Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I really want to see a "capture the flag" type thing to happen. I'm not sure how it would all work out, i have a few ideas though.

also, towards this game. I want to see a game as fun to play as this years (coming from a driver), but with less human player influence (maybe FIRST didn't think people would be quite this accurate?).

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I would like to see bumpers again because that was a big part of what held our bot together, because we were mainly defense. as for gameplay something like death race where you have to drive over icons to aquire things. like a battery to give power to a certin part of your robot so it can do something special. say giving power to extra wheels to go faster and give it more power.
Also have no starting autonomous because that caused a lot of problems at some of the regionals i went to, but have on at the end. lets say its has to go up a ramp by itself so you will have to postion it before time runs out.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I've heard this complaint a lot, but not many ideas as to waht teams would do if this rule were put back into place.

The rules this year were made to minimize robot penalties. Instead of calling ramming / pinning / intentional damage / entanglement / entrapment and preventing lots of robot manipulator damage, FIRST chose to instead simply have bumpers and no expansion. I think this was to make the rules simpler; I guarantee you that the rulebook would be 10 pages longer and matches would be that harder to judge if the rules weren't there.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

A capture the flag sort of game would be very interesting. I am curious about how that would work out.

Also, I would like a game where we did not depend so much on the human player. The human players seemed to have a lot of pressure on them regarding bonus point (aka super cells). Sometimes, the matter of a loss or win was up to the human player. And the human player has the possibility of accidentally scoring on his own trailer (when he fills up the hopper).

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Auton should be worth major points, mabye double/triple score during auto? Make autonomous longer or have bonus for auto during teleop period.

ALOT less human involvment, (mabye like only humans loading robots, OR only robots loading humans).

Not a sphere game element, mabye a football, or a cube structure (like tetras but a cube). Possibly another verion of a stacking game or capture the flag/tug-of-war.

A large view impeding wall across the middle (a curtain OR have smaller holes in it for robots to slip through), as to make it hard to controll robots on the opponents half of the feild (makes for a fun capture the flag game or end game on opponents half of field). That would make a good programming challenge (possibly auton during teleop?).

Last but deffinetly not least, a really exciting end game (like the bar / ramp). Hows about a large game peice or two that can be controlled by an alliance somehow?

Edit: For end game have a bar that is about 6" off the ground, and robots need to be comptely supported by this bar to earn bonus points.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I'll guarantee you that the rulebook would be about 10 lines longer and matches would be harder to ref. And yes, I'm from the "Bumpers? What are those?" era, when everyone knew the rules...

...except for some of the refs, but that's another whole discussion. (And the specific incident(s) I'm thinking of were when the bumpers were optional.)

The ten lines would be:
The pinning rule, added to the contact rule.
No high-speed, long-distance ramming, added to the contact rule.

Entanglement already has its rule, as does intentional damage/disable/tipping.

The harder to ref part comes from enforcing said pinning rule and more importantly, the definition of high-speed long-distance ramming.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Game pieces worth considering (meet price/availability criteria, durable enough and/or replaceable enough for a season's worth of use, and something we haven't really used before):

-Footballs
-Frisbees
-Hacky Sacks
-Empty 20 oz soda bottles
-Slinkies
-2x4s
-Rubber duckies

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

ooooh....using robot parts as game pieces! (yeah we had some 2x4 on our bot this year)

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I think it would be amazing if we had pieces (circles, squares, tetras etc) and each alliance had to make a "shape" (Like a square on a tetra or something) that would be randomly chosen at the start of the match. It would even be cool if each alliance had to sort each shape (like squares in one area, circles in another). Also, if each shape was a different color it would be able to let the robots have a bonus during the autonomous. The other alliance could try and prevent the robots from "scoring" or score themselves.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

One really cool idea would be to have an "alliance" of an FTC robot and an FRC robot (or two of each) competing in the same game. The FTC robot would have to do some task that enables the FRC robot and vice versa.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Theme: Blast from the Past.
Aim High Part II!


Change the rules a bit and make it even more exciting. Easily one of the best games ever.

How about 3 targets on top instead of one, with a random flashing light identifying one of the goals. If that goal lights up, its worth more.
Thus, instead of a stationary target, have a stationary target at different locations at different times.

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Glenn -

Aim High was definitely one of the best games in FRC's history, and I would LOVE to revisit it at some point. Of course major aspects would need to be tweaked, else you'd see a lot of Evil Machine clones running around :yikes: If there was a way to do high-goal shooting with static scoring I would absolutely love it. And maybe an obstacle in the middle of the otherwise empty field?

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that Aim High would have been one heck of a different game if it were played on Regolith...

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

Try climbing up those ramps with rover wheels...

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I seem to be the only person who didn't enjoy Aim High. I've always found ball games to be pretty boring. I much prefer having strange and unique game pieces. Some suggestions I've heard before, and some new ones I've come up with.

PVC pipe with steel bearings inside to shift their weight around.
Pool Noodles
Rope(score points by hanging lengths of rope, and I could see some teams designing a robot to actually tie knots so other teams can't descore)
Frisbees
2 liter bottles
rocks, yes, real rocks of all shapes and sizes, score is based on weight (Rubble Rumble?)
flashlights (if they are turned on it is a scoring piece, if it is turned off it is used to "descore" the opponents)
sheets of thin lexan

Re: Next Year's Game?
 

I think that something hard to pick up would be more fun, like the thin sheets of lexan mentioned above. How about a game where you have normal pieces and supersized bonus pieces larger than the bot, like something it would take two bots to move?