[archiver]

Posted by Scott England at 05/29/2001 6:55 PM EST


College Student on team #401, The Hokie G.U.A.R.D, from Virginia Tech/MCPS and Virginia Tech/VBEP.


In Reply to: 4 vrs. 0 or 2 vrs. 2:Some Thoughts
Posted by Ben Mitchell on 05/25/2001 11:00 PM EST:



my everyone seems to be really passionate about ALL 4v0 or 2v2, just to point out something, FIRST has gone from
every bot for himself to
alliances 2v2
to 4v0
I'm not so sure I would expect a return 2v2, FIRST has continously surprised us with new and at times shocking developments, I don't think FIRST has found its ideal competition set up yet so I see no reason to start recycling old ideas. I'm not necessarily saying that FIRST should keep 4vs0, though personally, I felt that this year's competition resulted in the best robots being near the top(the truly elite seemed to rise above the quality of their teammates and put up a high score anytime the bridge remained unblocked) As always, luck plays into things, but so long as a robot could make a good showing, it had a good chance of getting picked. In the mean time, I could make my case for why this year's competition was the best ever, but I won't get started, my point was why go back when we can go foreward. no where does it say FIRST is limited to all versus all, 2v2, or 4v0 (and someone mentioned the idea of 2v0, but I'd just like to mention that I'd expect more and more robots to be competing at once, just as a simple facts of numbers, say there are twice as many teams at nationals next year, they would either need twice as many fields to ensure they all get a reasonable number of rounds, or more simply, they could just make a game that has 8 robots playing either together, or like an idea someone mentioned, that I liked and have mentioned a few more times, how about 4v4, like football, offense vs defense, 4 robots do something to a playing field, and drive into a parking spot, hit their buzzers or run out of time, once all four switches are depressed or say a 90 second clock runs out, the other team has power, and some amount of time to undo some points (lets say 30 seconds to keep a 2 minute round) Then a quick field reset and the teams repeat it with roles reversed, less time spent getting robots to the field and with big introductions, 8 teams go in about 75 % (given that is just a guess)of the time it took 8 teams to go in past years. I'm hardly saying this is the best idea, just an example of how we could have more robots competing at once, and in more direct competition than 4v0. Moral of this story is lets not all get so defensive of either 4v0 or else 2v2, FIRST will continue to surprise us and do whatever is in FIRST's best interest. Ok, I've been typing way too long, I hope I managed to form a few coherent sentences in this massive message,
~Scott