[EricH]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

The answer to the question, "what to do if a robot doesn't show up," is much more complex that previous years. It's also a question that doesn't need answering until 27 February.

I was thinking the same thing. You have to do something without giving an advantage to one alliance (other than the 3v2).

Leaving the trailer on the field: point-blank for the payload specialists, the 2-team alliance is going to be at a huge disadvantage.

Taking the trailer off the field: 3 targets as compared to two, the 2-team alliance will be at an advantage. To further confound matters, it now becomes valid strategy to not show up for matches.

You could leave the trailer on the field and supply a house robot, but that's more transportation issues. You could leave the trailer on the field, but disable one of the 3 robots (randomly), but then somebody will complain that they were messed up because they were with 1114 vs. a 2-team alliance and 1114 got shut down.

You could remove one trailer from each side and disable the unconnected robot (see above for the objection, though this is more fair--you choose who gets the trailers). You could leave the trailer on, but put it at the outpost--there's a limited supply there. You could leave it on and not allow it to be scored on for x time.

In short, there's many ways to do this, it isn't critical to do it now, and somebody's going to be unhappy any way you do it. I think the GDC is thinking this one over carefully and throwing around ideas, but not exactly in a hurried manner.