Aerial Assist and Ill Will

[Chi Meson]

Originally Posted by sircedric4

For instance, lets take a suboptimal team's perspective. We have spent minimum $9000 to compete in this regional. We have spent the same six weeks of late nights, hard work and stress as any other team out there and here comes a team that tells us to play defense only. Sure my mechanism is slow and janky but it does allow us to score once a round. My student's parents are out in the crowd and I want to show off what I have been putting the late nights working on off. To be able to win I cant do that. 50% of the teams at the regional are in this situation. In the past there were other game pieces to play, now there aren't.

You make a good point and I can understand your position, but I would encourage all teams that would be in this situation to realize that the point of the game is not just to shoot. This game is about passing between robots. If a team spent 6 weeks to make a sub par shooting device, then they have not spent the build season wisely.

A pass/receive mechanism is much simpler, and ultimately worth more points. Any robot that spends their build season focused on a 50% successful catching mechanism should see eliminations, repeatedly.

I would venture to say that all strong teams will be looking to maximize the the capabilities of all their alliance partners.

Maybe I'm just too optimistic

[Canon reeves]

One thing that indefinitely plagues our team, and many others, is ambition. While not inherently bad in and off itself, to much can cap logistics and can lead to a team trying to do it all, especially the lower class teams, like my own. many people fail to see the big picture in first competitions, I have been a voice of reason within my team so that when my team says lets shoot and feed well when we have no experience except for one very poor year that ended up being simply a robot that could drive. I believe while yes teams will try to do it all, and many fail, soon they will realize strategic advantages. If you have three box on wheel robots against three high end teams, they can still make a difference, no they won't win, but there is only one ball? I think as a regional progresses the maturity of the newer teams will too, teams will soon learn that they can't win if they don't work together, and the teams that believe they have something to prove and don't care of their alliances agendas, they will fall behind and eventually learn. So while in the beginning there will be some negative things happen, over all I believe by the end of the season the people of FIRST will have a new attitude towards working together, one for the better. Maybe I'm wrong, but thats just how I see it.

[rsegrest]

In describing this game to a fellow teacher who has followed FIRST and our games for the past 5 years his first comment was, 'Hmm, finally getting back to gracious professionalism and teamwork are they?'

This game is all about team work between alliance partners. I agree with BedHed and the other posters regarding this game being all about strategy. We are one of those 'mid-level' teams who usually make it into the top 12 - 15 at our regional and into quals but never seem to make it to finals. We know that we are our own limitator in terms of design, ideas, etc. We fully recognize the importance of strategy in all our games both on the field and off and it is because of that willingness to do what is necessary for the alliance that we have both hurt ourselves and helped ourselves over the years (hurt because we forfeited ranking points to play a particular role for an alliance strategy and helped because teams knew that we would do whatever was best for a strategy regardless of what we 'wanted to show off').

I think that is what the GDC is really shooting for this year without calling it co-opertition. This game is all about working together to complete a goal and serves to (hopefully) teach our rookies as well as remind some of our veterans how to effectively strategize with other teams.

As far as 'ill will', let me state that we are not perfect, either my team or myself, but after 7 years of FIRST I believe that the game is the game and how you handle your emotions about match outcomes is an indicator not of how much you care about FIRST and your robot but instead an indicator of your emotional maturity and ability to see yourself and your robot rationally and realistically. And as far as this game goes...alliance strategy has never been more important.