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Unread 30-05-2002, 15:33
DKolberg DKolberg is offline
Mentor Iron Giants
AKA: David Kolberg
FRC #5069 (Iron Giants)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: May 2002
Rookie Year: 2000
Location: South Bend
Posts: 44
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The scoring seems to be of some concern. It appears that the goal of the scoring is to keep one alliance from stomping the other. Yet the current scoring allows for zero points to the winner by some teams leaving a zone to reduce the points to the winner. I believe this is due to the disparity in 3x rule. One simple fix is to give the winner the total of both teams’ score while the loser gets only their own. This will keep the scoring close and reward a team that consistently wins while not hurting a team that loses occasionally too much. Ties can be handled either with tiebreakers as in 2002 or with both teams getting the total score.

As for the difference between the qualifying and elimination matches, it is not all that bad. It opens up more strategies as seen in the last couple of years with team 111 in 2001 building a helper bot to control the bridge and help the team with very little scoring power on their own. And this year with team 71 building a robot that was so-so for the qualifying and great for the finals. It opens up a level of strategy that relies heavily upon your alliance and / or on the ability to get picked in the finals. Not everyone can build a robot that will consistently be in the top 8 and therefore build robots that will assist other stronger robots in hopes of getting picked by the top 8. I believe that this shows a lot of what FIRST is all about, teamwork and sportsmanship. However, if it is necessary to eliminate the two styles, then just make it 3 rounds with the highest QP at the end winner.

As for game strategies, remember no one was undefeatable. Every robot out there could have been defeated in some way. Having the strongest robot is not always the winning robot. The speed/torque thing is less important than the strategies. I like the 2 vs 2 as this makes for a more exciting game and any more like 2 vs 2 vs 2 would be too confusing for spectators and teams to watch. We need to keep this game simple so that small teams have a chance of winning as much as the larger well equipped teams do. I like the autonomous aspects for programming, however, the controller would have to over hauled to allow more storage and faster processing to do anything close to tracking or identifying an object. We are already at the limits of memory and processing with just controlling the steering and simple effectors used in 2002.

I like adding time as an element for scoring as in 2001. This can still be accomplished in a 2 vs 2 game as when any two kill switches from either side are hit the game ends and the score is added up. This adds a lot of strategy to a simple game. Either wait in order for more QP or stop while you’re ahead with a lower QP.

I like the idea of moving things and lifting them to score. Balancing was a nice challenge while not out of the grasp of any team. However, trying to balance while opponents are trying to keep you from balancing will be very hard and not likely to be achieved. I also like the idea of changing the score at the last moment of a game. This keeps the score high as both teams think they are ahead until the last thing that changes the score like the hanging on the bar in 2000.
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