In the 2009 FRC game Lunacy they had trailers behind robots on a low friction field. It was definitely entertaining to watch the robots chasing each other down...
The down side is all the penalty (how to differentiate between ramming intentionally / to score) or the pinning rules... It's going to make the refs and teams very frustrated since most of them are really subjective...
And I can see parts falling off robots in some cases... FTC don't have bumper rules.
The unlimited amount of batons definitely is a plus. I think the GDC saw that last year at World's most teams just collect / hoard all the balls till the end game and score in the outside goal so there was not much scoring during regular tele-op... But now this year was opposite since if a team has a significant lead after autonomous they'd just play defense.
This year's game favors autonomous significantly as Ken mentioned in September... Especially with the 5 baton limitation making teams nearly impossible to reverse a match. (if both teams balanced then they would only get the same amount of score and at high level competition such as World's, the maximum point gain differential can result from the end game is 20 points, one alliance have all 4 elements and the other alliance having both robots)
The problems with this year's game (I think):
Too much emphasis on autonomous
Little to no scoring of batons in regular tele-op
End-game is essential, not a bonus to scoring
There are many teams out there that spent many hours trying to have a good autonomous but only stopped by a ramming auto that takes not nearly as much time to do. Strategic wise it makes sense because it evens the score but it discourages many teams to spend more time on autonomous like the GDC wanted.
And when teams' autonomous did what they wanted to and gave them a huge lead their work is paid off because they can just play defense during tele-op. But it significantly decreased the excitement of the match. (Remember last year, when everyone cheers when the bonus ball is scored? Or when an unstoppable team scores around the center goal? That was exciting... Not only because it's fun to watch, but it also decides who wins / loses; unlike this year's game when both alliances with the same # of elements balancing on the bridge, and people applaud because they tied the tele-op score since no batons was scored and people knew who won already because one alliance had the lead after autonomous.)
Out of curiosity, how many teams here like the interaction of robots in FTC?
And why or why not?