Teams breaking the game

[EricH]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Anyone have the game rules from this year, or perhaps would be able to enlighten me with a quick explanation of the game for that year and the significance of this particular strategy?

http://www.technokats.org/history-project/

It's the 1997 game; open the Game Rules folder and grab the PDF of the Game Rules. Essentially, once 71 capped the top, everybody else could forget about doing the same. This gave them a bunch of doublers as well as the first tiebreaker.

[CalTran]

Huh. I wonder why there hasn't been a rule stating "Whatever Team 71 designs, shall be deemed illegal and require a redesign to level the playing field" (Hint: The above statement is dripping with sarcasm.)

[coalhot]

Originally Posted by sgreco

190 had a "breaking the game" strategy is 2008, where instead of driving around the track with the track balls, they would move to the side of one lane, pickup a ball, swing it around the center divider, then hurdle it again. (hurdle was the game term for a track ball passing over the overpass for those of you who are not familiar.). Their strategy was deemed partially illegal because track balls were required to touch the ground after a hurdle AND not be possessed by the robot. So they had to drop the ball, then pick it up again, which proved rather difficult.

Long story short, the strategy didn't really work because of some subtle rule interpretations and changes, but it was one of the more extravagant attempts to break the game. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's also one of the more well designed robots I've seen from a mechanical standpoint.

(I'll look for pictures).

Simple way to beat that strategy: steal the ball when their not looking!

[Andy Grady]

Originally Posted by EricH

http://www.technokats.org/history-project/

It's the 1997 game; open the Game Rules folder and grab the PDF of the Game Rules. Essentially, once 71 capped the top, everybody else could forget about doing the same. This gave them a bunch of doublers as well as the first tiebreaker.

Love this thread!

I think 71 holds the record for what I would consider "game breaks"

1997 - Capped goal in 6 seconds (we timed it), game over every time. Wildstang and Greenville were the only teams who really stood at shot at beating them, and they didn't.

2001 - Beatty balances goals from off the bridge. Downright unstoppable.

2002 - 3 Goals: plop, walk, done.


The closest teams to breaking the game otherwise would be 469 in Breakaway...if they won championship, I would have said absolutely...but you could beat them.

You could also make a very good case for 1114 during overdrive. In a game where you couldn't play defense it may have been the most dominating robot I have ever seen.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

Last year's VEX game had one robot that could perform a perfect chokehold. 2W, from Gladstone Secondary here in Vancouver, could expand and form a wall blocking off just over half the goals. Assuming they had a partner who could score 100% of the points that were exclusively available to their alliance following the "block", 2W was mathematically guaranteed a win.

In my nine years of youth robotics I've never seen a robot break a game like 2W did Gateway. I know most of you are FIRSTies and don't pay much attention to VRC, but go watch that video that Jason linked to. It's not a dramatic robot, but when combined with a good scoring partner, it was amazing.

[Andy Grady]

Also...

Have you ever noticed that some of the coolest robots in the history of FIRST have been some of the most controversial?

FIRST expends a ton of effort to plug up holes for breaking the game, but when a team figures out how to do it, its a stroke of brilliance. I remember how grumpy some people were in Breakaway when they saw 469's robot. In my opinion, it was one of the coolest robots in the history of the game. I hope we have more opportunities to see amazing robots that just defy rules and take down competitions. I call it, creativity!

Edit: Defy rules isn't the wording I was looking for. Legally work the rules, is better!

[Phyrxes]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

In my nine years of youth robotics I've never seen a robot break a game like 2W did Gateway. I know most of you are FIRSTies and don't pay much attention to VRC, but go watch that video that Jason linked to. It's not a dramatic robot, but when combined with a good scoring partner, it was amazing.

We ended up playing 2W in the division finals, they pushed our wall bot like it was nothing.

[StevenB]

I'm going to stretch back as far as I can, at the risk of making some subjective judgments. It was a long time ago and I was young (in elementary school), so maybe some older folks with a better memory can fill in the gaps.

In 1994, the game involved collecting soccer balls and placing them up in a tower goal in the center of the field. One team stuffed all their balls into a box, and then dropped the entire box onto the goal, which effectively prevented any other teams from scoring.

I felt that the 1995 game was "broken", in that the dominant strategy employed by many teams was probably not what the game designers had in mind. The manual reads, "Points are scored for balls which are thrown, tossed, pushed, passed, etc." through a football goalpost at the top of a ramp. My guess is that the intent was for balls to be primarily thrown and tossed, but teams realized they could hold on to the ball and pull it back and forth through the goal to rack up lots of points. There was only one goal, so whoever got into the scoring position first was almost guaranteed to win the match unless others could quickly dislodge them.

I've heard that team 121's 1997 robot was designed to intentionally tip other robots over, which was explicitly allowed at the time:

Originally Posted by 1997 Rulebook, T5

Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, or entanglement of opponents' robots are not in the spirit of The Competition and will not be allowed. Turning over an opponent's robot is not robot is not considered damaging and will be allowed.

They didn't win, but we did get a new rule in the rulebook next year:

Originally Posted by 1998 Rulebook, V5

Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over or entanglement of opponents' robots are not in the spirit of The Competition and will not be allowed.

Ah, the old days.