Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Ok, my overactive mind which was reading about the scouting and strategy this year, and well it gave me sort of an idea. What if teams don't find out who their alliance partners are until the match actually starts?

-Scouting would have to be a especially large effort since teams would need to look at every team in the match
-Designs would sort of enforce Versatility and the ability to do more in a match because partners would be almost unpredictable, and this would encourage innovation instead of specialty

Some stuff would need to change:
-Larger Team Identification Systems, or ones that are more visible and possibly clearer to read, i personally believe would need to be much more easy to identify at a game that would have you waiting until the last second to find out who's on what team
-Robot Starting positions, either robots start in the corners of a square, or they bring in the much talked about, circular playing field.
-Human Controller stations, they all need to be together somehow so the alliances that end up together have some form of communication

Like it?

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

I like the idea. But instead of finding out right at the start of the match, the MC or someone could tell them just before they set up. It would still encourage versatility and such but it would call up on-the-spot strategy.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

To make the idea even more wild, have varying starting positions on each alliance. If 1 and 2 we're always red, and 3 and 4 we're alwyas blue, it would be easy to track down your partner. But for one match have 1 and 3 be red, then the next 1 and 4. It would call for radical strategy changes as you don't even know where your alliance partner is starting from!
Or even more sadistic yet, you don't find out your partners until AFTER the match! :ahh: That would make for one quite interesting game, and it would probably be lot more action packed and offensive, as you don't want to accidentally play defense against your alliance partner. It would lead to quite exciting chaos. Not sure how it would work for the elimination rounds though.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Actually, it's not as bad as you might think. When you see another robot delivering stuff (with your team color) to your team's goal, it's a pretty safe assumption that they are on your alliance. Also, what about team color lights? Do you want to remove them completely?
There is also this thing about keeping the game at least halfway spectator friendly.

Good idea, but it needs a little fine-tuning. Maybe the game designers could do that? (As if they don't have enough to do dreaming up stuff to stump us.)

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Wouldn't that effectively result in a Nv0 game? I mean, if nobody's running defense on anyone...

However, not knowing your alliance partners until the opening trumpet does seem devilish enough. On a similar concept, suppose that next year's player stations were set up with the last alliance memberoperating from the opposite side. (To keep autonomous from becoming steer-to-the-right-and-ram, we'll say the robots start with the other alliance partners.) If something doesn't go according to plan, you're gonna have tons of fun trying to communicate with your alliance partners.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

The FIRST games traditionally have been a lot about luck, which is a good thing perhaps because it allows the teams with not-as-good robots that "lucky" chance to win.

But for a radical idea, I have always wondered what a FIRST game would be like if a lot of the luck was taken out of it. If winning a match or ranking was based more just on robot design/capability and driver skill rather than who you are paired with or how many points the losing team gets.

I'm not saying removing the luck factor is a good idea, I'm just saying it is a different idea; an idea that I don't believe has been previously brought up.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

radical idea... *havent read thread but i just thought of it =/...

only 2 practices rounds per team and start matches on THURSDAY after lunch!!!

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Heres a very simple, yet very radical idea. What if next year's game could be explained in 1 sentence? Or maybe a nice short Paragraph (5 sentences or less)?

The problem is explaing the game to a spectator, they are intrested. But they need a simple way of explaing it. For example this year's game: 3-D Tic Tac Toe and then you go crazy with all the scoring and bonuses. But imagine a First game that everyone could get in 1 simple sentence. That is why it is a radical idea.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Good idea, but I see two things that could happen.

1. The game is very simple with only one strategy to choose from instead of the traditional multiple strategies that are sort of equal but opposite.

2. The game too much resembles another game. An example is 3D tic-tac-toe. I see the tic-tac-toe part, but not the 3d part, but anyway, If in the game we only could get points for rows and nothing else, it would be easy to explain the game in a sentence, but it would be tic-tac-toe and not a unique game.

