what did you think of the 2002 game
 

what did you all think of the game for 2002. some people said it was too simple or easy, but some loved the head to head aspect of the game. what did you think

The scoring was a little complicated with the zones. I hated the triple the losers score thing. That just threw me for a loop.

I thought it was a great way to make you think of how to work with your oppenent's stragety (and your allience partner) instead of just trying to get as many points as possible. I did not find the scoring system hard to understand at all. I only had trouble keeping score when I could not see those tape-measurer teathers on the ground. :mad: I did not like those when I could not see them.
[Note]This is coming from someone who was on a rookie team and was only a spectator durong matches. I have not seen any of the othe FIRST competitions before and I am not exactly sure how the previous years games were.[/Note]

In my opinion the game was not spectator friendly at all. The thing that FIRST needs to do if at all possible is to create a complex strategy game while making it as spectator friendly as possible. The fact that the 2002 game was not spectator friendly makes it really hard to describe. Especially to someone unrelated to FIRST, like a CEO of a business who you are hoping to have sponsor your team, or a relative that you are just casually talking to unless you have a diagram or some sort of visual aid and because of this the person may lose interest in what you have to say however important it may be and you may lose the potential sponsor. So not only does it need to be complex but also needs to be spectator friendly. And we all know that the great folks at FIRST can make this happen. so when it comes down to my vote the option I would have liked to have chosen (either, other or liked the strategy but not the game) is not up on the poll as one of the choices.

i kinda found the scoring simple. then again i also sat with a laptop counting points with the simulator that was put together. as for 3 120lb. goals heavy but challenging in its own BIG way. 5 Zones the only confusing part was which robo was in which zone. maybe if the zones where color coded it probably would've been a bit easier to score. like zone 1&2 the color RED and 4&5 BLUE and 3 would remain either Gray or black.

meant 3 180lb. goals

I greatly appreciated FIRST bringing back contact. My first competition as a driver was May 2001 at the PA Robot Challenge, and eventhough a good time was had by all, the game wasn't as intense as I had expected. There was no deffiante winner after a match, you were only happy when you got a really high score. However, this year when we started our FIRST match at Mid Atlantic's on Friday, it was completely different. The whole mentality of the game had changed, and the contact, and the uncertainty of a deffinate winner until it was announced was a good change. Eventhough I hated the no sleep, no food, constant nausea and nevousness, I enjoyed the competition much more this year.

I began participating in the FIRST program in 2000. In 2000, the game was excellent: it was fairly obvious what the game involved; the competition was intense; and so many things took place at any one point in a match, that it hardly became boring (unless of course, a robot died). The spectators generally had a blast watching the matches. If I were to judge the 2002 game as it compared to the 2000, I would vote "not too happy with the game"

In 2001, the game was below average at best: a fairly large period of time would elapse before a spectator would have any idea what the game involved; the competition was nonexistant (from a spectactor's point of view); and so many things went wrong in a match that it often became boring. If I were to judge the 2002 game as it compared to the 2001, I would vote "love it"

In 2002, the game was (all things considered) really good: it was fairly obvious what the game involved; the competition was OK; and so many things could go wrong at any one point but didn't, that it was a thrill to watch at times. If I were to judge the 2002 game as a newcomer, I would vote "it was alright..."

[BTW.] The 2002 game was a bit lacking as a crowd pleaser (kinda boring to watch two tanks fight over a goal), but was a great improvement over the 2001 game. If the main objective of the 2002 game involved the creation of light and fast machines (think back to 2000) that could do various tasks, then it would have been much better. I would rather watch speedboats race, than battleships with no guns..

No Control
 

As much as teams strategized and tried to strategize against opponent teams, there was no saying in what could happen after the first 30 secs of the 2002 game. I too like the 2000 game the best, 2001 (my rookie year) was boring to watch but I liked how nothing was left to guesswork unless something broke, 2002... it was all guesswork after an allience's initial move. Neither side could develope a concrete plan because they were always adjusting to what the opponent was doing. If I were to compare the 2002 game to a sport, it wouldn't be football because there is no offensive or defensive team... I'd compare it to soccer because you can control where you initially kick the ball, but after that you play by ear. The 2002 game had no control, you either lucked out or you didn't.

I didn't like this year's challenge very much. It seemed too simple, and didn't seem to promote much creativity (unlike last year).

