What was good about Aerial Assist?

[SkittlesCharge]

Taking a bit of inspiration from this thread, what did you like about Aerial Assist?

[nuggetsyl]

It ending.

[221Sarahborg]

I thought the focus of working together as an actual alliance compared to last year was really good. Last year the teams were on their own, build the quickest shooter and you'll win, build a consistent climber (who can or can't dump) and you'll win kind of attitude. As an alliance last year you had to talk about who shoots from where and what side you'll climb on if you do and if you're on your way to reloading and someone on the other alliance is trying to shoot you can bump them out of the way.
Whereas this year you needed to really strategize and work together and make sure everyone is doing something and playing their parts to win the match, defending whenever they didn't have that single game piece. It also helped you realize what teams were best organized with strategy and working with alliances to who would make better alliance members if you were to be able to pick.
It wasn't my favorite game, but the working together aspect was a lot better and game more of an alliance feel to it in a way. It still frustrated me a lot when teams wouldn't pay attention to what our strategy was or if we had to change it spur of the moment they wouldn't listen or cooperate. I'm still glad it's at an end, though.

[Jibsy]

The strategy. The value of an effective strategy and driving ability in eliminations this year was huge - and there was enough diversity and development throughout the season to keep things interesting.

In quals, due to limited time, chemistry, and robot ability, putting together a strategy can be less than exciting; however, when elims hit - it's a whole new game.

[Cam877]

I like how for once alliance partners were to cooperate as a fully fluid team. I also loved the depth of strategy and seesaw elims matches. I loved aerial assist and I'm sad it's over. Although it had its flaws, overall aerial assist was a great game.

[Joe G.]

When played at a high level, arguably the best spectator game FRC has ever seen.

The dynamic where every team, no matter how offensively strong, needed to be able to provide defense at key points in matches.

[J_Miles]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

When played at a high level, arguably the best spectator game FRC has ever seen.

Agreed. Because every game piece meant something. Games like Ultimate Ascent are hard to keep track of. With a game where there are only two game pieces it's easy to follow a "scoring drive." And every score is something to celebrate. There's a build and tension akin to playing a "real" sport that many spectators are familiar with. It's very impressive to watch at a high level. In previous years spectating went something like this:

1. Mayhem on the field
2. Game pieces flying
3. ????
4. SCORES!

Though the rules of Aerial Ascent are convoluted and complicated and difficult to explain, the gravity of moments on the field were not compared to previous years' games.

[TheHolyHades1]

While others may disagree with me, I think this is possibly one of the best games FIRST has come out with. The true alliance dynamic needed to score meant that a powerhouse team could not just go in and do all of the scoring, as has happened in the past and was the case with ultimate ascent, for example. The alliance needed to strategize (which also meant that scouting was more important than ever) and really work to each other's strengths while trying to mitigate the other's weaknesses. This allowed pure defense/inbounding robots to be very valuable to a team, and really gave rookies and low budget teams a fighting chance to make it to a high level. I've seen someone say that FIRST has rookie awards to get rookies to St. Louis for inspiration; I'd go as far as saying this year's game was designed to do the same ... and boy has it worked.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

When played at a high level, arguably the best spectator game FRC has ever seen.

The dynamic where every team, no matter how offensively strong, needed to be able to provide defense at key points in matches.

I would definitely agree with you - it was pretty darn entertaining when there were two high powered alliances on the field. I don't know which game I liked best - AA or UA.

[kghaemi96]

The fact that 99.99% of the game relied on the entire alliance rather than a single team carrying everyone else. It left everyone (hopefully) with a feeling of companionship and teamwork. I hope they continue the concept of working together in this manner. It is something that was executed beautifully.

Only discrepancy was the refs. They can only do so much in a game as complex as this. They should have gotten more refs to allow for fewer errors.

[thatprogrammer]

I loved aerial assist. Not only did it make alliances more important than games from yesteryear, it also made each game piece extremely important. The game made it impossible for teams to win by themselves because there was no "each robot has a game piece". Defense and Offense where both important elements this year!

Most of all however, I think this game was so amazing because it allowed for so many different designs. Though FRC does allow for quite a bit of originality each year, I think it was taken to an even higher level this year because of the lack of an endgame and because of the set goals. We saw shooters, catapults, sling shots, rams, and even dumpers this year!

Overall, this may just have been the best frc game yet.

(Though, Lunacy could have been so good if hadn't had so many flaws *

[Joel Glidden]

I loved every bit of it except for feeling sorry for the poor refs who needed to watch everything at once. This game was a blast to play and great to watch as well.

Bravo, GDC! Please don't stray too far from this model next year.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

It ending.

Originally Posted by Joe G.

When played at a high level, arguably the best spectator game FRC has ever seen.

The dynamic where every team, no matter how offensively strong, needed to be able to provide defense at key points in matches.

This may have been one of the worst games to watch at the regional level, and play at the regional level. However, the Division eliminations and Einstein play was beyond phenomenal, and when you have such great teams work together, it truly created what was oneo f the most exciting games to watch. But there lies our problem: It's only exciting when you have the best of the best play it. At the regional level when you have partners that can barely move and assist, the game fails, and tournaments are decided by the random number generator.

[221Sarahborg]

Originally Posted by kghaemi96

Only discrepancy was the refs. They can only do so much in a game as complex as this. They should have gotten more refs to allow for fewer errors.

I also thought that the volunteers were an affect in how quick and effective they were when helping out with balls in the match, I've been in and not in matches where the ball has gone out of the field and the volunteers take a couple seconds too many to get the ball back to the human player and that could even change the outcome of a match. Given they are volunteering, I applaud all of them for working so hard and putting their time into it, it just seemed the ones at our Regionals were slower than the ones who got the balls back in within a second at the Einstein matches I was watching.

[Mrcope9]

Pro
-designed to icorporate all 3 alliance partners, giving each their own role
-fun to watch, exciting for spectators
-really high scores (when done well)
-possible for 3 good bots that communicate well to bring down a powerhouse

Con
-nearly impossible to officiate, due to the amount of things the refs must watch simultaneously
-when only 1 member of an alliance can pick up a ball and shoot, it is very difficult to overcome not being able to get multiple assists.
-the foul points. Enough said