A few of my thoughts on various things that have been said.
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Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil
A very small minority were upset with the church of England, now we have the United States of America. It's also possible that some people are not coming out because they fear being the minority.
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Yup, being persecuted for heresy and getting negative reputation are just about the same thing. For sure.
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
is this what we want? to be on ESPN?
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This is exactly what we want. There is no better way to further the mission of FIRST than to get widespread exposure.
I'm not saying that FIRST needs to go the way of battlebots, but I am saying there needs to be vigorous robot interaction. When I hear about all sorts of pushing zones and penalties for any sort of tipping, it makes be very afraid that we'll end up back in 2001. Is this what we want?
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
If thats what everyone wants, I'll go along with it - but at least tell us at the kickoff meeting so we dont feel like idiots when we show up at our first regional and watch our 6 weeks of hard work get battered, smashed and toppled repeatedly.
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FIRST was very clear at the beginning of this season, build robust robots. I'm normally a proponent of very strong defensive robots. This year my team decided to go a different route and we built a fast offensive bot. We knew we'd be a target, so we did everything we could to protect it. We designed outriggers (never used due to weight issues) to keep us upright, we put as little weight as possibile in our 2X manipulator to keep our center of gravity low. We knew teams would try and push and pin us, so we went with a strafing drive train.
Even when it came down to alliance selection, we tried to make sure that we had a defensive partner who could run some screens for us and help us stay in the clear. (See Teams 48 & 229)
You can't design a complicated offensive robot and not expect to be a target. That's just irresponsible. Designing a robot to withstand the rigors of defensive gameplay is part of the challenge we undertake every January.
Every year at this time, there is inevitably some one who feels their robot lost because of unfair defensive play, and bad referees. We then have to endure talk that if this keeps up FIRST is going to turn into battlebots. Isn't this getting old?
In 1999 teams 1, 45 and 68 controlled the puck with large defensive arms. People complained, say this was going so start a horrible new trend. Did it?
In 2002 after 180 torched Wildstang (Div Semifinals) and Beatty (even though the Beatty alliance pulled out the victory with some great play by 66 and 173) with their powerful drivetrain and wedge, people claimed that everyone and their mother's parrots would use wedges from now on. Did that happen? (Aside: Yes, many teams used wedges in 2003, but not in the attacking manner that people feared)
People see string defense show up in the elimination rounds every year. That doesn't mean world is going to end. In my opinion defense is still under appreciated in FIRST. I would never have my team build a solely defensive robot, because it's too risky. There's a huge chance that teams could ignore you, and you'll be spending Saturday afternoon at the funnel cake stand.
To sum up my long stream of consciousness, we should not try and eliminate fair defensive play. Robots intentionally trying to damage one and another is clearly wrong. Solid defense consisting of pushing, ramming and incidental tipping is fair game. I have a lot of faith in the referees that FIRST has. Let them be judge of what is intentionally destructive and what is just simply a sound strategic decision to play some hard nosed defense.