[smistthegreat]

I've thought about this for a while, and this is what I've come to. When I first read the update, my reaction was something along the lines of "WHAT!? That's just not fair to a robot whose random partners can't triple." Except not quite. After a little recollection of my experiences on the Curie playoff field, my decision changed. Us (1507, 34" long, with a significant overhang, with breaks), 51 (wide), and 3098 (wide with a stinger) tripled several times on the practice field. With those aids, and with that practice time, we still failed in the match we tried it. That was terribly worded, but the point I'm trying to make is that tripling, unless the alliance is W/W/W with practiced drivers, is by no means easy. And even then, the caliber of bots at IRI is such that there will be several (maybe even more) long robots that can put up 18+ points in 20 seconds while the other 5 are balancing.

I'm still not 100% sold, but I don't think this is the end of the world for long bots.