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Originally Posted by Jared341
Two ideas I like:
1. An autonomous mode of variable length. For example: if your robot achieves one task in the first 15 seconds, autonomous mode gets extended by 15 more seconds. Or, take a page out of 2001's playbook, and let teams hit an "E-Stop" to manually transition from auto to teleop, giving them incremental bonuses the longer they stay in auto mode (would only be realistic with rules/a field that prevents hostile contact during auto mode). It is important that we don't unilaterally install a 30+ second autonomous period, simply because nobody wants to look at stationary robots for that long.
2. Slightly smaller fields (say, 20x40) and 2 vs. 2. Design so that each regional/division can host two fields that alternate play. Less down time, more matches for each team, easier to see what is going on/scout (3 vs. 3 can get hectic), and more flexibility in fitting the fields into a venue.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
If we had an incentive to leave autonomous early this year, we might not have seen the 2 or 3 tube autonomous attempts this year.
I like the idea of an autonomous-mode extension for completion of a task, somewhat: keep the extension & bonuses reasonable, then take the equivalent amount of time away from teleop so match cycles are predictable. The idea would extend the life of interesting autonomous routines, and let the teams without auto-modes play teleop sooner. The downside is that it'd grow the disparity between well-resourced (mentors, sponsors, etc) and low-resourced teams.
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I like the idea of fancier autonomous routines, but I think one thing could encourage teams to go for it even in the context of the current setup: remove the fear. We wound up ditching our autonomous routines because we didn't want to interfere with our partners--to say nothing of my fear that our coders somehow caused the robot to take off backwards across the center line (as one of our opponents did at Peachtree). If you saw us start "forward" at Peachtree only to spin around immediately at the start of teleop, it was because I was downright paranoid.
My thought? Park a momentary switch on a grip at each player station. Your driver lets go? Your robot stops. Everyone lets go? Start teleop. Don't reward staying in autonomous, or you'll see teams just holding onto the buttons to rack up the score while their robots stay stationary.
As for smaller fields and 2v2, I'm game--the current-generation field border
definitely supports it, and that field size (don't remember the length) was about right for a scaled-down version of Aim High (open field, 28x38 bases with no expansion, bumpers optional). With a little extra field width and/or smaller robots, it could probably work. And it could work too--if you were able to run two matches in six or seven minutes, it could still be a net gain of robot-matches-per-minute while allowing smaller events to slow it down or run one field.