[Drwurm]

This year I went to 4 regionals and 1 championship.

One of the biggest complaints I was hearing all year was bad reffing. I didn't see so much bad reffing, as inadequate reffing. There were far too many things going on at once to try and call every penalty.

I saw blatant out of bumper zone contact never called because the refs were too busy trying to see if a bot would G22.

In another situation, a robot parked sideways in front of us and "pinned" us against a finish line. We backed up to get around the bot and incurred a G22 from a ref. From this ref's POV, we had simply gone over the line (he couldn't see the other robot in front of us). The ref that would have called impeding on the robot in front of us was busy watching another potential G22 occurring in another part of the field. Situations like this plagued every regional I was at.

There was simply way too much going on at one time in this game for the refs to deal with. If the refs are going to be required to look for so many things, some sort of instant replay MUST be included.

Now to the game itself.

Hybrid mode is an awesome idea with great potential. However, I was dissatisfied with the communication to the robots (IR). In later years, it would be nice if the hybrid commands were sent directly to the robot via the OI->RC system so that we didn't have to deal with bazooka remotes and IR diode arrays.

I didn't like the fact that all the goals in this game were based off of a similar task. Last year there were 2 completely unrelated tasks, which lent a little more to the alliance strategy. This year every alliance was clear. 2 great hurdlers, 1 defender favorably with ball knocking or some hurdling capability.

Also, I should ask how many devoted lap bots you saw in the finals. None-ish? This is because the 2 points awarded for a single lap is completely drowned out by hurdling. All bots that would have otherwise been lapping were playing defense on the hurdlers. Even 148, a bot designed to make laps reverted to defense(impressive I might add).

The point is, these laps made little difference to the actual score of the match since the bots hurdling simultaneously make laps. If FIRST is going to make other objectives count, they need to put more value on these objectives and make them specialized and unique from the main objective.

Also, the field was far too constricted this year. This would be a much faster game if robots had more room to pass and move around. I believe speed and constant movement were 2 of the goals FIRST was aiming for this year, so in retrospect, a larger field would have been better.

Bumping to pass????L-O-L. nough said.

What I liked about 2007 was that every robot on an alliance could accomplish the main task. Unfortunately, since this year had only 2 game pieces per alliance, one robot had to sit out. What I did not like about 2007 was that having such a central scoring structure led to huge pushing matches just to score a couple ringers in the finals. So in that aspect, FIRST did a good job this year, separating the scoring zones for each alliance.

Endgame was very exciting, even more so than last year in some cases. This clincher play excitement really made some of the matches for me.

What I would like to see in 2009:

Less penalty potential

Hybrid (with a bit stronger comm link)

Enough game pieces so every robot can have at least one

Separated scoring zones (This does not mean completely separated robots. I love defense.)

A strong secondary goal that has no relation to the primary goal

Endgame excitement!