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Unread 11-08-2016, 13:20
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Ringo5tarr Ringo5tarr is offline
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AKA: Lake Hall
FRC #1764 (Liberty Robotics)
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Rookie Year: 2015
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Re: FIRST 4 year game theme cycle theory

Okay, So I've gone and made what I think is some pretty decent predictions on what next years game will contain, I'm not positive on the exacts, but we can make some clear guesses. So we can look at the past games (As we already have been):

So we can obviously assume that there are going to be balls, (although we can't completely rule it out) not only because next year's cycle position is the "unusual game piece", but because each year goes on and off ball based gameplay, the only outlier being Lunacy, which had balls, but also had the hex-based trailer targets.
However, there is a game piece I suspect we will be using in the game: inflatables, there were three years in between Rack and Roll and LogoMotion, and it's been five years since logo, I would say chances are decent for a Inflatable based game.
We can also guess that the field will be either open or have much less obstacles than the last two years. In the past, rarely was there more than a single year in between games with anymore than games with nothing more than a single large obstacle in the center of the field. In fact, the last two years have been surprising in how many obstacles have been in their games, Recycle Rush is the only game in the last 14 years to have a divider that neither team could pass (which I would argue made the game what it was: more of a puzzle than action, but that's a discussion for another thread), and after such a strange outlier in the series of games, one would expect a much more open game with stronghold, but yet again, FIRST turned the tables on us, however the defenses are not as unique as Recycle Rush's impassable divider, they're still very much more complicated than FRC's typical fare. I would say that there's a fair chance that there might be nothing on the feild this year.
Also, endgame, we can always expect endgame, but it seems to simultaneously be the easiest and hardest to predict, I would give a 75% percent chance that the endgame will have something to do with rising off the floor, whether by using a bar or lifting allied robots. It's the 25% however, that makes this fun, there have been 3 out of 12 games with endgames that weren't using rising as a main mechanic:Overdrive, Lunacy, and Rebound Rumble. They didn't come in a pattern, so trying to guess from that is useless, and all three of them use fundamentally different ideas for their endgames, I find Lunacy's the most interesting and the one I want to see replicated.

TL,DR: What we can guess is:
1. No Balls
1a. Inflatables?
2. Open field/Few obstacles
3. 75% chance of a lifting based endgame
3a. Other 25% chance unpredictable

If you notice something missing or wrong with my analysis of past years, please tell me, I plan on updating and expanding to find more exact assumptions and more subjects to observe about each game
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