Posted by Kris Verdeyen at 04/10/2001 4:48 PM EST
Engineer on team #118, Robonauts, from CCISD and NASA - Johnson Space Center and Friends.
This was my first year with FIRST (I was a coach and an engineer with team 118), and I must say that the experience was great. I really enjoyed meeting many of the other teams and seeing what they had built. I actually did enjoy the negotiations that this game required, but as a rookie, I had no way of telling whether previous years had that aspect or not.
But, in the spirit of getting my own two cents in on the issue, I would like to recognize what I see as the main complaint about this year's game, and Dean & company's complaints about previous games:
---Diabolical Dynamics---
This year's game offered no direct competition, thus limiting the amount of control a robot had over its own destiny when competing head to head in the finals.
Also, four robots on an alliance raised the possibility that a well-meaning but accident-prone robot could ruin things not only for itself, but also for three other teams.
---Ye olde First Robotics---
Past First games have been too violent, and eliminating head to head competion was required before First started looking like Battlebots.
How about a compromise?
A game where there are two positions, each occupied by a team of robots. The goals for each of these positions would not be the same, e.g. one team of robots could be offensive, and one could be defensive. Using this year's field as an example, one team of three robots would have the object of doing just what they did this round, while one other robot (perhaps enabled 5-20 seconds late) had to stop them. A team would only have one robot, of course, to play in both parts of this competition.
Here you would have some head to head competition, without having a true winner or loser. Let me know what you think.
--my apologies for the long post, but I was on a roll
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