BEST 2012

[1683cadder]

Hi, I'm new to the forum. What do you guys think about the teaser? http://www.youtube.com/user/bestrobotics. Is it going to be a Best version of Lunacy? What are your speculations and do you think it's going to be another arm game like years past?

[OliviaG]

Welcome to chief Delphi!
awesome video, from what ive seen so far!

[Alan Anderson]

That's a space elevator at about 0:45.

[Anupam Goli]

This looks a bit interesting. Ever since the failure that was Total Recall in 2010, I've been uninterested in BEST for a while (though BUGS was kinda sorta ok), but this honestly looks much more interesting. Hopefully they can bring back elements of High Octane in 09 and Hubble in 05. Those were my favorite games.

[JohnSchneider]

With the kit that BEST gives out, only a few types of apparatuses are constuctable, and thus only a few types of games can be created.

There seems to be a pretty consistant style of "Pick up multiple and drastically different game objects and bring them back to this scoring zone" though some years it becomes "Avoid picking up these because scoring just x piece in mass is better than all other pieces" (Im looking at you 2010). So until we get a 5th motor...this is pretty much all you'll see.

BEST also has a lot of games with no robot-robot contact.
2007 did and it was great.
2008 didnt and it wasn't great
2009 did and was good
2010 didn't and it was terrrrible
2011 didnt and it wasnt that good

What BEST could learn from this is that their scoring needs to be thouroughly checked before competitions to make sure theres no overly weighted pieces, and that we need more robot-robot interaction.

SO! watching this trailer I'm liking the 2007-esque use of space, and Im sincerely hoping for a game like 2007 where There is robot-robot interaction, the spotter actually is signifigant, and the game has to be played like it was intended. This is the year they could redeem themselves!

[Anupam Goli]

I really do hope that they can turn BEST around, as it has been lackluster recently. Actually, I've been weary of them ever since the South's BEST Region in 09.

Our team won the 3rd place BEST award, but that year, they only sent the top 2 Robots and top 2 BEST award winners to Nationals. I was the team leader, so i got to see the score report. Some judge decided to kill our score because we did outreach through FIRST programs. Outreach is outreach! From then on, i've never really been interested in them, and the last two games have also killed my interest in the competition, but the theme this year looks really interesting. What I really want to see is a BEST game being as strategic as an FRC or FTC Competition.

[JohnSchneider]

Really? Its sort of strange - BEST loves to see outreach through other types of robotics outlets (VEX especially now since theyre buddies), but in FIRST they have never given us high marks for anything outside of FLL and FTC...hmm

BEST could try a 2v2 alliance game..but BEST is worse than FIRST when it comes to robots not working :/

For Strategy you need a game like '07 and '09 put together.

[1683cadder]

Yeah, BEST judges can be kind of weird. escpecially at that incident involving our team last year at southern regionals... I hope BEST becomes more first like since the games always feel like it's just picking and sorting.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by 1683cadder

Yeah, BEST judges can be kind of weird. escpecially at that incident involving our team last year at southern regionals... I hope BEST becomes more first like since the games always feel like it's just picking and sorting.

South's BEST judges seem to have some sort of bias towards the teams in Alabama, but it might just be me....something fishy going on there.....

In 08 and 09 I definitely enjoyed BEST, and the 09 game was one of the best in my opinion. Robot-Robot contact was encouraged, you needed strategy to know what game pieces to score and there were multiple ways to score.

[JohnSchneider]

Originally Posted by Wing

South's BEST judges seem to have some sort of bias towards the teams in Alabama, but it might just be me....something fishy going on there.....

In 08 and 09 I definitely enjoyed BEST, and the 09 game was one of the best in my opinion. Robot-Robot contact was encouraged, you needed strategy to know what game pieces to score and there were multiple ways to score.

not necessarilly encouraged...as there was a penalty But deffinitly gave you a trade off to consider.

[BackInCalgary]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

not necessarilly encouraged...as there was a penalty But deffinitly gave you a trade off to consider.

I really liked both '09 and '10, maybe because we did well those years with...unconventional designs (I went to the Academy of Science and Technology in The Woodlands, TX. North Houston/5-Star Hub) those years.

It was too bad the competition's gone the way it has, there were major communication issues at our hub in 2011 (the team that won was one of two that moved in the finals...), and we were heavily impacted by the Texas Regional's decision to not correct the field dimensions (we had a duct tape tube from the gadget tube to the scoring area, which separated from the robot while it scored gizmos . That thing was my baby). Because of that we were eliminated in the semifinals. Disappointing after making it to Nationals the year before.