[FRC Blog] Kickoff Broadcast and Game Hint Redux

[Jengles]

In some sports (one being hockey), scoring a goal and having an assist are both counted the same as a point. This demonstrates for the importance of not only scoring for your own team but also inter team cooperation. FIRST constantly stresses working together such as the theme of gracious professionalism. This idea of working together was prevalent in "Rebound Rumble".

Obvious examples include Coopertition points for balancing on the bridge with the other team (these points did not affect the score of the match only the seeding ranks). The use of the Coopertition points to determine rankings though upset a lot of people because it did not always properly represent teams and their robot's capabilities. The game also allowed for balancing with your own team as an end game way to get more match points. There were still more chances to work with your teammates in this game. There was in the autonomous period, what became the common practice of reversing balls out of one's robot and into another robot for more autonomous points. And during the teleop period, some teams had robots that were so good at shooting their biggest problem was they would score all of the basketballs on their side and have no more to shoot. They solved this problem with teamwork by having robots go shoot balls across the field for them, thus allowing them to have a bigger supply to shoot.

In "Ultimate Ascent", because of all the hate of the Coopertition points they were removed. This was a huge blow to the attempt to teach students to work with even those you’re competing against to become better. The game itself even lost all the sense of teamwork that was heavily promoted the year prior. In its teleop, the way to maximize points was to have all the robots go their separate ways in order to shoot from different locations. Even the end game was a solitary play; it went from balancing with a teammate to, "I have this side of the pyramid you have yours, don't get in my way". This is not the attitude that FIRST is trying to condone; therefore, they will try to make teamwork an important aspect of the game.

All of this is why I think that this year they will make assists equal in value to ‘goals’ (or whatever scoring is this year) in respect to match points. Coopertition still won’t return because of popular dislike of them though. By doing this they will promote working together, but also allow some teams to have a chance of winning by scoring alone if their teammates are of no use. If this is true then the hint interpretation which shows the records of assists for various sports would seem plausible. If that interpretation is plausible, then the game this year would logically follow to being hockey. Also the fact that this year is the United States 75th anniversary for ice hockey, helps further the reason why it would be a good year to make a hockey game. It’s just a theory. A game theory.