[PhilBot]

Thoughts on the game after our week 2 victory.

When the game was released, many of our team members were disappointed because of the lack of defense, claiming that it wasn’t really a “sport” without defense. This struck me as odd since we usually design high functioning robots that score well, unless we are defeated by heavy defense.

I maintained that there are MANY sports without defense, such as downhill skiing, just about all track and field events, gymnastics, figure skating (unless you include Nancy Carrigan), swimming, shooting, luge, and the list goes on. All of these events (individual or team) let the athletes reach the pinnacle of their chosen specialty without worrying about someone tripping them up. So why not FRC?

After taking our robot to the Greater Pittsburgh FRC Region, seeding in 9th place, captaining the #6 alliance and defeating the #1 alliance, I realized several things (not least of all that FIRST is brilliant).

1) The games were anything but boring. I don’t think that any prior games stand out as hugely more exciting (after 10 years of FRC). The crowds got a great show and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the spectacle.

2) The fact that seed matches weren’t Won or Lost was amazing. There is nothing worse than having a stellar match and losing 100 to 102. The new system of simply totaling the scores eliminated the bitter pill of defeat along the way, and kept teams focusing on doing better next time to raise their averages.

3) The new scoring system enabled “REAL” ranks (based on team averages) to be generated in real time, without worrying how many matches each team has played. So after each match the system displayed how you were moving up or down the ranks.

4) Teams that did poorly at the beginning of qualifications could still improve and progressively raise their average all the way to the top. There was no artificial ceiling set by “losing” a match or two.

5) The coopertition stack concept worked extremely well to get teams talking to each other. You only needed to find one compatible team on each alliance to make a compatible pairing. The 20 / 40 point bonus was high enough to make it worthwhile spending the time.

6) In alliance selection, you didn’t have to worry about defense, so teams could focus on working together, and finding teams that complimented their capabilities, rather than needing to have a “defense bot” on their alliance to counter the opposition. So all the elimination matches looked more like the finals matches, where top teams ignored each other and just went for it. Isn’t this how we WANT life and business to operate?

7) Running the Quarter-Finals and Semi-Finals using the same point-average system was brilliant. No longer was the 8th seed forced to be humiliated by the 1st seed. I never understood that system designed to maintain the original seed order. Now all 8 alliances get to start from scratch and show their capabilities and endurance, just like Olympic events.

This was REAL competition.

So in the end, to me at least, this year’s game seemed just as exciting, fairer, and allowed less opportunity to gripe about bad seed matches. I think FIRST nailed it.