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Posted by Joe Johnson.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 11/3/2000 10:10 AM MST


In Reply to: Exciting Do Overs! posted by Bill Beatty on 11/3/2000 8:54 AM MST:



Have we become too worried about 0-0 ties? Perhaps.

But... We have decided that erring on the side of the team that DOES something was the way to go.

It would be pretty painful to watch 6 robots locked in a 0-0 death struggle for a good part of 3 minutes.

We reasoned that while it would be possible for one alliance to block the other from 2 ramps, keeping them from all 4 would be next to impossible.

Also, don't neglect the importance of the second tie breaker. Specifically, it makes it tricky for an alliance to play defense by ball hording.

To illustrate, consider the following:
If all the blue balls are off the blue ramp but pushed deep into the blue territory, red might be tempted to run out the clock by tieing the blue robots up. After all, the blue team can't score (even on the red ramps to take advantage of Tie Breaker #1) if there are no blue balls available to score with. This is where Tie Breaker #2 makes this a risky strategy. If the blue team gets even a few red balls onto the blue side of the field, they will win the match via Tie Breaker #2. So... Red has to push some balls over to the red side -- where, perhaps there is a chance that a blue robot may try to pick a blue one up and score with it -- either on the blue ramp, to win outright, or on the red ramp, to win via Tie Breaker #1)

The intent at every turn this that ACTION IS REWARDED.

Play ball!

Joe J.

P.S. We have often lamented that fact that often, the FIRST Elimination Rounds are not as action oriented as we would have liked. We are trying to come up with a system that addresses that concern we have. You folks all get to be our test subjects ;-) Only time will tell how successful we were.