From what I saw at BAE today, this game is one of the best I've seen, particularly as a spectator game. Some of the the good things about Rack and Roll:
-Huge variaty of designs (arms, elevators, ramps, lifters, pure defensive
robots, and combinations.) Aim High 80% of the robots were pitching
machines on wheels, and Triple Play there was only one real task for
robots to do , so all the designs were kind of similar
-Game can change at any moment. One of the things I did not like about
Aim High was that 2/3rds of the time, the winner of autonomous would win
the match. This put a fair amount of teams at a disadvantage if they, for
whatever reason, did not have experienced programmers avalible, even if
they had a very good robot mechanichally. With Rack and Roll, the
outcome can change with one ringer at any moment, and this will
probably be even more the case as the season progresses and spoilers
become more of a factor.
-Lots of defensive opportunities. Although not quite as important as in Aim
High, this game encourages defence. A fair amount of teams have had the
strategy of repeatedly ramming the rack, which is quite effective against
all but the most experienced drivers. Opportunities for a team to score big
with one maneuver occur quite often (adding to a large row in a close
game, ramps, spoilers,) and for an alliance to do well, they must be able
to block at least some of these.
-Teamwork between alliance partners is required. Since defence is so
crtical, counterdefence is also quite important. Also, there have been
several instances of teams helping other teams up ramps, teams trying to
tip teams that have been tipped failing to climbing a ramp, etc. Along with
this, alliance partner selection for the finals is much more complicated, as
teams have to consider the two distinct elements of the game, and how
the three robots will work together to get the 60 points in the endgame.
-Spectatorwise, the game is great. No matter who you want to win a
match, you always seem to find yourself rooting for teams to score in
autonomous, just because it is so impressive. The action around the rack
it quite intense, and as mentioned above, the score can change at any
moment. If needed, teams often put on great defensive displays, and the
ramp climbing at the end is as exciting of an endgame task as the
endgame was in 03/04.
That being said, there are also some definate negative aspects of the game, but as others have said, a fair amount of these will probably improve as the season goes on and the rack gets filled up more.
1. Spoilers are not that useful. True, it is almost always more advantageous to score a ringer instead, but as the season progresses and the rack becomes more filled, expect spoilers to play a more important role. So far, most scoring has only been on one level per match, but in a situation in which both large horizontal and vertical rows have been created, a situation that will start happening more and more often, a spoiler placed in the middle will reduce scores by large amounts. Also, the lack of spoiled spiders was not so much due to them being completely ignored, but due to extreme defense played on teams possessing a spoiler, since they were usually only brought into play when an alliance had a 5-6+ row
2. Keepers do not give much of an advantage. I believe that as the season goes on, the importance of keepers will increace dramatically. As more of the rack gets filled, keepers will be used strategically as the middle of large clumps. This will make clumps like these harder to spoil. Still, keepers could use more incentive, like making them multiply rows they are in by something, or an additional 10 points or something just for having it on the rack, regardless of its placement in rows.
3. The top row is ignored. As teams become more practiced and used to the game, collums will become more important, and the large horizontal rows we have seen so far less so. Therefore, an ability to score up high will become a desired ability as the season goes on.
Quote:
|
1. A robot should really need to do more than unfold (mind you, i love the unfolding robots and i would build one given the chance now. Imagine a robot that unfolded across the entire home zone... it wouldn't even need drive wheels!!) Even the best ramp bot should need to play some defense or do something besides open up.
|
I really didn't see many ramp robots doing this at BAE today. (may have been different at other regionals though) Most ramp robots would ram the rack/push other robots for the first minute, and then go and unfold with about 45 seconds left
However, one problem that not many have mentioned is that a human player can inadvertantly shut down their own robot scoring wise. Several times, a ringer thrown by a human player got wrapped around some long, tall part of the robot, dissallowing it from picking up other ringers. Unfortunately, I can't really see any way to work around this problem other than for human players to be more careful. Also, the "random" alliance issue really needs to be fixed.