I like the idea of a pit in this post:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...6&postcount=27
Adding to that, what if the "end game" feature was not to get up high as in previous games (2000, 2004) but to get low (aka: an area where a robot could park & hit a button in the driver's station & lower an elevator device of some kind to basically put the robot into a pit but also have that area of the pit now not be able to be used as a flat portion of the ramp.
(Think 2003 with the surface of the top of the ramp now half the size because a robot decided to get points by lowering the robot scoring portion of the ramp to score, thus leaving less room to drive for the rest of the teams.)
With self and/or alliance scoring, comes some sacrifice for everyone else, including same alliance members.
(Wow, typing that last sentence gives me horrible, but also odd ddeja-vu of 2001 with the large ball multipliers & individual score advantage) LOL
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=29
I like the idea of another overpass (as shown above), but what if one was used for the human players?? Basically we would have set positions for an object, but on a rack above the playing field.
The object of that part would be once the object pice is placed randomly, the human players could roll a ball in the direction of that to see who could get closest to the spot or on it.
Think of a grid of tubing & one designated as the scoring square. When the human players roll a ball over the grid, the alliances color ball which lands on the spot gets a lot of points (or a higher bonus multiplier) where as the farther away you are from it you get less points.
You could even have a grid of about say 10 x 10 spots, & a rail like in the post linked above from each corner of the field & from the middle letting human players feed team color balls into that grid so that all 4 or 6 teams can get in on the action.
Ok, so this doesn't require skill that much, but if this was treated as a multipler or bonus, this could add a lot of excitement & unpredictibility to the scoring at the end.
Think "crazy ball board game" from a carnival.
http://www.jacksgames.com/images/kbb4.jpg