Bill's Blog, 5/11/11 "Wait, Did he say pool"

[Basel A]

If you make the autonomous mode extraordinarily important, more people do auton. Just give it more points and let incentives do their work!

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Basel A

If you make the autonomous mode extraordinarily important, more people do auton. Just give it more points and let incentives do their work!

Too strong of an incentive and any team that can't get an auto to work suddenly is completely not competitive.

[MrForbes]

and if autonomous is more important, that gives us more motivation to get the robot put together in 5 weeks rather than 6. But it also gives us more motivation to build a "practice bot" and spend 4 months in build/program mode...which some teams do already. I kinda like a break after 6 weeks.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by BJC

Of course, the flip side is getting to watch numerous matches where robots sit still for 40 seconds. 15 seconds is plenty long for that.

Bingo. Even in 2008 when teams just needed to drive straight to get points, there were far too many teams not doing autonomous.

The problem the GDC has is making a game that is good for both week 1 regionals and the championship. This year's game was good for early weeks, but pretty boring at the championship (the diminishing value of tubes, imo, really killed the game when played at the highest level). A longer auto would be good later in the season (pinks 3 uber auto, more 5 ball auto in Breakaway), but would be awful watching 6 robots stand still for 40 seconds week 1.

[Joe G.]

I loved the "end early for bonus points" element of Diabolical Dynamics, and since then, I've always thought dynamic lengths of periods would be an interesting game feature. For example, a 10 second auto, which gets extended to 30 seconds if the robots accomplish a certain task. Or a long autonomous, where the first robot to accomplish a task gets switched to teleop early, while their opponents remain in autonomous for a while longer. If done right, it could give top notch programmers a chance to really shine, while reducing the "boredom factor" from 6 robots that sit still autonomously.

[Billfred]

I've got a better idea...

Standard FRC match cycle is six minutes, start to start--that means that, in a 2:15 match, the field is hot only 37.5% of the time. If those matches went to three full minutes, and the match cycle expanded to seven minutes, then the hot-field percentage goes to 42.9%. 3:15 and seven-minute cycle? 46.4%. For the same amount of time spent doing load-out, reset, load-in, and introductions, you get that much more time of the game being played.

Robot wouldn't run for that long, you say? Imagine if your matches were three minutes, but your robot only ran for two minutes. Just like the real world, you can't run your machinery around the clock--maintenance, repair, slow business, constraints on supply from upstream, operator rest periods, and so on all conspire to limit how much a piece of machinery can actually run. So with a time limit on each robot, you now have an additional layer of coordination necessary to achieve game objectives.

It wouldn't work for all games--Lunacy would be awful with this scenario--but it could afford FIRST some flexibility in scheduling (or even some other objectives; imagine if robots above 110 pounds had a one-second delay in activation in the middle of the match.)

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Billfred

I've got a better idea...

Standard FRC match cycle is six minutes, start to start--that means that, in a 2:15 match, the field is hot only 37.5% of the time. If those matches went to three full minutes, and the match cycle expanded to seven minutes, then the hot-field percentage goes to 42.9%. 3:15 and seven-minute cycle? 46.4%. For the same amount of time spent doing load-out, reset, load-in, and introductions, you get that much more time of the game being played.

Robot wouldn't run for that long, you say? Imagine if your matches were three minutes, but your robot only ran for two minutes. Just like the real world, you can't run your machinery around the clock--maintenance, repair, slow business, constraints on supply from upstream, operator rest periods, and so on all conspire to limit how much a piece of machinery can actually run. So with a time limit on each robot, you now have an additional layer of coordination necessary to achieve game objectives.

It wouldn't work for all games--Lunacy would be awful with this scenario--but it could afford FIRST some flexibility in scheduling (or even some other objectives; imagine if robots above 110 pounds had a one-second delay in activation in the middle of the match.)

I was thinking a related idea. Four robots per alliance - matches of 4:30. Budget four minutes between matches, and each team will have roughly the same number of matches as before. I was also thinking of having one robot off the field at all times, so the field would not be so crowded... teams could also change batteries/etc. while their robot was off the field.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by bduddy

I was thinking a related idea. Four robots per alliance - matches of 4:30. Budget four minutes between matches, and each team will have roughly the same number of matches as before. I was also thinking of having one robot off the field at all times, so the field would not be so crowded... teams could also change batteries/etc. while their robot was off the field.

I wouldn't see that happening with anything remotely resembling a current FRC robot--anything that required the gates would become too dangerous to try to pull on and off while the field was live. That said, locations on the field to park shut-down robots might be a workable solution.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Basel A

If you make the autonomous mode extraordinarily important, more people do auton. Just give it more points and let incentives do their work!

Autonomous was extraordinarily important-not as much as 2008 when you could win a match via auton, but still very very important.

Yet probably less than 50% of teams could reliably score in autonomous.

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

I loved the "end early for bonus points" element of Diabolical Dynamics, and since then, I've always thought dynamic lengths of periods would be an interesting game feature. For example, a 10 second auto, which gets extended to 30 seconds if the robots accomplish a certain task. Or a long autonomous, where the first robot to accomplish a task gets switched to teleop early, while their opponents remain in autonomous for a while longer. If done right, it could give top notch programmers a chance to really shine, while reducing the "boredom factor" from 6 robots that sit still autonomously.

I... I really like this. I want this.

[pandamonium]

Here is my take
wow kind of surprised he came right out and said that they are playing around with everything from field configuration to length of play.


Pool... as in shooting pool 6 pockets?

[Jared Russell]

Two ideas I like:

1. An autonomous mode of variable length. For example: if your robot achieves one task in the first 15 seconds, autonomous mode gets extended by 15 more seconds. Or, take a page out of 2001's playbook, and let teams hit an "E-Stop" to manually transition from auto to teleop, giving them incremental bonuses the longer they stay in auto mode (would only be realistic with rules/a field that prevents hostile contact during auto mode). It is important that we don't unilaterally install a 30+ second autonomous period, simply because nobody wants to look at stationary robots for that long.

2. Slightly smaller fields (say, 20x40) and 2 vs. 2. Design so that each regional/division can host two fields that alternate play. Less down time, more matches for each team, easier to see what is going on/scout (3 vs. 3 can get hectic), and more flexibility in fitting the fields into a venue.

[Ryan Caldwell]

I think its interesting he said Winnow the pool and not Narrow down
win·now (wn)
1.
a. To separate the chaff from (grain) by means of a current of air.
b. To rid of undesirable parts.
2. To blow (chaff) off or away.
3. To blow away; scatter.
4. To blow on; fan: a breeze winnowing the tall grass.

Aim high with a industrial fan behind the goal?

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

This year's game was good for early weeks, but pretty boring at the championship (the diminishing value of tubes, imo, really killed the game when played at the highest level).

I found the opposite to be true. At early regionals/districts, there were too many no-shows, boxes-on-wheels, and incomplete programs/robots to be terribly entertaining; when the really good robots were winnowed out, the games became more exciting.
I do agree with your notion of the tubes becoming less important as the minibots became more prevalent, though.

[Refresh]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

Pool... as in shooting pool 6 pockets?

that's what I was thinking. It could be kind of like lunacy with the stations in the middle of the field and the four stations at the end.