However, I did like the head-to-head aspect.

just my 2 cents.

In hindsight, I found this years game interesting in that, eventhough there were still some robot-robot "interactions", the teams were motivated to return to neutral corners prior to the end of the match. This reduced some of the more violent altercations that were seen in the 2000 game.

I think that the game-meisters did a good job with the high level rules for this game. I won't go in to the issues with tape measures and such. That's for a different thread.

I also thought that the game was too easy this year. It was very much a drive base design challenge, which is fun in itself, but not as creative as years past.

In being too easy, I mean that it was easy to put a ball into a goal which was 5 feet tall and easy to push around a goal. The only really hard thing about this year's game was the fact that we initially could only lift the goals by touching the pipe... that was a good design challenge. However, once FIRST implemented the "wedge" rule on goal contact, lifting the goals was easy.

If compared to previous years' games, other tasks were much more difficult. Placing inner-tubes or balls in a high spot was difficult in 97, 98, 00, and 01. Lifting floppies over 8 ft. was difficult in 99, hanging from the bar in 00 was kinda hard, and stealing objects from goals in 97, 98, 00 was somewhat difficult also.

This year, the major challenge was in traction and pulling force. While this was interesting to designers, it had its negative side effects to the game (boring to watch a tug-of-war, damage to carpet, etc.).

Another 2 cents,
Andy B.

the fact that the game was a design contest with pulling force had a very negative affect because some teams had engineers design thier transmitions : ( this made the game very un-fair for those teams and took a lot of the fun out. also the fact that FIRST did change the rules about lifting the goals after most teams had finished thier designs for goal grabbers was very disappointing, that happened to my team, we had an origonal idea to lift the goals, but we threw it out because fear of it being illegal

Unfair?
 

How is this unfair? This program is about inspiration. It is not a science fair project where students do all of the work. This program is a partnership between students who want to learn and engineers (and other technically-related adults) who want to mentor them. If you want a student-only design contest, go enter BBIQ or design a killer science fair or great 4H project.

Our team's transmission was designed by me... yes, I am an engineer and I design automated machinery for a living. However, many people on our FIRST team had a part in this transmission, from the concept portion, fabricating the parts, assembling them together (many times), and finally to the preventive maintenence. We all learned some good lessons (design and other) from this experience, and it was definitely a "team effort" (notice all of the names mentioned on the shift-on-the-fly gearbox white paper).

Unfair... I think not. A challenge to compete would be a better way to say it.

Let me put it this way... do you want the engineers to do none of the design? Do you want us to just teach the students CAD, give them a SPI catolog and let them do all of the design? From my experience, if you said yes to this, you are in a small minority of FIRST students.

Realistically, if this took place, many design developments in FIRST would not have taken place. There would be no "crab" or "swerve" steering on FIRST robots, no gear switching drive bases, no custom circuit board boxes which monitor traction or amp usage, no 10 foot tall inner-tube placing machines, no 15 ft. long monkey bots, no auto-balancing robots, etc. Granted, students have made these designs, but only after seeing engineers do it first. For example... many teams use "crab" steering now, even some student-designed teams... but who developed it? Yep.. some pretty smart engineers.

For those teams who don't have engineers who can help with the design... I challenge you... go out and get help. This competition is not easy, and you know it. Go into a local machine shop and say "we need your help" and tell these machinists and engineers that they will get to compete with some of the best machine designers out there, along with mentoring great students.... you will find some takers.

Don't get me wrong. I have great respect for robots that are entirely student designed. My hat is off to you students who do this. The students who design these robots are learning lessons that their peers are not, meeting great people in the FIRST program and developing skills that will affect their careers... but put these same students next to an experienced design engineer and the situation just gets better.

The whole point behind our team's push to publish designs (starting two years ago) is to provide assistance to teams who don't have the engineering resources that our team has. Many teams have used these designs and their teams have benefitted from them... they simply say thanks and we are happy. They never say anything about unfairness of engineers doing designs.

OK... I'll get off the soapbox.

Andy B.

Re: both Andy and Nataku

I must say there are more than a few gaps between typical superstar teams and most others, but to think that any team can have a competition worthy robot without at least a little professional assistance is pretty unrealistic, in my humble opinion.

