A New Age of FRC?
 

So I know this year's game is completely different from the past two decades of FRC. Obviously one of the huge changes is having the alliances separated by a barrier which they cannot (legally) cross. I was wondering if this will be true for the next several FRC games for several reasons:

1. FIRST re-structured the manual, it is organized very differently from previous manuals and might be a template for future manuals

2. They are using colored carpet to separate the two sides, and FIRST wouldn't order a lot of new carpet for only one year right?

3. Bumpers, or lack there of. I feel like they also wouldn't change this for just one year, and the new team number display cards seem like a permanent change.

With all these big changes I was wondering if we are entering into a new age of FRC games? Do you think all future games will have alliances separated on the field and no defense? We will probably just have to wait and see, but if this is true, I'm glad I'm a senior now and not a freshman, because at least I had 3 really fun FRC games with lots of robot-to-robot struggles. (all-time favorite ultimate ascent)

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

AFAIK, carpet is replaced after each regional. It wears out very quickly with some 50 robots running over it 10 times apiece.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

Use the game pieces this year to fabricate new bumpers next year... fits in the theme of the game, right?

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

After the reaction to this year's game... I think we can expect to see some defense next year again.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

1. It's restructured? They went with a different publishing method, but the general structure seems to be largely the same to me. Whats so different about it this year?

2. Carpet is only used for one event. Sometimes, carpet from later events may be sent onwards to champs for practice fields, but the carpet used on the competition field is brand new every event.

3. Bumper rules used to change all the time. First, there were none. Then they were optional. Then they were required, or had to cover a certain % of the frame perimeter, or had to cover the corners... lots of changes over the past 10 years on bumpers alone! I think the lack of required bumpers this year is due ONLY to the lack of defense in this game and the separation of the alliances. Recently, bumpers were used for 3 purposes: to help protect the robots from hard impacts, to identify the alliance the robot was on, and to identify the team number. 2 of the 3 don't apply this year, and the third was replaced with the number requirement, which is actually not really all that new of a requirement. Take, for example, R14 from 2007:
Don't assume anything about the future based on this one game. If anything, this game is telling us that the assumptions we had about this year as little as a week ago were wrong!

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

but they plan the games far in advance right? and how much do they actually re-evaluate their games based on the communities reaction to previous games? They had a good thing going with rebound rumble and ultimate ascent why change it? So this game must have been planned far in advance and even though FIRST knew they were deviating from the successful pattern of the last 3 years they still went with it

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

FIRST has a recent trend of alternating between exciting spectator games to technically challenging games and we're in the technically challenging part of the cycle. FIRST will see that games that allow for alliance interaction are preferred by the community.

However, for this year, I think FIRST (and maybe FedEx) really wanted to re-visit a box stacking game. It didn't go so well back in 2003 and turned largely into a King of the Hill style game because stacks are difficult to protect, so I think they bit the bullet and decided to separate teams so that the box stacking game can come to life as intended.

The added benefit of the separated teams comes from the much more relaxed robot constraints. This year allows teams to think outside the box (or the frame perimeter) for their robot concepts and my students are rather intimidated by that fact. We're so used to strict starting configuration constraints and even teleoperated size restraints that they have hardly even considered the possibility of creating larger designs.

Because of all of this I have the suspicion that, while this may not become the norm, we will likely see similar structures in the future.

On the topic of the carpet, FIRST has used colored carpet in the past, so I don't think that it'll become a fixture in the games. Ironically, it was last used during the last game that "featured" stacking boxes.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

I happened to watch the last FRC behind the line a couple nights ago, and one of the guests talked about that. He said that they keep on one idea through the whole year, and they were still making big changes for this game right up until the last few days.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

Good chance bumpers will be back based on this blog post:

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

They used green colored carpet in 2010 and that hasn't been reused.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

I think it depends on how the game plays this year.

Pro: The lack of defense will be easier on teams with rickety bots, or with ambitious complicated strategies, so we'll see more of them pull it off.

Con: Without defense the matches might be foregone conclusions, so the sport might be less engaging.

Pro Rebuttal: With the seed coming from total score, rather than W/L, maybe the losing alliance will be still fun to watch - especially if the announcers keep track of the stats.

Con Rebuttal: Without the leveling aspect of "defense bots are easy to make and drive", Uber-teams might have a freer hand to dominate than years previous. I expect there to be a pretty strong correlation this year between OPR and team budget / experience.

So it could swing either way. I'm more ready to give it a chance than I was at kickoff. If it works, we'll see more of these (*cough FLL*) style games. If it doesn't, we won't.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

Not to mention sending out the kit of parts next year inside this years' game pieces.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

Last year's game, IMO had a worse reaction (or, at least a negative reaction that seemed to make more sense).

1. That's just a simple, nice, reorganizational thing that probably was going to happen anyway. Especially now that they got rid of the ugly web-reader that created the ugly PDF.

2. Carpets are handled, usually, by the individual event.

3. Display cards aren't necessarily a thing, just as long as SOMEWHERE you have the numbers visible in that form. It's definitely not out of the question for bumpers to be back.

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

They didn't re-use the carpet from 2009 in future years....

Re: A New Age of FRC?
 

And tan carpet in 2012 hasn't made another appearance.