Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

Overall, it was an entertaining, fast-paced, enjoyable game. But, IMHO, there were still some issue:

• As one who likes a good blend of offense and defense, I thought this game had great potential for both...in the beginning. However, as defensive-minded teams became more innovative and developed creative defensive stratagies, high-powered offense-minded lobbyists definitely got their way as rule "clarifications" as the season went on were definitely skewed towards the offense.
• Penalties decided way too many matches.
• During a brainstorming session in January, I recall someone (I think it was me...) saying, "Catapulting a giant 10-pound ball 7-10 feet into the air from one end of the field to the other and having it land wherever can't be safe--FIRST will never allow that!"...Well, we know for next year that FIRST has reset the bar on limits.
• Qualification match pairings will not be completely impartial until the list of compeditors is randomized BEFORE entering the list into the algorithm.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

This game turned out much better than I thought it would at kickoff. Parts of my perception may be because my daughter's team had a better robot than in the past 3 years, and that I've already spent more time reffing than I did last year and we're not to the off-seasons yet.

Overdrive didn't have the "something special never done before" aspect that we've had for the prior 3 years:

• Triple Play was the first time we were 3v3, and had a unique shape that no one had ever worked with before. (I still have a certain affinity for that game, even though I had little to do with the team or robot build; perhaps because I enjoyed strategizing from the stands where the next tetra should go.)
• Aim High - we were encouraged to fling objects about!
• Rack-n-Roll - climbing up on your partner to score the bonus.

I wasn't keen on the "drive by remote" part of hybrid this year. Especially since it didn't work so well. The good part about hybrid was that all robots on the team could do something, and do it pretty much simultaneously, without conflicting with their teammate's efforts. Triple Play you had to decide who was going to go for the vision tetra, if anyone. Aim High sometimes two bots from the same team would fire balls into the same place, resulting in them scattering rather than scoring. Rack-n-Roll had very few multiple keepers scored, sometimes because the robots interfered with each other. Yes, we had a few robot collisions that stopped one of the teammates from crossing a line or getting a ball. But pretty much teams could all get going to score at least one or two lines. Also the points given for hybrid were well-balanced with the rest of the game. In Triple Play and Rack-n-Roll the auto points weren't enough; in Aim High if you won auto you pretty much had won the game.

Penalties were severe and easy to earn this year - I should know, I called enough of 'em. Still, I really enjoyed reffing this game. Maybe because you had to pay attention so closely, and it made even a less-than-stellar match to view exciting for a referee.

I was also pleased to see how many variations there were in robots. After kickoff, the general sentiment was that we'd have a bunch of grippers on elevators. I was glad to see shooters, flingers, arms, elevators, suckers - and lots of variety of end effectors too.

My personal rank for the last for years is

1. Triple Play
2. Overdrive
3. Rack-n-Roll
4. Aim High

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

I didn't like it. I feel that rules were too far open to interpretation by referees, that too many matches were decided by penalties, and that the game was boring to design for, to coach and to play.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

I wasn't really a fan of this year's game. The concept of it was very cool, but the penalties ruined it for a lot of teams. I guess in a year where you get points for just driving, there has to be penalties assessed, but when is FIRST ever going to get the penalty values correct? You get 2 points for making a lap, yet a 10 point penalty for messing up while trying to complete that lap. It seems like regardless of the point values in each year's games, the penalties are always 10 points. I don't like that. There were a ton of matches decided by penalties and, to me, that's a sign of a flawed game.

Was the penalties section on the rankings in the pits ever there before this year's game? I don't really remember it.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

Being a rookie team we found overdrive an easy game to be played and we had so much fun working on the robot. although i think the hardest part was working on our scissor lift to knock the ball off the overpass. we also had a very....interesting first try at our autonomous mode when we played our first match. we learned alot from this game and hope that the game next year is a bit more challenging.

TEAM 2495

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

FIRST got the values right. The reason why the penalty was so high was to eliminate almost all reasons to get the penalty on purpose which was related to hurdling.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

Personally Me and a couple teamates disliked Overdrive. We hated it at first but as mentioned above the game really did come alive in the finals. I remember people saying they disliked rach and roll because there was too much focus on the centre of the feild. I do agree with that but for me its what made it intense. Without the powerful drives and the pushing the game seemed a little bit to dependant on design which is great for lots of teams, however are design didnt turn out the was it was initialy planned.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

I'll always be a big fan of Aim High. That being said, I enjoyed Overdrive.

It was easy to explain to people. If they wanted to know what the robot did we'd explain, "Nascar, but with robots and giant balls." It took a lot longer to explain rack and roll, and I always got the feeling that they didn't quiet get it.

It was exciting. Last year the ramps at the end decided a lot, and the game was a bit predictable. This year teams could be neck and neck the whole way, and knocking off a ball at the last second meant a lot.

