Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
...As you might expect, the entire strategy falls apart when one member of the alliance isn't there, and we were the team that created scoring opportunities for our partners.
Any other year, it's a tragic loss, but not an insurmountable one - you can win the next two to move on. But at this event, we were in a situation where, two seconds after our very first match started, it immediately became impossible for us to win the regional. The score we would need to move on after getting nearly no points that match was impossibly large, and not even the best teams at the event ever scored that many points...
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Wow, that sucks. I'll also point out that this isn't just a product of the tournament rules, which really do not play nice with improvement/inconsistency. It's also a product of the game itself and comes up in many other unfortunate places. Capping this year is unique in the modern FRC era for its disproportionately high entry requirement. Design functions can typically be executed in parallel to receive points, rather than depending serially on another task--in your case on another robot. Of course, there are ways to avoid this pitfall (build a stack under your own Can), which is quite common. And it's not the GDC's 'fault' that teams specializing in Canning are at a loss without their partners. But it is uncommon--I think for a reason--to find a nominally 'scoring' task that's useless without another one. More valuable with another task, sure, rightly (1+ robot on a colored bridge or 2 on a white one). But entirely dependent?
It's unlikely for an alliance in any year to win a match after losing their AC/first pick. But it's possible. (Heck, our 1st alliance won MAR in 2013 in 6 matches with the #1 pick of the draft repeatedly jamming for large swaths of matches.) Does anyone know an example of it this year?
I'm not even necessarily knocking this scoring as a game mechanic. It is what it is, and we're expected to play with it. I do find it interesting how uncommon this is in the modern era (to my memory?), though, and I rather hope it's not here to stay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bduddy
If that's what you get out of "Gracious Professionalism", then I think you're misunderstanding what FIRST is trying to say. Although hey, they put out this game, maybe I'm the one that doesn't get them. Wouldn't be the first time...
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I'm with you. Especially considering that GP is at least 15 years old, if not as old as FIRST or Woodie. And since almost every time we hear it, it's accompanied by Woodie's "compete like crazy" mantra. In fact, if FIRST has been hinting at anything recently, it's that we should be more of a "sport". Not that some sports don't work as individual challenges, but I don't ever recall HQ hinting that we shouldn't be competing against each other.