Another angle... would you like to have a class without a teacher?

the fact that the game was impossible to strategise for made it way to easy (if that makes a whole lot of sense) it was just, go out there, go for a goal, and pull.

the scoring was easy, but the game was hard to explain, without visual aide. people sortof get that glazed look by the time you get to the three-goals-in-the-center-zone part. and like everyone else is saying, it wasn't very spectator friendly. most of the matches looked the same, even to me, which is sortof sad, being the strategist...

I think that there was a definite strategy element to this game. It was just a lot more straightforward than in past years. You needed a plan and strategy, even if it was the same as what you did every time. This was especially true when going up against harder teams. When we would srtategize, we would first determine who was the biggest threat, so to speak. We would use that to plan our strategy and deny the goals to whomever we thought was the better team. In that respect, you could do some strategic planning, but definitely not as much as in past years.

well im sad you feel this way. Being the head strategist on 121, I know how many different scenerios we had. Being a hybrid bot allowed us to have many different plans of scoring the extremely high qp's we had. This game was in no way impossible to plan for. you knew your opponent, you knew your partner, both well in advance. you can scout weakness and strengths for all of them and build a plan from that. you have other teamates in the stands jotting notes on what each team does on the field and anythings else worth writing about them. I know our plans were more complex than grab a goal and push. we unlike most teams decided to actually pick the balls of the ground and put them into a goal.

but in my opinion about the game itself it was very good. you had 3 goals and 4 robots on the field. many times 2 or 3 would go after the same goal, especially if there are some balls in it. It was a great improvement over 2001 and it was very simple. 3 times losers score also was great in my opinion.

and the only maches that looked the same to me were the ones with 4 boxes on wheels going after the same goal.

I've gotta agreed that there was a definite strategy part to this years game.. if it wasn't for strategy, you could simply look at other teams.. think oh 'they're better/stronger/faster/etc' then us, they'll win.. why would you bother to play?

There are many unique and cool designs (regardless of who by). Some seem unbeatable, some completely defeatable.. but neither is totally one or the other, and it all depends on strategy.

Anyone who knows us knows we do the same thing virtually every time.. we do that because we haven't teams that can consistently beat us at it (our individual task, not our alliance strategy). Sure, we've broken and been beaten that way (it happens to everyone.. in the middle of a match, doesn't strategy effect how you react.. do you have a back-up plan? and sometimes there's not enough time to fix in between.. what else can your robot do?? how does it help? another strategy decision)...

All these games look simple, but if you want to you, you can make them as fun as you want.. the element surprise always exists.. and in the team strategists bag of tricks.

I may be biased because that's my job on the team... but I know as we look forward to this MD Fair Competition.. I see a big strategy challenge for many reasons.

Even 2001 had some good strategies (as bad as the game was) although they were based on the score vs. time element.

If that made any sense....

I thought this game was pretty good. Personally I think the 1999 game was the best I've participated in, but that's my opinion :)

There's always going to be some sort of problem with the game - FIRST is great, but they're just like any other organization - human :)

As to some teams having an "unfair advantage", it really depends on the balance between the amount of work engineers do, and the amount that students do. It isn't good when engineers do most of the work - on the flipside, teams that are comprised of only students, are restricted by their lack of experience and knowledge.

My team, Team 188, is for all intensive purposes, all students. We have 5 mentors and 1 engineer (who are key to our team's existence), but about 88% of the robot is conceptualized and built by the students.
This year we did really well, making it to the eliminations in all our regionals (2), as well as the nationals. Our robot was very solid, and most of our team agrees that this was the best robot we've ever built.

But still, teams like WildStang and Beatty blow us away - teams which have engineers, can come up with really amazing stuff, as I'm sure many will agree. Without these teams, it might be easier for student-run teams to advance farther, but our horizons and creativity probably wouldn't be stimulated as much.

What I really did not like at all about last years game was how the game changed in the finals. Now if you had a robot with torque all you had to do was grab a goal and hold them.
It just became a boring tug-of-war.
At least the earlier rounds required strategy. Anyone can run a robot over, grab a goal and just sit there.

The game was a strategic challenge, but I have to agree it was too complex for the spectators. The three times the losers score was interesting in qualifying rounds, but in the finals the only strategy was to snatch the goals and keep them in your zone, which kind of put ball bots at a fairly significant disadvantage.