[BJT]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Daniel,
That was Abhishek criticizing this game for being too rough on average teams. Not for being too rough on elite teams. He's noting that elite teams with 50+ highly experienced students and mentors have even MORE of an advantage over average to average-plus teams that can just about manage to build a decent robot and keep it running. We simply don't have the time and resources to rebuild ten other robots at the competition so they'll have alliance mates that can help with assists. I know a heck of a lot about robots, but I'm the single best resource my team has and I don't have time to fix all the robots that I'd need to fix to give us assist-capable alliance mates in every match.

I think perhaps the side claiming that bad robots are a severe handicap haven't quite clearly explained the huge difference we see between this year and last. In Ultimate Ascent, the contribution of robots on the alliance was more or less linear. 3 robots cycling meant 3 times the points. 2 robots meant twice the points. A slow or non-functional robot could, at worst, block a feeding station and slightly slow down cycle times. Elite offensive teams were free to let other teams try their hand at scoring or climbing, or whatever they wanted to do. Elite teams felt safe letting other teams show off their robots and try to do what they designed them to do.

In Aerial Assist, a slow or non-functional robot is rather more harmful to an alliance. 3 working robots assisting efficiently means 4 times the points of one robot. 2 robots is twice the points. And slow or non-functional robots can severely hamper your offense, because they can (purposefully or not) hold up the only scoring object you'll ever get, completely choking your scoring abilities. This year, a bad robot can easily lose you a match through trapping a ball, missing an auton shot, or getting a deadly technical foul. This year, elite teams that want to win matches and control their destiny have to highly manage any of their alliance mates that are less than capable.

You have an intake that chokes on balls and jams occasionally? Perhaps you should go play defense. You have a good intake but a questionable shooter you're really proud of? Sit by the HP and run your intake in reverse the whole match so we can get that first assist. You seem to be having difficulty with your shooter and intake. How about we take that off and add some PVC so you can possess a ball briefly and get us an assist? No, we don't want you trying to do anything else with the ball because that will slow down our cycles...

You're right that winning these matches takes much more strategy and cooperation among teams. The downside to that is that the less capable teams are going to get told rather often that they shouldn't be trying to use that 50% working shooter they've been working on all season. They should be team players and drive around pinning balls to the wall to get that critical assist.

It's not about the robot, but students do spend 6 or more weeks building that robot, and they're kind of invested in seeing it work and do what they designed it to do. A game that encourages a team to give up on a system because it's not working 100% is a pretty frustrating game for a lot of people to play.

Thank you. all of it, exactly what I was thinking too.