Re: Week 3 Impressions of Rack n' Roll
 

This all comes together very nice.... Yes, there was a lot of crazy defense being played and yes, i believe there were many times that penalties should have been called and they wernt, but thats not up to us.

On a second note: Driver communication was definitaly at a minimum on those last few matches, I truly believe we had the best alliance at detroit. However there is nothing more we can do now. We will learn from our mistakes and bring them to West Michigan :D.

Re: Week 3 Impressions of Rack n' Roll
 

There are some interesting comparisons to be made between this year's game and last year's.

In my mind, this year it was much MORE important to be on an alliance with other capable robots. Just like the scoring was exponential, so was the benefit from having capable partners.

Last year, if you had a robot that was able to score in autonomous, you could get a reasonable score even if you were missing one (or even two) teams in you alliance.

In autonomous, first you got the points that you scored (up to 30), then you got a bonus (10) and then you got to play defense which meant you had time to pick up more balls.

During the offensive period, the opposition could only use two robots to block you, and finally, you could score more bonus points if you were able to get up the ramp by yourself. (More robots were great, but they weren't "required"). A single good robot could end up with a respectable score.

This year, if you could score in autonomous you got 2 points, then all the opposing robots could play defense on you (which eliminated the real bonus of scoring the keeper) and then without a capable partner there is NO WAY to score a bonus. A single good robot didn't have much of a chance.

So, the randomness of the seed matches is a BIG deciding factor on how well you rank. eg: We ranked 35, but were the second robot to be picked during alliance selection. Thank goodness for scouting :)

Personally, I liked the way that last year's game enabled a technically proficient robot to lift an average alliance's score (inspiring and encoraging). This year is seems that a poor alliance canceled the impact of a proficeint robot (dissapointing and frustrating).

As a mentor, I appreciate the competition as a great way to demonstrate the engineering challenge, regardless of the final score.... but I have 25 years of real world experience behind me. It's easier for me to say "oh well, that's how it goes" afterwards :)

As a programmer, next year I'd like to see more importance given back to autonomous mode (as a stand alone event). This would encourage the rest of the team to start thinking about it right from the start, rather than as an after-thought. I'd like the Smart-bots to be able to beat out the Brute-bots ;)

Re: Week 3 Impressions of Rack n' Roll
 

I'm in Austria on business this week so while my team is busy at work with practice and getting ready for the fix it window on Sunday, I thought I would share some of my thoughts about the year so far. Like them or not:

1. I think the see-sawing of FIRST and GDC support on CD is quite amusing. One update comes out and everyone hates FIRST and the GDC. The next update comes out and everyone can't praise them fast enough...the next update...they suck again... While I agree that some rules don't make sense to me and costs my team time and money, it is what it is...a game to inspire...

2. I think the game will really be played as it was designed to at WMR next weekend. With a high number of high caliber teams, I think we are going to see some incredible alliances and scoring... I would love to see a 256 to 286 or something round...

3. I think throwing ringers onto a spider leg is not in the spirit of the game and the only reason it is allowed is to allow it to count if it actually happens. It's sad that I've seen many rounds where people are more excited about the tubes flying through the air than the robots that are placing them there.

4. I think defense is still a very good strategy for the game, but having three strong scoring robots with one of them have reliable 60 point bonus capability will win it all... And the teams with that capability will be able to use it in Atlanta where the divisions are deep with scorers, and even deeper with robots that can just play defense. If that's all you can do, you better be the best at it.

5. I understand the desire for the "method" of qualification round alliances, but it doesn't work, especially at small regionals.

6. The game is more exciting than I thought it would be.

Thats about it for now...

Re: Week 3 Impressions of Rack n' Roll
 

I have a unique perpective on the 'impressions' because I had to work concessions with the university swim team at the Waterloo regional in both 2006 and 2007. I'm the only person on the swim team actively involved in FIRST. Every single person I worked with who had done concessions last year agreed that Aim High was by far the better uninformed spectator's game. They said it was more exciting, easier to follow, and faster-paced.

They all agreed that Rack n Roll was pretty boring to watch, because so few ringers actually ended up anywhere near the rack on a regular basis (yes, there are a few matches with high scores, but they are far from common). I think part of the boredom stemmed from R&R's tendency to devolve into pushing matches around the effective scoring robots near the rack.

In Aim High, a robot without a shooter still had to do an offense period, pushing balls around into the low goals or trying to impair an opponent's reloading. This required skillful driving back and forth across the field. There was action as robots flew from one end of the field to the other on the period changes. Because of the way the period/backbot system was set up, for 2/3s of the match there was at least one robot free to shoot or set up to shoot. Even a robot who missed was fun to watch as they showered the crowd with balls.

My own thoughts: I think the game is skewed a bit too much towards the defenders. It is too easy to disrupt an offensive robot. Some might say "but, in Aim High you had to accurately aim a shooter!". I respond that even the smallest jitter to the robot base multiplies itself at the end of a robot's arm, making it difficult to score. Simply driving near the rack can shake the legs, making it even more difficult to score. In Aim High playing as a purely defensive robot, 1281 encountered many robots with drivetrains built solidly enough or camera guidance programmed well enough to be nearly immune to everything but a full-speed ram (which is obviously illegal for good reason). In R&R, you just have to drive into the rack and knock the opponent around to get their arm swinging wildly. This results in a slower-paced game, and a tendency for a regional to get slower and slower as teams damage arms or realize that they can prevent far more points from being scored by defending than they can score themselves.

Other:
-Autonomous is really only as good as your alliance is. If you can't put up any more points or are defended from doing so, then those 2 points are useless (and can get negated by a skilled human player).
-I like that human players can score. Since it is such a difficult shot to make, it is pretty thrilling when someone makes contact and changes a match. It'll be interesting to see if some teams start training their human player so that this starts happening more often
-I don't like the "only 1 ringer at a time" rule. I think it'd be more of an engineering challenge and higher-scoring if you allowed teams to handle as many ringers simultaneously at once as they wanted. I imagine this rule was adopted because they didn't want robots internalizing ringer handling pez-style and popping them all, since they are less durable than balls
-I like the logo for this game better than Aim High's logo
-Autonomous might be worth doubling your points, BUT that's a bit disingenuous: the front three spider legs are much easier to score on in teleoperated mode than the side and back ones that you must stretch to in order to make your autonomous _really_ worth it. If you can score 4 in 90 seconds and run out of time getting a back ringer, then autonomous has really done nothing for you, since the 10 seconds it saved you is time that you had anyway.
Note: I wrote this without reading the thread (or any of the other impressions threads) so I could give my unfiltered opinion.

Biases:
-I was more involved last year, so it was probably inherently more exciting simply because I knew the challenges we faced better.
-I have 2 regionals and the championship to draw on Aim High impressions, while only 1 small regional of R&R impressions
-Humans forget bad things faster than they forget good things, so the rose colored glasses effect is probably biasing me as well.

Improvements I can think of, if the game were to be designed again:
-Find a more durable game piece and remove the "only one ringer at a time" rule. I think some interesting multi-ringer robots might come out of that
-Greatly dampen the swinginess of the rack: it makes it too easy to disrupt scoring, snags robots, and generally slows the game down
-Reduce the required heights and the points given for ramping by a small amount. This would make it more common, but also reduce the incentive for teams to sacrifice maneuvarability and scoring ability with enormous ramps. So we'd hopefully see more scoring AND more ramping.
-Put lights over every spider leg. This would encourage use of the camera to guide your robot on the other side, if you knew that there was ALWAYS going to be a light to guide you.
-Allow teams to score over top of other ringers. I think this would make for a more score-intensive game