The cheesecake runaway

[Joe G.]

I think that cheesecaking to the excessive extent which was common throughout this year can be solved mostly through smart game design. Here are just a few factors off the top of my head which made recycle rush uniquely suited for cheesecaking:

• An incredibly cluttered field, which made it hard to effectively utilize three scoring robots without getting in each other's way
• No defense, which necessitated that a third partner contribute to the alliance through means other than their drivetrain, generally a crucial, and very integral, element of third partners.
• Three distinct, moderate/high difficulty autonomous tasks (20pt stack, cans 1/2, cans 3/4), all with extremely high reward, which were very hard or impossible for a single team to do more than one.
• The ease through which canburgling could be done through an "auxillary" mechanism, rather than something more integral to the design
• The transport configuration rules, and the extreme flexability they gave teams in these types of "auxillary" mechanisms. (see tethered ramps)
• The extreme strategic importance of a task which didn't immediately draw attention to itself, and was not initially focused on by a majority of teams.
• The fact that this importance varied to an extreme degree with the level of play, to the point where designing entirely around can grabbing was likely not a smart choice for a low resource team
• The "arms race" nature of the task, with continual dramatic redesigns being a requirement to remain competitive.
• The fact that canburgling was autonomous and very fast, giving the cheesecaking team complete control over a number of variables they likely would not have otherwise.

All of these can easily be designed out of future games. Not necessarily saying that they're all bad things (in fact, I quite like some of them), but all together, they created the perfect storm of cheesecake this season.