At the beginning of the season, I thought the game had promise and I was excited; then a few weeks in I realized how boring the matches were going to be, as you were going to have a limited number of nearly identical robot designs. I did like the downplayed role of bash-em-to-bits defense, and the advent of "smarter" defense.
Here's just a whole bunch of random ideas for improving the game. Some are more feasible (and better) than others, but I'm just throwing them all on the wall to see what sticks. Or if you prefer Dean's lingo, it's time to kiss some frogs.
- A "golden trackball" type of thing which could have been scoreable (only as a hurdle) by either alliance.
- More diversity of playing field objects, a la FIRST Frenzy. Add in some mobile goals, or 20" balls. With three robots per alliance, the possibilities of "specialized" robots would be even cooler than it was back in 2004.
- What if the entire overpass was a teeter-totter (with about 10 degrees of motion), and if you had more trackballs over your homestretch at the end of the match (thus causing it to tip towards you), you can get a multiplier bonus.
- A launching ramp for Dukes of Hazzard style driving.
Or even just speed bumps. - A Red/Blue target light at each trackball position, which would light up as the color of trackball there at the start of the match for CMUcam autonomous navigation.
- Modification of G22 to only count FULLY crossing the lane markers in the clockwise direction as a penalty.
- Elimination round matches are to be played in the opposite direction (CW) than qualification matches (CCW).
- A variable-length autonomous mode. At the very minimum, it starts as ten seconds. But for every five/ten seconds extra you leave your robot in autonomous, the point value of all maneuvers completed autonomously double. (Of course, this will only work if the real-time lane marker sensors had been working...)
- A REAL HUMAN PLAYER POSITION.