[Citrus Dad]

The FRC Game Design Committee has added an important feature in the last two games that I believe helps promote FRC to a wider potential audience of high school students. Each of these games, had added a less-difficult match-long challenge that teams that are newer or with less resources can accomplish and make a material contribution toward the alliance's goals.

In Stronghold the added challenge was crossing different complexities of defenses. Those crossings contributed to both the team score (and it was possible to win qualifying matches with only crossing points) and to an important ranking point separate from the match outcome.

In Steamworks, it will be placing gears, which should be easier than shooting massive amounts of fuel in the high goal. Again, this task contributes to a separate ranking point.

Kudos to the GDC to create a clear value-added role for teams that sometimes have been seen as much less important in past games.