[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

Dang, I could have sworn it was 2003 with the backup battery. The given reason behind the backup was the controller brown-outs - I'm pretty sure of that, but I thought they happened in 2002, not 2003. Oh well.

In 2001, all of the teams got their alliance's score for the match with one exception: the big multiplier balls. Every team was assigned a color prior to the match. If your team's large multiplier ball (the large balls were colored to correspond to the 4 robot colors) was on top of a goal, your team got a bonus for that match. I want to say it was an additional 10%, but since my team didn't handle the big balls that year the bonus wasn't that important to me (at least that's how I'm explaining my poor memory).

You're right about the reason and the timing of the controller brownouts, but I think it took a year or so to work into the system, plus they did a "major" overhaul at the same time to switch to C.

As for the multipliers, I think you're about right, but it was 10 points, IIRC. (My old team--before I was old enough-- could handle 2, and place both on goals while balancing the bridge, just before killing the power.) It was enough to set you apart; not enough to do much.