Quote:
Originally Posted by PVCpirate
I'm sorry, when has this ever not been true? In 2013, could a team without excellent engineering, manufacturing and programming skills have built a robot with a 7 disk auto and a 30 point climb? Could a team without those skills have had a 3 ball auto for Aerial Assist? High scoring robots are built by teams that excel in all of these areas, regardless of the game.
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The difference in the game is several fold. First the scoring premium for achieving the most difficult engineering task--balancing an RC on top of 6 cans--is much higher than any of the past premiums. And the difficulty of achieving intermediate premiums is not much less. Whereas going from 3 disk auto to 5 disk wasn't that hard, going to 7 disk was a big leap. Going from no RC to 1 RC turns out to be pretty difficult and getting to multiple totes is another big leap. The other difficultly is just acquiring an RC--so many teams spend the whole match chasing an RC.
But probably even more important was that in previous games a lesser robot (actually an alliance) could beat a better robot (especially acting alone) by devising a better strategy, of which there could be several. The only strategy this year is to be faster in the first second of auto, which really comes down to being better at engineering. If a strong robot uses common sense in planning, that team can beat an entire alliance of less well-built robots on its own. That does not encourage alliance teamwork as a good alternative. Running solo becomes the preferred route. That's the opposite direction FRC has been going for the last several years--rather successfully in my opinion.
BTW, this is a discussion better continued over in Defining Great Game Design:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh....php?p=1452301