Aerial Assist and Ill Will

[Ian Curtis]

I am excited to see Aerial Assist played on the field this year. It's very cool that the GDC chose a new gameplay mechanic to try out.

At the same time, I am worried that only 1 ball per alliance has the real potential to breed ill will. FRC teams for the most part do not build robots that are good at scoring points. (2011 OPR distribution) Having watched many FRC matches, if I had a penny for every second I've seen a robot try to acquire a game piece and come up empty, I would be a rich man. Let's say you're on an alliance with two BLTs and one perennial powerhouse. If the BLTs can't POSSESS the ball well, chances are giving your powerhouse exclusive access to the ball will score the most points. But if the BLTs have mechanisms they want to try/show off, this game plan is obviously not going to fly with them. An additional factor is the damage done if a ball gets stuck in a faulty mechanism.

There are always some threads every year where people complain about coaching. Given that there is only one ball per alliance in teleop and scoring points actually requires coordination, the personalities and persuasive skills of the drive team will be critical. I can only imagine that these threads will be more frequent and more heated.

On top of this, there is a non-negligible portion of people involved with FRC that already hold ill will against high performing robots and their for a variety of reasons. This opinion is not held by many people active on CD, but you don't have to look far at an event to find people that feel this way. Might this get worse if they perceive a team as being ballhogs?

The GDC's solution was to make ASSISTS the secondary sort, which alleviates some of this problem. Is it enough? Am I worried about nothing?