What if...

[brandon.cottrell]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

Can you expand on why you think this please?

Well think about games like Ultimate Ascent, the whole "pyramid climbing" goal.

Sure, it wasn't worth very many points, but to have a robot that actually did that was eye candy for spectators. Everyone I talk to about Ultimate Ascent outside of FIRST cites the Pyramid as the most amazing thing about the game, because of the complex mechanisms robots had to do them. Like, this and this.

In terms of shooting frisbees it was just a spinning wheel with a piston to push the frisbees in, with varying input methods like floor pickup or human player feeding. Though the latter was easily a larger source of points, it was still easier to engineer, whereas the former was a harder, but more visually appealing task.

With this game, all the robots really had to be successful was have a consistent way to hold and release the ball. You didn't even really need to launch it, and there were a lot of cases where launching it would've just created more problems than simply holding the ball and then letting goal of it.

What this lead to is many "cookie-cutter" robots and strategies, which is the main reason people don't like games like Lunacy. Even though nobody is really "copying" anyone, it's hard to bring a new innovating idea that will actually work and be consistent.