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Unread 24-12-2014, 13:06
jvriezen jvriezen is offline
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FRC #3184 (Burnsville Blaze)
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No defense?

Ok, here's a radical 'change' idea-- no more defense. There are two ways I can see this happening: 6v0 or two simultaneous 3v0 on a segregated field (i.e barrier midfield that can't be crossed.) Teams cooperate to score as much as possible, and the same ranking points are awarded to all six teams. (or each of the three teams on an alliance if it is 2 x 3v0.)

Such a big change would have to be justified, but I see several shortcomings that many in the FRC community complain about being solved by this.

1) Bumpers. No need to change bumper colors (even in 2x3v0 field marking can indicate alliance colors). This means teams can build one set of bumpers, permanently attach them (even if it takes two hours to do so) and never take them off. Inspection process would change to weigh with bumpers (maybe a higher max weight) and perimeter check would include bumpers. This speeds up inspection, no dragging bumper covers. or human error in changing bumpers and not fully attaching them resulting in lost or half attached bumpers on the field.

2) Refs - No pinning calls, no high speed ramming calls, and maybe no perimeter incursion calls. Refs could be limited to things like possession limits and such. Fewer subjective calls and less work for them to do.

3) Better modeling of 'real world' robotics technology. Lots of recent robotics R&D are for cooperating bots (swarms, amazon inventory picking, etc.) and the only real world applications for competing robots is in military and police contexts, which are not in keeping with solving the worlds problems.

4) Less bot breakage -- Less robustly built robots won't break down as much, and there will be fewer box bots on the field due to broken appendages.

5) More scoring. Defense is usually just blocking bots movement, and that's not very public spectator friendly compared to scoring. The crowd cheers when a score happens, but not so much when a great defensive move happens.

6) Highlights cooperation -- FIRST has tried various ways to put the cooperation part of coopertition onto the field and with the exception of 2014, most have had at best mixed results in terms of acceptance.

7) Playoff rounds -- Alliances would be 6 teams or more likely 7 or 8 with six playing) for the 6v0 model or 3-4 teams for the 2 x 3v0 model. Playoffs can be multiple rounds with two or three plays per round, and alliance's best round (or sum of rounds) determines subset of teams that advance to next round. Final round is two alliances.

8) Board games (and to a lesser extent video games) have an increasing number of cooperative gaming models.

Downsides:

1) People like head to head offense+defense competition. With the 2 x 3v0 model, you would still get head to head, just no defense.

2) Less opportunity for epic 'fix it' in limited time and other teams helping you fix it scenarios. But things will still break and need fixing with incidental collisions and field wall/element collisions.

Even if this isn't the 2015 game, I think the 2 x 3v0 model is well worth considering for the future.
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John Vriezen
FRC, Mentor, Inspector #3184 2016- #4859 2015, #2530 2010-2014 FTC Mentor, Inspector #7152 2013-14
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