I think the games should be more complex, because that makes better games. Also, it allows for more strategies. One robot could be throwing balls in a goal like crazy gaining lots of points, but then another robot could hang from the bar as another way to get points.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

What about this, the top seven teams pick their partners then all the teams that are left have their numbers put into a had. The judges/refs/computer then selects 3 teams to be the eighth aliance

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

I like the system the way it is. If one alliance is made up of random teams and not the top teams, they may not do as well and don't have much of a chance. I would rather see 24 teams in 8 alliances that are supposed to be the top.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Well, the idea would be that each team would have a different color/goal and would score independantly. Say there 4 "colors" are green, red, blue, and white. Match one, green and red are together (they dont find out until after though), match 2 green and white, ect.

Here's how I would invision it. Say the game is similar to the 2004 game, First Frenzy (although you can create any sort of game you wanted). There are 4 goals, one for each color, a bunch of small balls, and 3 doubler balls. The goals are close to each teams respective corner. In the middle could be a bar or ramp of some sort for some kind of King of the Hill or hanging points.
With a limited number of balls, especially the doubler balls, battles would emerge over them, as well as with the limited space in the middle, ensuring action. Some teams could (and a few probably would, although it may be risky, so I wouldnt forsee it being common) making "truces" before the match to help eachother in hope that they end up on the same alliance. Say one bot is really good at scoring the small balls, and another at capping. They could work together, one scoring small balls in both goals, the other capping both.
The biggest problems I forsee arises from the chaos on the field leading to the game possibly being not audience friendly, and these "truces". Back-stabbing could occur, and if a team fails to hold up its obligation (even if they tried but failed),t hey could be occused of back-stabbing and have their reputation soiled.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

This is sort of a general idea but it could develop into a much more complex idea. On the playing field you can only do certain actions from certain places.
Example:
Think back to 2004, you have the bar to hang on, but instead of the stairs you have a ramp on either side. One catch, you can't drive on to the ramp on and then procede onto the Bar. You could use the ramp to maneuver around the field but to not complete a task, its sorta like a highway.

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Well, I am not sure exactly how "radical" this idea is, but since it would be a change from last year's system, I think it belongs in this thread.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned any reform to the penalty system. There were many complaints this year about proportionality of the penalties that were assessed, as compared to the points that were usually scored in a match.

Therefore I propose the following solution:

Why not assign a "penalty coefficient" to each of the rule infractions that can occur?

If we used this year as an example:

INFRACTION...|...PENALTY COEFFICIENT
---------------------------------------
LOAD ZONE INTERFERENCE - .85
HP INFRACTION------------ .95

Say the blue alliance scored a total of 50 points, and had 1 load zone infraction and 2 HP infractions. The red alliance had a total of 70 points, and only 1 HP infraction. The formula for determining the score with penalties for each alliance would be:

[((.85)^(# of Load infractions))*((.95)^(# of HP infractions))] * Raw Score

In this case, for blue alliance:

(.85)^1*(.95)^2 = .77
.77 * 50 = 38.5 .. (round up to 39 to give the blue alliance benefit of the doubt)

For the red alliance:

(.85)^0*(.95)^1 = .95
.95 * 70 = 66.5 .. (round up to 67 to give the red alliance the benefit of the doubt)

In this case, red would win, 67 to 39. By the old rules, blue would still have lost, but with an even greater and more devastating margin. The score would have been 60 to 0 ... very disproportionate (plus red would have gotten no qualifying points).

I realize that there are some quirks to this system that would probably have to be accounted for. But hey, it's just an idea, and ideas can be improved by more than one person.
What do you think?

-- Jaine

Re: [Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Alright, I'll throw an idea out here for everyone.

The Capital Clash is allowing folks to increase their robots' weight to 125 pounds with everything. So why not make it interesting for teams at competitions?

Suppose that for regionals, everyone keeps the 120 pound weight limit. But at the championship, the weight limit drops, say, three or five pounds.

Or, since everyone talks about folks who go to several regionals getting an advantage, why not make it three pounds per competition? If 1293 went to, say, Peachtree, Palmetto, and the Championship, then the weight limit would go from 120 to 117 to 114. At each competition, you have to be able to pack your theoretical ten pounds of potatoes into your theoretical five-pound sack.