Team Update #10

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by lineskier

...Man do I miss 2v2, back when you could tell what was actually going on in a game.

The soft spot in my heart is the old 1v1v1...

[FRC4ME]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

After the unintentionally defensive game "Breakaway", which followed the best FIRST game ever (abbreviated as "Lunacy"), I assume that the GDC wished to make the game a real shootout, which I enjoy.

Lunacy was my personal favorite game as well, not so much playing it as designing for it. Drive systems and ball manipulators have been perfected over the years but Lunacy provided a different challenge. When else did you see teams experimenting with propellers, gyroscopes, and weight shifters? When else did you see closed-loop traction control algorithms?

"Surprise! This year's game takes place on the moon." was the GDC's best idea ever. Until the water game , I doubt we'll ever see so much creativity and innovation in one year again.

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

The soft spot in my heart is the old 1v1v1...

Aww, come on now. Cheering for/with your alliance is the best part of a regional.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by 340x4xLife

Do you think the GDC is reading what teams are planning to do? or do you think they are basing most of it on Q&A questions...

That reminded me of something...in 2003, Truck Town built this, and FIRST replied with this questionable interpretation (discussed here). It's entirely possible that FIRST issued an update that just happened to call out that robot's most unique feature, without having seen the picture...but somehow I doubt it. So it wouldn't be unprecedented that FIRST staff are reacting to a particular robot design revealed on ChiefDelphi. I just desperately want to believe that FIRST wouldn't have reacted the same way had they seen Beatty Hammond's 2002 robot before the end of the season—after all, it had a game-killing design, and it was fantastic.

The worst part of that 2003 update was the date: it was in March, after the end of the build season.

So, in terms of the 2011 update, FIRST has done worse in the past. This time they gave the teams some time to correct the problem, and explicitly added a rule (instead of muddying the waters with a dubious reading of the rules). I'm not sure if that deserves some sort of faint praise, but either way, I wish they wouldn't do things like this.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

. A really good rampbot in 07 would get propelled into the Einstein field

Anyone else wish making Einstein was this easy?

[Molten]

So...you can play defense on your own, but you can't work as a team. That makes perfect sense for a team game. I guess FIRST is catching onto how to get rid of defense strategies. Get rid of teams. I usually try to be understanding on most of their decisions, but this is the most ridiculous ruling I've heard from them in a while. If GDC is reading this, you should have an idea to eliminate defense as that seems to be your goal. Afterall, I remember in 2007 that the most cooperation I saw was on the defense side of cutting the opponents off from scoring long chains. I guess this is about 4 years worth of steps backward.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Love this update!

I was dreading the 'score first then shut down all scoring' tactic, because it commits one of the worst sins of FIRST: It renders the game *boring*.

I know, I know, some people will disagree with me on what does and does not constitute 'boring', but I think of things from the perspective of the casual spectator. It MUST be exciting to non-participant spectators (e.g. friends, family, classmates, and invitees of those on the teams) in order to fulfill it's mandate of changing the culture.

I think a casual spectator would agree that the Miracle on Ice was one of the greatest games of hockey this planet will ever see, and people don't really talk about the first 50 minutes... it's all about the last ten when not a single goal was scored.

[SteveGPage]

Well there goes three pages of my play book. I guess I can understand this from a GDC point of view, especially blocking us from doing what I called "Hotel California" - you could check-in, but you could never leave. The lane to the Human player could be effectively cut off by two Robots. If you got a really good scoring robot to go into one of those lanes to pick up a tube, with two bots, you could keep them there for the rest of the match. Also, "Home, (not so) Sweet Home" was tossed out. Get the score high enough over their score, and set up a "picket fence" of three bots to shut down their scoring zone, and then bolt for the towers at the end game.

At least "The Italian Job" play is still valid - well, at least until Update #11!