Value of Coopertition

[theun4gven]

Originally Posted by GBK

I would like to point out that the name of last years game was Rebound Rumble. The graphics for the game were basketballs. The year before was Logo Motion. The challenge is to build a robot to play the game, with the goal of winning.
If you do not attempt to build a robot to play the game are you trying to meet the challenge or are you trying to disrupt others that did attempt to meet the challenge.
I understand that resources limit what a team can do. But I have seen teams with very limited resources do well.
Trying and failing is one thing but not trying is another.

I would like to point out that there are many excellent defensivemen in the NBA who rarely put up points. These players would not meet your definition of meeting the challenge as they are actively attempting to disrupt the other team from meeting their challenge. It would be easy to get nitpicky and point out that, according to the name of the game, the challenge of the game is to recover missed shots, not to make them. This could lead one to the conclusion that the point of the game was defense.

The problem with your statement, as others have also noted above, is that your are defining what is important and what constitutes the challenge. First you say that the point is "to play the game, with the goal of winning." Then you are essentially defining "meeting the challenge" as scoring baskets. That statement does not follow the previous. Playing the game constitutes much more than just scoring baskets. To win the scoring portion your team needs to score more than the other team. This does not in any way imply that all robots must attempt to only score as many as possible. Scoring one basket and keeping your opponent from scoring any is a viable strategy and I don't believe you can argue that this is not playing the game.

This year FIRST decided that winning would be worth 2 points with balancing also worth up to 2 points. I would argue that this statement can be seen as showing coopertition is equally as important as winning the scoring portion.

Essentially FIRST told you how match scoring would work, how ranking would work, and what needed to be accomplished to obtain these scores. It is up to the teams to decide how they want to accomplish these goals. Meeting the challenge is whatever the team determines it to be.