Was Aerial Assist Better than Ultimate Ascent?

[Vupa]

Originally Posted by SkittlesCharge

To expand on what I said previously, one thing I really liked about Aerial Assist is that it was designed to be pretty friendly to teams that had trouble building their robots. Compared to previous years, it's great to see what a simple robot could do in Aerial Assist.

In 2013, a box on wheels could:
- Play defense (in a game that was only somewhat defense-friendly)

In 2014, a box on wheels could:
- Herd or trap the ball for assists
- Score in the low goal
- Play defense (in a game that was quite defense-friendly)
- Score in autonomous (drive forward, get mobility points, and push a ball into the low goal for either 11 or 16 points)

I personally believe it was quite the opposite this year. The game was actually very unfriendly towards box robots because of several different reasons. The reality being that teams that had difficulty with building a robot also had difficulty maintaining said robot. Unfortunately these teams are often rookie teams or newer teams, meaning that they are also not used to the rules of the games and the nuances of competition. Multiple times in competition you would have to tell a team to not do anything or to not use their shooter or intake because they would "get in the way" or "cause a dead ball" perhaps even net some unfortunate fouls. And although this seems like a poor showing of Gracious Professionalism, it is the sad truth because as a team, you don't want rookies to lose you a match due to fouls. Thus actually putting the restrictions on the simpler robots and their ability to participate in the match.

This is why this game is worse for simpler bots. In Ultimate Ascent there is no such thing as telling your rookie teammate to stop playing in fear of fouls. You let them play defense and if they could score you would tell them to do their best. In Aerial Assist there is just one ball per alliance and thus it is key on who has possession, if your alliance member is unable to actually do anything with the ball, then you want to minimize your risk of them getting the ball. Thus reducing their role to perhaps even less then mediocre defense.