[archiver]

Posted by Patrick Dingle at 04/30/2001 3:16 PM EST


College Student on team #639, Red B^2, from Ithaca High School and Cornell University.


In Reply to: One chance to score big
Posted by ChrisH on 04/30/2001 1:50 PM EST:



You got me thinking... How about two bridges in the middle, but with an 8-foot gap in between (e.g. swap the positions of the 1 1/2' high bars and the goal). In the middle, you add a 2000 goal. Black balls in the 2000 goal count as three points each. Big balls only count when they are on 2001 goals. Black balls in the 2001 goals count one point. For each goal balanced on a bridge, each ball in that specific goal counts twice as much, including big balls. However, if both bridges are balanced (one goal on each bridge), all balls in either balanced goal count four times as much. There are no time multipliers, and no endzone. Each robot counts as an extra 25 points if they lift themselves off the ground by attaching to the 2001 goal. Any questions?

Now this seems a lot more complex, but without the time multiplier it's a lot easier to understand. I think this type of setup is better for several reasons. First, as Chris suggested, two brides allows two different robots to balance. Now you could claim that one robot would still balance two goals on one of the bridges, but it is worth more points if one goal is balanced on each of the two bridges. Additionally, the importance of balancing is decreased with respect to the importance of scoring balls. Without robots that can score big and small balls, it doesn't matter if you can balance or not. If an alliance is not confident in their ability to balance a goal, they can score many balls in the 2000 goal, earning them three points per ball. Now you might guess that alliances would opt not to balance, when the 2000 goal is already worth three points per ball. However, recall that the human players can easily load a 2001 goal from the human player station, while it is much more difficult for human players to score in the 2000 goal. Additionally, big balls that are placed on top of 2001 goals can potentially be worth 40 points each if both goals are balanced, one on each bridge. Towards the end of the match, all these robots can earn the alliance 25 additional points by hanging of the goal in the middle, similar to last year (only it's off the goal, not off a bar).

As I think about different options for games, I think more and more that it is possible to have exciting 4vs0 matches... they just need to set up the scoring correctly -- and I must say they failed this year since there were so many robots that did not have a purpose in the alliance. If you understood all my rules, does mine do any better of a job? Other interesting modifications ideas?

Patrick

: I don't know about other teams, but we deliberately decided not to handle small balls because of the low effort/points ratio. It was almost as much effort to pick up a small ball as a big one for far less payoff.

: This was in spite of having a robot design from the previous year that would have easily picked up three or four small balls and deposited them in the goal within 30 seconds with only slight modification.

: I think the worst part of this game was that there was one critical operation, balancing goals. Further, it could only be performed by one robot. As I understand it most discussion in stratgey sessions revolved around who would accomplish this task. Finally, if this task was not accomplished the whole alliance suffered, but there was no way to tell for real if a team could accomplish it but to let them try, and possibly suffer for the result

: While it would be theoretically possible to design robots to work together to accomplish the balancing task it is very difficult to do this without collaborating on the design. ( Congrats to Wildstang and the other rampbots for figuring a way around this)This is hindered by the random assignment of partners. Why design your robot to work with a particular other robot when there is no guarantee you'll ever get to work together?

: A large part of this could be eliminated by increasing the number of scoring possibilities. For example, how would it have changed things if there were TWO bridges? For even more fun add two more goals. Leave all the other rules the same and you have a totally different game. Of course, big ball limbobots might not be in such demand, but you would have vastly increased the number of potential goal balancing robots and reduced the failure risk in each match.

: It was very frustrating to get a poor ranking in spite of accomplishing your assigned tasks more than 90% of the time because your partners did not accomplish their tasks. Especially when they often were fighting hard to get the chance to fail. Very similar to being the star player on a bottom of the standings team.

: Just my thoughts

: Chris Husmann, PE
: Team 330 the Beach'Bots