The Dark Side of the 2013 game

[Hoover]

Last year in Rebound Rumble, the Coopertition Bridge offered a way for alliances to help each other on the field. It was a real crowd pleaser when it happened.

It offered a bit of a chokehold too. We were a rookie team last year, bad shooting percentage (almost non-existent), but we could climb a bridge. In post season play we actually made it to rank 2 one time by climbing the Coopertition bridge more times than anyone else, so it may have been weighted a bit heavily. (we were 96/99 in our district in regulation play!)

But this year there is no such way to cooperate on the field. And what I am seeing is, in elimination matches the game is getting a bit rough. There is a lot more bumping then, pinning, *brushing by* a robot which is sticking partly out of the tower cage to make it miss, and even some occasional robot toppling. Yellow cards. There are interactions which are not for the faint of heart. You hope you built your robot tough enough to be ready for the next match.

I am hearing the comments in the stand, in contrast to last year, things that can't be repeated here.

Since this is only our second year, what are some of the long timers take on this considering past years? Is there any cooperation action they could have added to the game?

[Akash Rastogi]

Even I'm relatively new to FRC still (06/07 season), but I think you'd need to watch even older match footage to see really rough match play

I actually love that this year finally allows for rough and defensive play. More so than the last few seasons. I love it! Imagine this without bumpers, oh how awesome that would be.

As for the coopertition/cooperation stuff: I was not a fan of that last year. It did not always allow for proper seeding of the best robots in the top and it isn't fun when your ranking depends on your opponent being able to balance with you or not.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Even I'm relatively new to FRC still (06/07 season), but I think you'd need to watch even older match footage to see really rough match play

I actually love that this year finally allows for rough and defensive play. More so than the last few seasons. I love it! Imagine this without bumpers, oh how awesome that would be.

05 still allowed defensive wedges. This led to a lot more flipped robots.

04's step saw a fair number of robots that would get shoved off.

03 was full on autonomous ramming on top of a ramp.

Bumpers? What are those?

This ain't rough guys. Our bot took a bit of a beating in Orlando but nothing like the damage robots used to take.

[Steven Donow]

The past few tears, defense has always seemed relatively light compared to this year. As Aakash said, older FRC is A LOT more brutal than even this year. I love this years game and think the amount of defense allowed is great,and very excellent for forming the game's own "meta game"(pro League of Legends fan here). This overall leads to a much more dynamic game.

I loved the coopertition bridge last year, but I don't see any way something similar could be used in this game.

As for negative comments in the stand,that'll happen every year no matter what, and sadly its an unavoidable inevitability.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

05 still allowed defensive wedges. This led to a lot more flipped robots.

04's step saw a fair number of robots that would get shoved off.

03 was full on autonomous ramming on top of a ramp.

Bumpers? What are those?

This ain't rough guys. Our bot took a bit of a beating in Orlando but nothing like the damage robots used to take.

I remember needing to take a sawzall to 1075's 2004 frame after a head-on fullspeed autonomous collision at the Wonderland Invitational, because the frame bent so far the wheels couldn't turn any more. We had an awesome auto, and defending it just meant "ram them full-speed".

1075 in 2003 though, had bumpers before they were cool. Full-speed auto ramp ramming. Fun times. I miss the days when your robot fell apart if you didn't build it to take a beating.

[DjScribbles]

Coopertition was a great showcase of FIRST values, but it really hurt elims play. While it was great for newer/less-capable teams to make it into elims, I speculate that very few of the teams that ended up as alliance captains without effective scoring found much success; since the alliance captain and first pick are the primary scorers on an alliance, if the captain is a defender w/balance they have a severe handicap. I wouldn't mind if co-op added a second order sort criteria (sort robots based on QS, then co-op, then auton) or a fractional amount of QS, but I like this years system better.

A lot of the reason defense is so aggressive this year is because of the open field; not the lack of coopertition. Last year the bump limited many robots to primarily one side of the field (bridge traversal worked but wasn't good for running back and forth). This years game encourages alliances to leave their own turf for easy game-pieces, and the game pieces don't obstruct traffic when they litter the floor.

I personally like the visceral game play (as long as nobody gets hurt), it adds a lot to the action.

[jee7s]

I wouldn't call defense "the dark side"...that sounds far too ominous.

My experience goes back to 1998, when there weren't even alliances much less coopertition. Oh, and no bumpers either.

