A Recycle Rush Reflection

[Jared]

Recycle Rush is very different from any FRC game I've ever seen (2004, 2005, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014).

In many ways, it's a great game. The engineering challenge is fun and original and caught many teams off guard. This year, the best robot is more likely to win than in previous years. The less restrictive design rules were awesome too. Although some people think the ramps are cheap solutions that take away from the value of the game and may not have been anticipated by the GDC, I think they're amazingly clever simple solutions to difficult problems. Isn't that what engineering is about?

The average score system is also far superior to the old W/L/T system for providing accurate rankings. The rules are also really objective and fair this year.

However, Recycle Rush has some flaws. The game is very boring at a lower level, and is often dominated by one or two teams. Scoring is set up so that a simpler robot scores way too little compared to better robots. The lack of defense and robot-robot interaction really brings down the excitement because you usually know what's going to happen before the match starts.

At the level of eliminations, the third robot on the winning alliance doesn't have much of a role. If the alliance partners are unable to cheesecake the robot, the robot usually ends up in a corner, watching the other teams make a fortress of stacks.

The game is also deceptively difficult. Even loading totes from a hole in the wall is challenging because they don't land consistently or right side up. Was this additional engineering challenge really necessary? What does it add to the game? There are two game pieces, neither of which can easily be manipulated, but being able to manipulate both is required to do well.

Autonomous mode also was also a little disappointing. Outside of eliminations, there are rarely robot sets, tote sets, or container sets simply because a collaborative autonomous mode is very difficult. No teams seem to be using the landmark to help coordinate autonomous scoring. Most of the time when scoring happens in auto, two robots sit out of the way while a third gets a stacked tote set which gets old after a while.

Overall, I think that the positives from this game outweigh the drawbacks. It's refreshing to have a game that isn't about throwing things into holes above the other side's driver station - which is what I had for my first three years with FIRST. From what I've seen, the crowd still gets very excited when coopertition happens, or a stack falls over, or a robot does well. The GDC does have to try something different now and then.