Recycle Rush Farewell

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

It was better than the last time we stacked boxes.

I wasn't around FRC then, but from what I hear, I agree. Next time stacking shows up, oh, around 2023, perhaps there will be three areas: red must stay out of blue, blue must stay out of red, and white is a traditional "bumper" area. anything goes. Scoring is in red and blue, and most of the game pieces are (or at least start) in white. Maybe a rule that you have to stack at least two pieces to bring them to the scoring area to cut down on canburgular type systems.

Average points was a good match to the "stacking/placement" game mechanics. It might have cut back a bit on robot-to-robot defense even if there weren't a step, since (during quals/seeding) scoring ten points would be more beneficial to your average than stopping your opponent from scoring fifty. Unfortunately, it makes finals at each event an inherently different game than the tournaments, even if the finals are "total points in three matches" rather than "two victories". For this reason, I prefer victory counts over point counts.

Nonlinear scoring makes for a good challenge. It also moves OPR from the realm of the uncertain to the often just wrong. Consider this: If OPR/DPR meant anything this year, every team would have a DPR very close to zero unless it had a good canburglar or a wicked HP noodler. Canburglar DPRs would be diluted further whenever playing against an alliance that couldn't put up more than three big tote stacks.

As for the coopertition and endgame, I found it strange how few robots coded up the "drive forward five feet" autonomous; I guess a shot at four points just didn't seem worthwhile. Coopertition was good, though I preferred the mechanics of it in Rebound Rumble. As part of the endgame (not the main game) it gave a bonus to both teams in the rankings in qualifiers, but did not change the game as significantly for playoffs.