[Andy Grady]

I had a thought about this years game based on this subject in general. If you really take a look at it, and the fact that this is an anniversary game, it almost looks like some of this was intended by the GDC. Its almost as if they asked the question...

"If you could replay a game, in this case Rack n Roll...how would you go about it? Would you take your own robot from that game and just remake it? Would you take a look at another team's robot that you admired and make it? Would you come up with something completely different?"

Take a look at the designs of the robots this year. We have seen everything from Pink Clones, to Beatty Clones, to Poof Clones and beyond. Some teams essentially said...yeah, we'll just go with the same thing and throw a minibot on it. We have also seen some completely out of the box designs that took some guts and ingenuity to put together. In all cases I salute you!

Now we are half way through the season, and it almost seems like with the minibot, we are going through a micro version of the same questions...

"If you could replay the race part of this game, how would you go about it? Would you take your own robot from that game and just improve it or even leave it alone? Would you take a look at another teams minibot that you admired and make it? Would you come up with something completely different?"

In this case, it seems that the predominant way to go has been the middle case. It leads you to wonder...will anyone manage to come up with case 3...be out of the box completely and blow us all away? I think any team who doesn't at least try thinking about that portion would be crazy. Every little bit to give you an edge helps.

It may very well be a coincidence that this keeps coming up this year, however, no one can dispute that it is well within the rules. The question that seems to be surrounding this is in the morality of the case. Last year we had arguments over the morality of 6 v 0 strategy. I was extremely critical of some teams for using the strategy, and looking back on it I felt that I was wrong to judge anyone for it. Much like this, 6 v 0 was well within the rules...teams realized that, they used it to their advantage, and they benefited from it. Here we are a year later, and we are at yet another moral crossroads. Are we just becoming some sort of moral social experiment?

Its starting to make me wonder.