[StephLee]

A teammate of mine (E. Wood) and I have been working on a possible game, and here's what we've come up with so far:

The field would be about the same dimensions as this year, with the driver's station on the long sides instead of the short ones. It would be 3v3 again, and the robots would start on the short sides like they did this year. Three raised platforms, one on top of the other, would be in the center of the field. On the center and highest platform, there is a basket or bucket or something of red triangles and blue squares. To retrieve these objects, all four wheels of a robot must be on the middle level, kind of like the loading zone rule this year. The objects are then taken to the end zones, where they're put in a scoring bin. The triangles and squares are worth the same amount of points.

At the beginning of each match, flat green squares (or possibly pressure pads, but they might be difficult to move around between matches) will be placed randomly on each alliance's side of the field for the robots to find using a vision system like this year's. If a robot successfully finds this square, that alliance is awarded two (or three, maybe more?) white circle game pieces, worth much more than the other pieces.

Near the end of the match, say around the 30-second mark, three pressure pads near each end zone will be activated, the same size and shape as each of the game pieces. Each alliance must place one of each object on the corresponding pressure pad. If they do, they will be able to retrieve a larger object from a previously barred-off position on either side of the raised platforms. If the alliance has this object in their end zone at the end of the match, they are awarded a fairly large bonus. One idea we had was that this object requires more than one robot to carry it, possibly because of its size.

On the defensive side, robots are allowed to take objects off the opposing team's pressure pads, but are not allowed to take them out of their scoring bin. (One possibility if you want to allow a more aggressive defense would be to allow robots to take the objects directly off opposing robots, so long as the opposing bot isn't damaged.) Robots would be able to block their opponents from getting the objects, but they would have to be really careful not to knock them off the platforms.

Let us know what you think is missing, what you like, and what you don't like. One thing we don't have is a real role for a human player; we had thought of them doing something like constructing an object that is worth more points, one that only their alliance can then use, but we didn't really define a role. If you have one, let us know.