn't even really need to launch it, and there were a lot of cases where launching it would've just created more problems than simply holding the ball and then letting goal of it.

What this lead to is many "cookie-cutter" robots and strategies, which is the main reason people don't like games like Lunacy. Even though nobody is really "copying" anyone, it's hard to bring a new innovating idea that will actually work and be consistent.

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Of all the reasons I despise Lunacy, cookie cutter robots is not really one of them. In fact, this is the first time I've heard that particular criticism levied at that game.

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lol that's an interesting way of loooking at that.

On the topic of creativity in AA, adding a good endgame would have been enough to make it more creative. 2013 was just shooting frisbees with wheels, either with a linear shooter or a single-wheel shooter. However, it would have been very hard to top 148's pyramid climb in terms of creativity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxGa8Z8LUYE

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I don't understand how those examples are that much more amazing than this and this.

This statement (with small variations) could probably be said for any game. For example: "[With Ultimate Ascent], all the robots really needed to be successful was to have a consistent way to hold and release [discs into the low goal]. You don't even really need to launch it, and there were a lot of cases where launching it would've just created more problems than simply holding the [discs] and then letting go of [them]."

It seems that you are more commenting on unique designs here, which is a very different issue than a game that did not provide a difficult engineering challenge.

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Sorry this is off topic but... http://youtu.be/MsRTBzIZonc?t=1m
Looks awesome, but its probably the worst possibly way to climb - especially if you're the driver. :)

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Aerial Assist played on the field of Lunacy with two pyramids in the center that you had to send a minibot to the top! There are 4 goals you can score in and in center there are two bumps that span the width of the field! It's basically a mashup of the past 5 games.

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We've played at the Bayou Regional in Kenner, LA. 3400's the median team number at Bayou for 2015 (between 3337 and 3468), so most of the teams are still relatively new, and last year, we had about a dozen robots that consisted of only a drive system, a drive system with a "box" to hold the ball, or had essentially non-functional manipulators. Curiously, we have no rookie teams scheduled this year - the newest were rookies last year. However, of the regionals I checked out on video (perhaps four, but I don't recall which), the effective game strategies didn't seem much different.

I also generally agree with the criticism that AA didn't offer enough "engineering challenge". While dealing the big ball was hardly trivial, there were no competing requirements that forced compromise. Apart from the 10 points of "mobility" which simply involved driving forward about ten feet in autonomous, every point to be earned involved manipulating the ball. With UA, there were competing space requirements - we'd have loved to be taller or heavier, but then we wouldn't have been able to get inside the pyramid for the much easier "inside climb", and/or been slower about it. For RR, there were definite height (for basketball) vs stability (for crossing bridges or the hump) tradeoffs. Checking back on some research I did this summer, every game since 1999 excepting 2000 and 2014 seemed to involve an "endgame bonus" which was distinct from, and often in design conflict with, the "main game".

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I did not see one successful alliance in Ultimate Ascent whose strategy was entirely focused around the low goal. The same cannot be said for AA, where quite often it was the better option.

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Agreed. Mathematically, it just makes sense. A robot scoring 4 discs in the high goal scores 200% more points than a robot scoring 4 discs in the low goal. In AA however, a robot scoring a 3 assist ball in the high goal scored only 29% more points. There is a clear advantage to the robot that can score in the high goal.

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In 2013, a robot that scored 2 low goal auto discs and 4 4-disc low goal cycles would have been an above average robot. In 2014, a robot that could successfully pick up and score the ball in the low goal, doing both of these tasks consistently and quickly was probably above average (although I don't have solid data on this). These tasks seem to be of comparable difficulty to me.

The reason entire strategies in UA did not revolve around the low goal was that there were almost no robots that were designed to score there. In contrast, almost all robots in AA were designed to have the capability to gain possession of the ball and release it. The lack of low-goal strategies in UA does nothing to discredit their potential in my opinion. An alliance of 3 successful low goal scoring robots (especially if they could 10 point climb) in UA could easily have been a force to be reckoned with come elims.

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If you consider why nobody designed for the low goal, you'll find why nobody used low goal strategies.

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In my personal opinion, the reason many low-resource teams did not design for the low goal was because they incorrectly assumed that high goal shooting would be required to be successful. However, this is now becoming something like a circular argument, and it is difficult to tell what event was the cause and what event was the effect.

4656 was a local example of a successful low goal scoring robot. As a rookie team with a single active mechanism besides their drivetrain, they got picked early in the second round, beating out many veteran teams with far more complicated designs.

All that I am trying to say is that there is always a minimum competitive concept each year, and I don't think that making the MCC for AA was a drastically easier challenge than making the MCC for any other game.

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With all these people talking about water games, what if FIRST just gets extremely annoyed and makes it a freaking air game or something.

Who knows.

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Drones firing at targets? I'm game.

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Sand game :rolleyes:

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Plausible IMO.