2015 HINT DISCUSSION

[EricH]

Originally Posted by matthewdenny

I was thinking what if say there were 100 objects on the field, and 6 scoring bins. You each get a point for each object in your bin. It wouldn't make since to play d with the time lost and others scoring while you do it. Would it?

It would. It's a lot easier to win if you can shut down 1114 or 254. With there being 5 robots all thinking the same thing, chances are HUGE that you'll get a de facto 5v1, where 2-3 are playing D and the rest are scoring, swapping roles every now and again.

And then there's the ranking problem--I'll just leave that to Andy Grady's explanation of the last year that was used.

[MaadHatter]

The video said that change is coming, so I doubt they're going to recycle much from the previous years, doesn't really connect with the hint.

The throwing away of the game rules probably means they're changing something big, which could mean anything. Number of alliances, number of teams in the alliance, large change in field size or shape, large change in robot size or shape, or something else. The hint actually tells us less about the game then before, because before at least we could kind of count on most of the general rules being the same.

Also, I doubt it'll be a projectile game, they wouldn't say change is coming and then give us the fourth projectile/shooting game in a row. Probably better for newer teams so that they're not going up against teams that have been working on some sort of shooting mechanism for the past 3 years.

[GKrotkov]

Originally Posted by matthewdenny

I was thinking what if say there were 100 objects on the field, and 6 scoring bins. You each get a point for each object in your bin. It wouldn't make since to play d with the time lost and others scoring while you do it. Would it?

Also, on a more practical note - I'd guess that most game pieces that are small enough and cheap enough to be produced upwards of 100 per event would probably be so small and easy to manipulate that a good team might actually be able to score a significant portion of that - enough to start to crowd out other teams, which would violate the whole "effectively individual matches" idea. If you did actually individual matches (one robot on the field at a time) then it would work (with fewer qualification rounds, I'd hope!) and you could add some sort of team challenge for elims with two or three on an alliance. However, that's not what FIRST ordered with the fields. I like the concept, though.

[Pault]

Havent put too much thought into this, but just want to throw it out there for bragging rights on the off-chance I am right.

This year we will se a complete reworking of the penalty system and how rules are written. That is why Frank is recycling the game manual.

[MaadHatter]

Originally Posted by Pault

Havent put too much thought into this, but just want to throw it out there for bragging rights on the off-chance I am right.

This year we will se a complete reworking of the penalty system and how rules are written. That is why Frank is recycling the game manual.

I wouldn't be surprised if this happened actually, with the huge increase in penalties last year

[Duffy509]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Lavery had a picture of Plowie with the circle and cross through it, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a different animation. That will make me sad though.

Maybe Dave is trying to give us a hint that Dozer and bots of that type are ineffective in this years game. I would find it odd for FIRST to switch animation styles when the community enjoys them and they are efficient at explaining the game.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Duffy509

Maybe Dave is trying to give us a hint that Dozer and bots of that type are ineffective in this years game. I would find it odd for FIRST to switch animation styles when the community enjoys them and they are efficient at explaining the game.

I would find it EXTREMELY out of FIRST's character for robots of Dozer's class to have no role at all.

Dozer is generally regarded as the BLT/BoxBot class of robots. These are your very low-resource* teams who have a tough time building a basic robot--FIRST always attempts to have something that they can do to be a positive contribution to an alliance. Always.

If that has changed, then there is probably going to be a sudden shrinkage in FRC next year...



*I'm counting organization as a resource, along with funding and mentorship and parts.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Duffy509

Maybe Dave is trying to give us a hint that Dozer and bots of that type are ineffective in this years game. I would find it odd for FIRST to switch animation styles when the community enjoys them and they are efficient at explaining the game.

If this is the case, I sure hope there's some other easy task for rookie teams to handle. I think it's actually rather important that there be some tasks that a box-on-wheel can do to contribute in some way to an alliance.

[IronicDeadBird]

Maybe they are just changing the format of the manual. Font, size, spacing, but they want to recycle cause you know environment or whatever...
Although a big change from last years game they could throw out there is heavy-only safety zones, it'd be a shame though if that happened.
Although for this not to be a joke the change that does come needs to be at least comparable to what the videos show, otherwise its kinda tame.

[Canon reeves]

Originally Posted by MaadHatter

Also, I doubt it'll be a projectile game, they wouldn't say change is coming and then give us the fourth projectile/shooting game in a row. Probably better for newer teams so that they're not going up against teams that have been working on some sort of shooting mechanism for the past 3 years.

I think the GDC has shifted towards spectator/sport orientated games that aren't hard to understand. In games like logomotion, it wouldn't really be as interesting to someone who doesn't understand the scoring system, where as in Ultimate Ascent, its easy to tell. The more frisbees you shoot in the goal the more points, and the higher you climb on the pyramid the more points. I think they want to capture the kind of hype that sports get, and the edge of the seat matches that are the result of real time scoring and well matched alliances.

[Mark Holschuh]

Originally Posted by Libby K

Just FYI as this discussion continues, his name is officially Dozer.

Just out of curiosity, do any of the other robot characters from the game animations have names?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Mark Holschuh

Just out of curiosity, do any of the other robot characters from the game animations have names?

Not that I know about. That being said, those are all significantly different from year to year; Dozer mainly gets bumpers and "finish" items (for example, an engine and spoiler in '08), or a change in the number of wheels if he's lucky, between years.

[SpaceBiz]

I can say that there is almost no chance dozer like robots will not be able to contribute next year. Growth and including rookie teams is something first always puts as one of their first priorities.

I can also say there is a very strong chance that first will either minimize arbitrary penalties, or at least make large changes to the rule book.

[alicen]

People are probably reading way too far into the Dozer image (which hasn't been linked to this thread??). It's probably something in the animation that tells about a penalty in game.

I would go through all the things that I definitely don't think will change and why, but it's already been done several times.

[*Rachelle*]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Maybe they are just changing the format of the manual.

This would be a real tease to the FIRST community, but truthfully, it is possible. They very well could change how the manual itself is organized- this would explain why the manual was thrown in the recycle bin. However, it does not explain the rest of the video and why they only chose to highlight some of the big changes instead of all/most of them. So, while this may be a change, I doubt it will be the biggest change.