I was thinking about the problems of this year's game and all of the answers came to me in a dream (I know, dreaming about FIRST
). Each of the scoring aspects this game represented a different type of robot design (drive design mostly). The goals represented the high torque robots that could shove their way through anything. The ball robots (in general, but not all) tended to be faster and more maneuverable to scoop up all of those balls. The robot zone scoring aspect represented fastbots and tethers
. And then I thought about that ultimatum of the goal aspect. The three goal win, cancelled out everything. This ultimatum is what caused High torque robots to do so well in eliminations. This also caused the complete neglect of balls in many elimination matches (especially Nationals). And since goal handlers were often uber-torque robots, that swung the game completely favor of them. Of course you already know this...
But the source of the problem was the ultimatum. In next years' game, no ultimatum should exist that allows the neglect of a scoring aspect. This should create a new FIRST-game general aspect. The rock-paper-scissors aspect. Scoring method B often cancells out scoring method A, C cancells out B, etc. If the scoring is balanced evenly amongst these three aspects, there would be no ultimatum that neglects any of these three aspects.
Let's considered Zone-Zeal modified to a Rock-Paper-Scissors format. Goals should stay 10 points each. Lets up balls to 2 points each in a goal (because they are naturally cancelled by goals) and 1 point each if a robot has it picked up off of the ground. Finally, we'll up the robot scoring to 15 points each (also, we enforce the strict zone interpretation to make tethers less favorable). Now lets consider similar situations in this years game, a robot forces three goals into their zone and holds them there and the other robot stays back. This would normally be an automatic win (40, 20), but now, the other alliance picks up 16 balls and gets back to their zone, it's (45, 46) and the ball handling team wins. However, if balls are simply being picked up and not being put into goals, in fear of the goals being stolen, then the other team just then piles balls in the goals for the double value and wins. Balls in goals are cancelled out by goals being shifted from zone to zone. And simply the use of goals is shut out by the simply picked up balls and the robot zone. This balances out the game for ball-handlers and goal handlers.
I think that the rock-paper-scissors general format will result in very interesting and infinitely effective games. Especially, if each aspect is almost radically different. The strategy will be infinite and it would be impossible to say that any one aspect is "better" than another.
~Hubicki~
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Shoot, I rambled again...