[Moreau]

Meh, I'm an eternal pessimist... but I initially liked this game. Interesting concept of a super low friction course with the only goals being attached to robots.

However, the more I look at it, the more I think I see how it will work out. And, of course, I have a lot of suspicions. First I'll just gripe a bit...

I don't like the idea of the human player being so vital (if you want human involvement, look at the drivers. Yeah, keep looking.), although I did like in rack and roll how a human player technically could score, but it was very difficult and luck based. Here, it looks like human players will get at least 50% of the points in the average games.

I dislike the no expansion rule. Make it so that we can't interfere with our own trailer (blocking points going into it), but please don't prevent us from going outside of the box... Honestly, I can't imagine any effective design that needs to go very far outside of the starting configuration, but even just a foot out of the box allows much more accurate dumping of balls into a trailer. And this game looks like it will need all of the points it can allow to be interesting.

I don't really like the low friction this year all that much. I don't hate it, but it's not really an engineering challenge. It's a limitation... sure, you can do some things to compensate for it, but its not a very interesting challenge in itself. The real challenge is the fact that the robots will all be moving like drunken ice skaters with their arms duct taped to their sides, trying to throw balls into other ice skaters' backpacks while everyone moves around in a big mess. And with a lot less acceleration than ice skaters.

As others have said, this year's robots will be very poor demonstration bots, so keep those 2008 bots together.

Now, game play issues that I foresee:

Wheel scuffing. With the absurdly low friction between the wheels and the floor, the slightest difference in surface of the wheels could provide a huge boost in traction. The rules allow for wheels to have normal wear and tear from running them on floors, but disallow deliberate modification to improve traction. Well, in the whole 10 minutes of dinking around with the wheels on a robot frame that we did, the wheels look like they've been sandpapered and scuffed severely just from running on some slightly (haha) dirty tile. And even a tiny gain in friction can provide a massive increase in power to the ground (a .02 increase in the coefficient of friction is between a 30% and 40% gain in friction), and it will be very noticeable. How is this going to be policed? Must we have pristine wheels to be allowed to compete (and thus never let them touch anything but super clean and smooth competition-like floors?), or will some scuffing be allowed? And if it is, how much is the cut off? Just run the robot over concrete for 10 seconds and you probably doubled your traction on the "regolith."

Anyways, in looking and the time allowed for supercells to be in play and the maximum acceleration of a robot (without a fan), I found that it would be almost impossible to grab a supercell from the far back and run all the way to the other side to find a robot and dunk it within 20 seconds. Instead, you would have to use the carpet along the walls.

I think this game will devolve into carpet scooting, with the "regolith" being a no-go zone for most of the match unless you get pushed out into it. People will vie for position on the carpet and use it to move around, coming off of it to perhaps try and coerce someone else near a friendly human player. Basically, a race track with an ice rink in the middle. You won't want to come off of the carpet unless you want to make a move on someone because you would become an easy target. If you're on the carpet, you're essentially immune to anyone pushing from the ice unless they get to the carpet and gain footing. You would also be able to wiggle your trailer out of the way easily enough if you're on carpet.

Interestingly, a carpet strategy will require a car-style driving system since only one set of wheels can be in contact with the tiny strip of carpet. That is, unless you like sliding along the walls for the entire match until someone bumps you out of your rut.

I do like that the best strategy on the regolith will probably be a coordinated push by one alliance against a straggler of the opposing alliance in the effort to get them into a corner near a human player, and perhaps dump a few balls into the trailer if possible. Two or three robots will always win a pushing contest against one in this game as long as the two push in a similar direction.

Bah, I'm rambling a bit at this point and I've lost any cohesive conclusion that I might have had in mind, but there are some of my thoughts. I think this will be a very defensive game with most robots sticking close to the carpet and their "safe zones" near their alliance human players, since that nearly eliminates any potential loss of control and scoring against you.

*edit* Oh yes, and I hate how a practice field is out of reach for the vast majority of teams. Over $1000 dollars for a reasonable recreation of the field is ridiculous, so very well financed teams (or teams near very well financed and nice teams) will be the only people coming in with real driving experience. Everyone else is going to be scuffing up their tires practicing on much higher friction surfaces, or getting somewhat closer experiences off of waxed tile. No real drive experience is bad enough, never mind how hard robot on robot scoring is going to be in general due to positioning...