[FAF] - June 28, 2013 - Game Design Committee

[Caleb Sykes]

Sometimes, when looking at a complaint about scoring values, it is useful to look at the team's context. Team 3289 competed at the Utah regional, they went 10-4 overall. The lost one qual match to the Hawaiian Kids (enough said, you guys are awesome). In their other 3 losing matches, they played against 1891, the best high-level climber there.

Believe me, I know how it feels to lose matches because there are other robots that can do things that your robot cannot, it stinks. Afterward, all that I think is what ifs.
What if we had spent our time designing a minibot deployment system.
What if we had had different wheels so that we could balance more easily.
What if we had built a climber instead of a floor pick-up device.

This is the one statement that I have trouble with:

If the side events score is decreased, maybe we can get back to all-around robots vs. specialized "point bots".

Personally, I would much rather see 10 FCSs, 10 ground pick-up bots, 10 3rd-level climbers, 10 cyclers, and 10 defenders that are all specialized than 50 all-around so-so robots when I go to a competition. Then, when we all play, it will become apparent what the strongest strategy is.

Engineering is optimizing and trade-offs. FRC is the same. Choose the best strategy that your team can manage, then optimize until you run out of ideas, brainstorm some more, and optimize again. If the GDC wanted, they could make games where only one thing happens, and we would all become excellent at optimizing. But they don't, because they want us to make trade-offs.

I hope the best for you guys, 3289. You appear to have done well this year. My one suggestion would be to spend 1 more day in the early build season analyzing the game and determining trade-offs.

EDIT: Pault added in 3289's context, beat me to it