I might be a bit biased as this was a very good year for my team. :eyeroll:

Personally, I'd put Overdrive above Rack and Roll, but below Aim High.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

Honestly, I found the game to be just okay...I really loved Rack N Roll because of how much offensive strategy and defensive strategy that had to be planned out from match to match...Overdrive seemed too predictable on strategy and the most you could have done with defense is take the opponents ball off the overpass and/or pin the ball. ..I don't know, as high tense everyone gets to see a trackball get put up or pushed off last minute, I miss the intensity of trying to get your entire alliance up the ramps on that last second without tipping over because you're going too fast or bumping into a tube...(for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPdRd9q7vj8 Match 2 where 1636 fell over but 555 pushed them out of the way and got up right at the last second and took the finals to a third match starting at about 9:31)
Although I do like that the game this year was a lot easier to explain and to understand (compared to explaining what is Rack N' Roll to someone non-FIRST) but the enforcement on the rules and the amount of penalties given I defiantly did not like especially how impeding was not really enforced consistently.
Hybrid mode was pretty cool but it felt like the Human Player got a promotion but got a downgrade...it all depended if the team was able to get a good program, a good remote, and a good angle from the transmitter to the receiver, or even a strong enough signal...if it didn't work out, the Human Player wasn't necessary...then even if it did work out, the human player becomes worthless still...I like Triple Play, Aim High, and Rack N' Roll because the human player worked with the drivers of their team and their alliance (i.e. "we're ready load a tetra.....throw a ball into our hopper...get a tube in front of our bot....etc."....).

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

Overall, I liked overdrive. It was one of the most intense games I have witnessed (I know my rookie year says 2007, but I have watched a competition since 2001.) I agree that it came alive in the elimination rounds.

The sheer impressiveness of seeing the trackballs flying also made the game a great spectator game. The surface simplicity of the rules was also good. I loved the lack of "blindly crashing into things" defense. I hate seeing a box on wheels do nothing but screw up a well thought out machine. This game gave teams that could only move something to do, and in some cases, enough motivation to make lapping in an innovative way a robot's primary function

I may be the only person here who doesn't think that G22 penalties killed the game. Sure, it would have been better without them, but when it comes down to it, FIRST isn't about who wins the match. It is about being inspired to go into the field of engineering. I am much more inspired by seeing something I helped build accomplish something than by seeing a bigger score next to our name than our opponents.

I think this game's strongest point was the diversity of robots. Lapbots, Herders, Launchers, Arms, and everything in between were all viable. 1114, 217, and 148 were all completely differant, and yet they all contributed to the "dream alliance." However, I agree that hurdlers were a bit too viable. This is kind of a throwback to 2005, where there were multiple ways to score, but tetra capping was the clearly dominant one.

In 2009, I'd like to see an endgame task like 2004, where it is different than the bulk of teleoperated mode, and yet can be built into it (hook onto capping arm) and involves more than just driving to spot X, and competing with other robots to get there. Ball capping was just a bit too similar to the rest of the game.

I think the robocoach was an okay idea, but I preferred human players.

However, I think the biggest weakness of the game was the static-ness of strategy, once you got down to the field. There was no real equivalent to on-the-spot decisions from past games, like quickly calculating if removing a spoiler or placing another ringer would be better.


Overall though, the GDC gave us another gem, in the sense that they gave us a game that worked. I am in awe, every year, that the game is completely different, and yet it is still competitive, challenging, fun to watch, not completely impossible to understand, and overall, makes FIRST fun to participate in. Thank you GDC!!!

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

I think this is exactly wrong. The penalty is to offset the points from a hurdle and a lap, which is 10 points. If the penalty was only two points, robots could flagrantly run backwards to get a ball to score 10 points.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

I wasn't talking scoring objectives, i was moreso pointing towards building objectives. For instance, in 2005, you could build a robot that could place tetras... that was about it. In 2006 you could build a robot that could shoot or dump. (2 objectives). In 2007, there were ramp bots and tube bots (2 objectives). This year, technically there was hurdlers and lap bots, but in the end, a hurdler could easily become a lap bot if need be. Every robot was capable of doing 4 or 5 laps and the top could do 8-12. That isn't much of a difference.

In 2007, the thing I liked was that you could go one of two completely different approaches. The objectives were completely unrelated. 2006, dumping and shooting were pretty related, in 2005, there really was only one objective. This year, the only real decision having to be made was how to hurdle rather than something like, should we lift or should we score tubes.

I agree that it was nice to see a game where there was a large variety of robot scoring mechanisms, but in the end, it got a little repetitive.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

The game was too simple... I think first could have come up with a better game than they did. It was a good game for rookies.. to easy for veterans.:yikes:

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

:] overdrive was boring but kind exciting. The whole game was just left turns and hurdling or herding the ball. The most exciting part was the ball hurdling, boy the crowd went crazy.

Re: Thoughts on Overdrive
 

FIRST did an excelent job with overdrive. They delivered a fast paced game that gave everyteam a chance to shine. The highschoring task during teleopp was a task which gave every team a reasonable task to engineer for. As much as i loved aimhigh, getting that camera to work right, and actualy shoot balls efficiantly was tough. It seemed professionaly engineered robots dominated the field doubly. Rack nd roll also seemed biased to super robots. While one "lesser bot" could spoil a big line, thos "promade" bots just wrecked house.

This year robots came in many forms, and i think the comparitive level of super bots this year was much lower, and closer to the average student engineered and built bot. The penalties i believe added a strong aspect to the game because even if you were overpowered in a match the skill of the driver came into play, and often decided matches. Im glad FIRST penalized bots interfereing with hurtles. A hurtle is a beautiful thing. The true grace of what was engineered was allowed to shine.

just.. get ready for the 2009 game.

FIRST SQUARE DANCE

thats my call.