2013 Game?

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by qzrrbz

Wouldn't one robot cooperating be similar to the sound of one hand clapping? A Zen game!

Yeah I guess it would. I am searching for the robot equivalent of having to get a dresser up a flight of stairs. I once had to do it by myself. It was the longest hour of my life as moved the giant dresser one step at a time. It was so big, I could not grab it properly. It was not that heavy cause I took everything out but if I had a second person helping me, it would have been a 3 minute task.

So I am thinking of a robot task similar in theme where one robot could do it by itself but it will be very difficult. The crowd reaction could be, "that robot is going to actually try it by itself?" Maybe a dead lift of an elongated version of the 2002 goals? So one robots CG would be far away from the goal's CG.

Originally Posted by lorem3k

It could be done by awarding bonus seeding points to one alliance if they score a certain amount of points on their own goal. This would also add the strategic element of deciding whether or not to risk their victory by scoring points for the other alliance. It would be very interesting to see that play out.

That is another idea, if an alliances have a minimum score, the opposite team gets cooperation points.

It would encourage us as a community to help every robot to play the game. However, i think its a sad scenario if your alliance can't score and you need your opponents to score for you. Its kinda like the AYSO soccer mercy rules. I would feel even more bummed out if it happened to be. Ideally it would be that alliances won't play defense until the minimum scores are achieved.

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

That is another idea, if an alliances have a minimum score, the opposite team gets cooperation points.

It would encourage us as a community to help every robot to play the game. However, i think its a sad scenario if your alliance can't score and you need your opponents to score for you. Its kinda like the AYSO soccer mercy rules. I would feel even more bummed out if it happened to be. Ideally it would be that alliances won't play defense until the minimum scores are achieved.

My idea isn't quite "if the opposing alliance has a certain amount of points, you get coopertition points", because in that case, if you were playing against a strong alliance you could just let them reach that score by themselves. I was thinking that one alliance would NEED to contribute a certain amount to their opponents' score to earn the bonus.

I do like the idea of a capture-the-flag style game, it would need an interesting field design though. A completely flat 27'x54' field without any sort of "base" that the flag is in would be somewhat awkward to defend.

[Savvy578]

They did say something about better visibility too.

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by lorem3k

My idea isn't quite "if the opposing alliance has a certain amount of points, you get coopertition points", because in that case, if you were playing against a strong alliance you could just let them reach that score by themselves. I was thinking that one alliance would NEED to contribute a certain amount to their opponents' score to earn the bonus.

I do like the idea of a capture-the-flag style game, it would need an interesting field design though. A completely flat 27'x54' field without any sort of "base" that the flag is in would be somewhat awkward to defend.

Oh ok. I was thinking sort of the same thing, that an elite alliance needs to score for the other alliance too if they want the bonus. That having a 100-0 score would yield only the QP points of a win.


I am kinda reluctant about capture the flag, because in 2002 it was a battle between drivetrains with the highest gear reductions and traction possible. It inspiring for me to witness such great engineering but to go through that again with so many people knowing the tricks from that year would be grueling.

In 2002, I like teams like 60 that picked up the goals. So I was thinking it would be neat to see two robots trying to dead lift a massive goal for the cooperation bonus. The rules would prohibit two robots from the same alliance touching the goal. Then an elite team could figure out a way to do the process solo. like using an alliance partner as a counterweight.

In eliminations, two of the goals would be provided, one for each alliance.

[Dr. Shocker]

I would be interested in either a game with more contact, or control of more pieces being allowed. I think it would probably be a lot more exciting for non-FIRST spectators to watch with more robot n robot action, or with game pieces flying everywhere, instead of being so limited.

[JohnSchneider]

Lets make the field a little easier to traverse as well. Box bots were next to useless this year as they couldn't lower the bridge or go over the barrier.

Last years game is an awesome example of how an even field allows box bots to be useful. 2010 wasn't too bad either since you could place them in the defensive zone from the beginning.

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

Lets make the field a little easier to traverse as well. Box bots were next to useless this year as they couldn't lower the bridge or go over the barrier.

Last years game is an awesome example of how an even field allows box bots to be useful. 2010 wasn't too bad either since you could place them in the defensive zone from the beginning.

If they keep following the same pattern they have been for the past few years, next year will have a flat field

[Quantam]

I've heard from some other members on my team that they heard Dean Kamen himself point some students in an aqueous direction for next years competition

[StAxis]

Based on looking at where the inspiration for the games seems to have been coming from such as 2011 vs 2007 and 2012 vs 2006, as well as bridges from last years FTC game I believe that next years game will probably (and hopefully) have some combination of the following:

1. Ramps (FTC 2012 game)
2. Non circular game pieces of different sizes (FRC 2005 & FTC 2012)
3. FIRST carts (like the ones used in Lunacy and several games before that, been awhile since we've seen them)

I really hope it's something with lots of boxes or triangles, I really like the PVC idea too! As for the high visibility statements, maybe they're going to not have walls on the side or have some weird driver stations? Only kinect driven would be too hard for rookies I'd think, but whatever it is I'm sure it will be awesome, maybe they will combine co-op with minibots too so you could use them to score like in 2011 but on some kind of co-op task get ONE seeding point (two was too much...) and of course it would have to be something else other than climbing poles.

[gyroscopeRaptor]

One item I'd like to see addressed is with the bridges. Don't get me wrong, the bridges were an incredible endgame. The problem I have is that the "cheap field" schematics that 98% of teams use in their practice spaces had bridges nowhere near the same properties as the official field bridges. I'm going to request and hope that the next field to use any sort of "dynamic" field elements have the cheap field versions be much closer to the real field's properties.

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by gyroscopeRaptor

One item I'd like to see addressed is with the bridges. Don't get me wrong, the bridges were an incredible endgame. The problem I have is that the "cheap field" schematics that 98% of teams use in their practice spaces had bridges nowhere near the same properties as the official field bridges. I'm going to request and hope that the next field to use any sort of "dynamic" field elements have the cheap field versions be much closer to the real field's properties.

I agree with this. This difference kind of screwed us over for balancing, we had no troubles balancing the plywood bridge, but the heavy plastic ones at competition were a different story.

[theawesome1730]

I want to see a game where each of the 3 robots must perform a specific task in order to achieve the game's goals. Each robot can only be ONE of the specialized options. This is gonna make alliance matching and seeds nearly impossible though

[EricH]

Originally Posted by theawesome1730

I want to see a game where each of the 3 robots must perform a specific task in order to achieve the game's goals. Each robot can only be ONE of the specialized options. This is gonna make alliance matching and seeds nearly impossible though

2004 comes close.

You could herd the small balls around, (and pray that your alliance had a good human player). A few tried to catch and unload them straight from the drops.

You could hang from the bar. A half-dozen robots played bar defense as their entire game. Just about everybody had some sort of bar hanger.

You could play for the doubler balls. Most robots that did this, though, also went for the small balls.

At least one world champion did all three--internal ball hopper, doubler-grabbing arms, and a fast-winching hook for the bar.

And, as a strategy nightmare... doubler beats small, hanger beats doubler, small beats hanger.

[lucasking94]

Since FIRST robotics has conquered tubes (2011) and balls (2012) it would only seem logical to use something like a frisbee in 2013 or another very different object.

[Anupam Goli]

Ooh Ooh! We should so see something with stacking bins. Stacking bins filled with Hexagonal wire mesh game pieces. And playground balls. Bring all of them back!