Off-season rule changes should make the game more enjoyable without punishing any robot designs.
Changing the field configuration
- Upside down totes - we haven't seen any robots work the upside down totes but it's possible we will it at champs. They are an interesting element to the game. Flipping them moves the landfill dimensions for pulling RCs from the step. So I vote leave the upside down totes.
- RCs on the step - any reconfiguration of the RCs will change how teams pull them from the step. I'm not in favor of changing or adding RCs to the step. If you add a center RC, the teams built to pull from the center (examples 610, 2848) would have to redesign. Plus a lot of work is being put into the can burgler race, that should be rewarded somewhat in the off-season.
- Allowing RCs to be entered on to the field from driver station - some teams are naturally built for this, others are not. Also what happens the first time an RC falls on a driver? Leave them on the field.
- Additional RCs on the field - I like this idea, give every team one more RC to setup during autonomous wherever they would like not in the auto zone. This pushes the score ceiling a little bit with out dramatically affecting game play.
I have more comments I'll post later about other rule change ideas.