[magnets]

While we're on the topic of what we'd like to see, I'd like to see something that's not a shooting game. I've had three consecutive years of starting on your side of the field, shooting a preloaded game piece into a goal above your opponents heads, then driving around, picking up projectiles from the ground or from humans and repeating. That being said, frisbees are by far my favorite game piece we've ever had.

The winning alliances from the past three years have all had flywheel shooters.


I also like games that have very unique elements to them.
This year, on the first day after kickoff, I could have told you that the winning alliances will shoot 3 balls in autonomous with wheeled/catapult shooters, people will pick up balls will claws (that won't work well) and rollers (which will work well), obtain assists to increase scoring, then use a catapult or a wheel to launch the ball into the goal and score points and that defense on an open, unobstructed field will be rough. The same goes for 2013 and 2012. If you showed me a video of the winning robots from 2014, 2013, and 2012, I wouldn't have been surprised at the strategies used, except possibly cheesyvision.

The same is not true for all games. Some years, there are robot designs that are extremely 'different'.

When you get to competition and you see the number of crazy solutions that you didn't think of(think 118's field blocking wall in 2003, 71 in 2002, wildstang's bump climbing swerve from 2004, massive double tetra arms in 2005, flop bots, detaching parts blocking goals, 469 in 2010...etc), it's very exciting.