I can remember seeing steel framed robots designed to punish. I remember teams rewinding motors to get the performance they wanted. I remember collisions so hard that steel welds broke and bolts went flying.

FIRST has come a long way since then. And, yes, I've observed that newer teams have been surprised when good defense shows up. But, if it's clean defense (no contact inside the frame perimeter, no long distance ramming, etc) then it's part of the game.

Speaking specifically about my team (FRC 2789), we play hard stifling defense. Heck, we've cleanly played defense under our opponent's pyramid. The bot has dents and scratches galore. And yes, there is risk to this strategy. We've accidentally committed penalties, we've had disagreements with referees, we've had arguments with teams. But, after actually looking at the rules and discussing the situation, emotions tend to die down and things generally go in our favor. Oh, and we've been picked by a #1 and a #2 seed, and been Finalists and Winners this year.

So, just because it lowers the score, don't think defense is all bad. Actually, it can lead to some more exciting matches when a good defender can shut down a good scorer by exploiting a weakness.

All part of the game.

[Shane 2429]

Defense is beautiful this year it allows for younger teams and teams with less resources to out play,out defend older more expirenced team that arnt used to having to think multi demensionaly.forcing these teams to take defense into mind and strategy that was close to non existent last year

[Jared Russell]

There were some nasty collisions in the pre-bumper, pre-red card era, but I've seen some collisions this year that are just as violent as in the 2002-2007 heyday of defense. That's what you get with a relatively wide open field (to <28" tall robots) and a proliferation of 6+ motor, high traction, and inexpensive 2 speed drives. The drive train arms race is at an all time high level of escalation.

[connor.worley]

I don't feel that the defense has been too heavy this year, especially considering that penalties have been very harsh.

[2789_B_Garcia]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I actually love that this year finally allows for rough and defensive play. More so than the last few seasons. I love it!

We are a 5 year team, and are still in the process of building our program. We often dream big in terms of robot design and either run out of time, don't have enough mentors, deal with materials sponsors pulling out, etc.

Needless to say, we don't always wind up with the robot we want, but try our best to make due with what we have. One of our team's strongest suit is our ability to read and break down the rules to make the best out of our competition experience. This plays out by us determining the best defensive strategies allowed by the rules.

As JEE7S said, we play stifling defense, and we play it proudly. In the past three years we have consistently either been in a picking position or been picked for elims, and as we have seen, matches in elims have fundamentally different dynamics than matches in quals. Defense is part of the game, and as someone else pointed out on another thread, these competitions aren't engineering exhibitions, they're games with strategies, and as with any game, regardless of what mechanisms we have, we will play as graciously, professionally and competitively as we can

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

I don't feel that the defense has been too heavy this year, especially considering that penalties have been very harsh.

I think a lot of it has to do with where you're playing.

In MAR, specifically the portion of which that once would have been The Philadelphia Regional, Defense this year is something else. On one hand, it's really nice to finally be able to 'escort' a robot around the field without fear of penalties as long as you steer clear of the protected zones, but on the opposite, fixing your robot after every match (especially Eliminations) gets old really fast.

In our 20 or so matches played at Chestnut Hill, I think 6 or 7 of them ended with robots tipped over or otherwise immobile from 'legal' contact. A few teams got rammed into the pyramid in such a way that they were more or less high centered on the 10pt bar which was really, really interesting to see. IIRC, in one match of our qualification matches, two of three robots had been rendered immobile by the 1 minute mark.

[Trent B]

As someone involved in FRC since 08, it doesn't seem to be any rougher than the average, the only aspect that seems to add to it is the pyramid.

In one instance we pushed an opposing bot out of our way so we could shoot and they got stuck on the pyramid but I believe we got penalized for that as well.

There was a lot more opportunity for carnage in breakaway with the potential to flip bots near the bump.

[mrmummert]

In 06 bumpers were introduced and were optional. Our robot from that year
still has a bent rear frame from taking a bad hit but it wasn't bad enough to
keep it from running. Agressive defense has its good and bad points.

[apples000]

Back in the day, our team built a robot with a ridiculous steel frame and absolutely destroyed another team's weak aluminum frame. We ended up on their alliance, and we took a sawzall, some sheet aluminum, and box tubing and completely rebuilt their frame in about 1 hr. Even in rough play, GP was still there.