[phrontist]

Wow... tires... that would be great! I love the idea of drastically different size elements too, so I guess the ideal game for me would involve tires filled with ping pong balls. Oh yes...

I'd also like to see some other way for robots to move around, instead of the wheels-on-ground approach. Perhaps aircraft cable(s) running the length of the feild (from driver station to driver station), that robots could grab and winch themselves along on. Essentially, I like the idea of robots off the ground and moving around.

I'm envisioning a feild with a taut aircraft cable across the center (like the midfeild line in soccer) at height x off the ground. You could design your robot to be below height x or you could design your robot to get over the cable using the "zip line". In order to make the zip-line option attractive, the game could revolve around depositing items on the opponents side of the feild at a significant height, like the tetras this year. It would be difficult to deposit items up high if your robot had to fit under that cable, but if you built a mondo arm it could do both functions. Hey! The scroring items could be the aforementioned ping pong balls, deposited in tires. The tires with your ping pong balls could be on the opposing side of the feild, with the goal on your own. You'd have to get across and get back to score, or have on robot get across and send ping pong balls over some how. Robots could do wildly different things and still be competitive!

As an aside, aircraft cable is cheap and strong, and if the feild were designed properly, quite safe (snappage wise). You can anticipate how much tension would be on it in the worst case scenario because you know the weight limits of the robots. You could make them lower for saftey/challenge reasons.