[Allison K]

Ack! How did I miss this thread. I've been waiting since championships for it.

Anyway, something I came up with...
(You may want to look at the field picture first, as a picture of the field may help the description make more sense)

Basic Points
•1 vs. 1 vs. 1 vs. 1 vs. 1
•Your alliance partners are the two teams on either side of you. Yes this means that each team will have a different set of alliance partners. For instance Red would work with Orange and Yellow. Blue would work with orange and green.
•Your total score is your score plus the score of your alliance partners (the two teams on either side of you)
•Each match teams are ranked by total score. 1st place gets 3 ranking points, 2nd place gets 2 ranking points, 3rd place gets 1 ranking point, and 4th and 5th place get 0 ranking points. In the event of a tie in total score teams are ranked by their own score. If there is still a tie both teams are given the higher RP value. For instance if two team tied for 1st place they would both get 3 RP, and the next highest team would get 1 RP.
•Qualifying points are determined by your team’s high score.

Game Play and Scoring Objects
•The scoring objects are pool noodles and nerf soccer balls.
•Each team has a home zone and a far zone.
•In each home zone are two seven foot tall “T” shaped goals. They are placed so that the top bars are four feet apart and parallel to each other, and perpendicular to the driver station wall.
•The goal is to lay noodles across the bars to create a platform to place the balls onto.
•The far zone contains one seven foot high stationary goal.
•Points can be scored by placing noodles across the home zone goals and stacking balls onto them, or by scoring balls in the stationary goal and completely containing noodles in the far zone.
•Home zones may not be de-scored but far zones can be.
•Each team has two human players – a noodle human player to the left of their driver station and a soccer ball human player to the right of their driver station.
•To the left of each driver station there is a 1’ x 1’ square “go” button and to the right of each driver station is a 1’ x 1’ square “stop” button. If a team’s “stop” button is activated their human players may not move off the pad or their robot will be temporarily disabled. Each match starts with every “stop” button disabled. The human player pad is located ten feet from the human player interaction area.

Good Things
•It would lead to a more offensive game because it will be very important to be able to score points reliably, but it will also allow for defense because in the end you need to outscore every team to win.
•It allows 5 teams on the field at once
•It would decrease time between matches because each color could have two driver stations and one team could set up while the other team packed up.

Bad Things and Reasons it Wouldn’t Work
•Different field shape, would probably be too expensive to build, and I imagine would be awkward to fit inside certain venues.
•Elimination rounds would be nightmarish to work out (although it would make it easier to create five divisions at championships, which would allow for either more matches per team, or more teams)
•It might be somewhat difficult to explain. Although most FIRST games start out hard to explain and then they get easier as you get practice.
•Need to add in some autonomous options (but with all of the colors there are probably some entertaining vision system options)
•Need to do more with human player.