301 points! and could have done more

[AaronEllsworth]

As a dad of Team 2403 I have to weigh in on this conversation. Being the 3rd pick on the 1st seed alliance was simply amazing to me. We weren’t good enough to lead an alliance, nor good enough to be picked on any of the other alliances, but we did have enough skills to nicely compliment the best 2 robots in the competition. I agree that the score of this match can’t fairly be compared to the scores of other matches played with defense. I don’t understand why that is important except for bragging rights. So who out there has the highest score in a match?
But I totally disagree with the other sports comparisons and here is why: football, basketball, soccer, tennis, etc. all have ONE game piece and your opponent is really the only thing keeping you from scoring infinitely. In aerial assist, each team has a game piece, and much of the challenge of the game remains in the shooting and passing and ball handling, but most importantly both alliances can play offense AT THE SAME TIME, since they each have a ball. So this became more of a relay race. I thought it was awesome and should be encouraged, and given the point value in the rules for ball passing this seems to be more in the spirit of what the gamemakers envisioned for this game, but maybe that’s just me. The second assist is worth 20 points, which is twice as big as any other scoring event on the field.
In many of the other matches, it happened that a ‘bot was lined up to take a shot only to be bumped at just the right moment to miss the shot and then the robots have to go scrambling to pick up the loose game piece; that was heart-wrenching and difficult to watch. Basketball doesn’t allow that kind of fouling, but the rules allow it here. I personally think the game would be much better without that kind of defense.
Also, this was a fascinating match that really helps answer the question of how many points are really achievable in a 2:15 game. Could we have executed everything flawlessly and a little faster and gotten 360 points? That would be amazingly fun to try. Also, the blue alliance put 180 points on the board and everyone was cheering for them to reach 200! It was awesome!