[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

You can say "Rookies will find it hard" with literally any change in the FRC challenge.

Let's take a look at the proposed idea. For simplicity, we'll assume that the barrels are open end up, and the rookie team has infinite materials.

1) Getting objects into goals. This is a standard challenge. I would presume that any rookie could build a robot that would theoretically be able to do this in some way.

2) Going through the curtain. Also somewhat standard, other than entanglement risks. Again, any rookie could build a robot to do this.

3) 1) on the far side of the curtain, where target visibility is nil from the operator's station. In order to be successful, your rookie team needs to, at minimum, have a camera feed going to the driver's station (assuming that that is possible in any given year). How many veteran teams had trouble with that this last year?

4) Apply 3) to semi-autonomous operation. Again, how many veterans had trouble with auto mode last year? Much fewer, but how many used the camera?

As a rookie team, I'd be tempted to either do too much (automode the whole way) or not even attempt it at all. Even a number of veteran teams would probably not attempt blind scoring for a number of reasons. This leads to the audience reaction to that type of game--boredom for the first half except when a robot actually scores on the far side, followed by interest during the second half when the curtain disappears and robots start scoring like crazy. That first reaction alone would probably be enough to take the game down before the GDC finished designing it.

I think Breakaway is about as far as the GDC is willing to go in terms of hidden targets--reversed from the view of the drivers so they have a harder time lining up.