Do we want another game without defense?

[BJC]

Don't forget about descoring as a defensive game mechanic. FRC has never implemented this at in the modern era with their quest for automated scoring. However, it has been extremely successful in VEX. I see no reason it wouldn't also be successful in FRC.

Cheers, Bryan

[75vs1885]

I loved seeing the robots hit each other from 2014, it made the game so much more entertaining!! Without contact its much less fun to watch, not to mention that the game is won in the first 15 seconds (who ever gets the RB's)
Sooo......

WE NEED CONTACT!!!!!!!!

[EricAnderson191]

Recycle Rush promoted a holistic systems planning in ways that the two other games I have seen played did not. The better a team planned and thought in January the better they played at champs.

Even with the planning and thinking, though, some of the best teams in FRC either did not make it out of their division or failed the quarters on Einstein.

Logistically I did not like the split fields for Einstein. We were off to one side which made half of the matches unwatchable.

Eric

[njkayak99]

Personally, I was not a fan of the divided field. It took the element of competitive robot interaction on field out of the game, which was something I rather enjoyed seeing.

[JesseK]

I think there should be a defense-less game every 3-4 years, so each set of kids gets to understand the wonderful engineering potential of precision engineering under a controlled environment. Recycle Rush feels like an experiment in that regard, and I hope defense-less (and therefore bumperless and geometry-boundless) games are attempted again. Killough Drive on Einstein - yes please!

I don't think RR is a good example overall due to the noodles and autonomous races. Noodles in cans were a great idea. Noodles on the field were just pointless given the reduced visibility of the field at high levels of play. In hindsight, if we replaced the noodles with ultra-light poof balls and made the cans have no lids, this could have been an awesome game. Bonus points for scoring your balls in the opponents' capped stacks, or some other such shenanigans. Negative points for knocking the opponent's stack over in attempting to do so.

For defense-based games, we're in a modern era of COTS 3-CIM gearboxes. Teams put little to no engineering into these things when they use them as the primary mechanism for defense. Unregulated drive train power simply means that the offense-based teams need to allot 5.4 more lbs to the drive train in order to beat the defensive teams to a point on the field - meaning the challenge for offense-based teams is even harder to accomplish due to less weight available. Bumpers, frames and hard-mounted objects must all withstand a few hundred Joules more during impacts (based upon 0.5*m*v^2 at 8' acceleration distance).

I love safe zones and exclusion zones on a field. Exclusion zones represent an area of the field where a team must explicitly design for it in order to gain access to it, such as 2010, 2012 and 2013. They can be a way to play mind games with particularly good defensive drivers and add a whole new plethora of strategic and match flow possibilities at high levels. They can be a way for a simple defensive robot to significantly delay an offensive robot which cannot contend with them at all. I'd much rather spend extra engineering energy on that type of defense avoidance than spending thoughtless money and weight on the drive train.

[billbo911]

Personally, I have always felt that a game based solely on how well robots can perform a task would be fantastic.
One thing that has really bugged me throughout the years is how a team could work incredibly hard for six weeks building a robot only to have it permanently rendered incapable of performing at the level it was intended to because of the "defensive" actions of another robot. (Yep, saw that in 2014.)

Now that I have seen a game where performance alone determined the outcome, I like it! That said, I know there is a place for defense. As many others have said in this thread, a game without defense is good, but not every year. So, yes I would like to see it again, just not right away.

[Koko Ed]

People love defense until someone decides to violently impose it upon their robot. Then it's not so awesome.

[Eric Scheuing]

I'm all for another game without direct defense, but a game with as little indirect defense as this year would be disappointing. Not having to design to withstand collisions (to the same degree as other years at least) gives teams the option to allocate additional weight and space to other mechanisms and strategies.

[AmoryG]

I really liked the lack of size restrictions this year since it allowed teams to make very creative designs. If FIRST could make a game with defense/robot-robot interaction and no size restrictions, that would be really cool. A robot version of tennis, volleyball, or dodgeball could work.

[spearbc]

I had my doubts about game excitement early in the season. I found the final matches interesting but I agree the robot interactions are more exciting for spectators.

I also agree with statements that lack of a defense allowed more creativity and more focus on design. But defense sometimes allows participation from younger teams that have not developed the capabilities for design. A box on wheels can do defense.

In the end, I would say games without defense are just another tool in the toolbox for game design. We should always have enough tools to keep folks guessing on the game requirements and provide opportunities for the different skill sets of different teams. I am a big fan of balance and would hate for a student to be on a team four years and never have a year where defense is not part of the game. But giving them a year without defense does allow that focus on Inspiration.

Cheers, BC

[WillNess]

I think that a game without defense helps the students learn more than it does with defense. The reason is, last year when designing the robot, after every suggestion we had to evaluate if we thought it could survive constant beating during a regional. This year, we had to worry about that a lot less. In fact, we were able to be much more creative and even have a 5 foot arm sticking behind our robot that could pick up bins from the step without mining the landfill. Even if the same length/width rules were in place in a game with defense, we never would have been able to make that arm because it couldn't have survived being run into. FIRST is about the students, and I learned much more this year about engineering and programming than I did last year because of the creativity involved in this years game. Remember that the competition is where the students can go to show off what they've done, but the important part is what the students do up to that point. I would vote for the crappiest game ever if it means that the students on my team were to learn more.

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by WillNess

I think that a game without defense helps the students learn more than it does with defense. The reason is, last year when designing the robot, after every suggestion we had to evaluate if we thought it could survive constant beating during a regional. This year, we had to worry about that a lot less. In fact, we were able to be much more creative and even have a 5 foot arm sticking behind our robot that could pick up bins from the step without mining the landfill. Even if the same length/width rules were in place in a game with defense, we never would have been able to make that arm because it couldn't have survived being run into.

Nobody has to worry about durability in the real world right?

However this year did present a different kind of challenge, which should be welcomed. Your team found that challenge to be more inspiring in some ways, which is great!

[buchanan]

Traditional style defense:

• Gives robots with less effective (dare I say "failed"?) scoring mechanisms a way to contribute to their alliance.
• Lets teams reuse large chunks of successful engineering design from year to year. What's effective for pushing, pinning, and blocking one year tends to be transferable to next year's robot with minimal rework.

The first has value as a force for parity, maybe keeping some young teams from getting discouraged. But once past their rookie season most of the students have caught on that hearing "you play defense" during alliance match planning isn't usually a good thing.

The second has value too, rewarding the building of team competencies over the years, but that's traded off against parity.

My hope is when defense returns, as it certainly will, the GDC consider that ice hockey style contact defense is not the only kind there is. Billiards, shuffleboard, and even chess, for example, have defense, but with minimal pushing, shoving, and hitting. Defense does not have to mean the same problem and the same solutions year after year.

[ThePancakeMan]

I see both sides of the argument but at the beginning I would like to say that I would enjoy a game with defense. However I would like to say that I , in no way, think that this year's game was "lame". Sure there was no defense but it only forced people to think around it. Can grabbing was a form of defense although it only usually lasted the beginning of the match. I still enjoyed watching a game with minimal contact. It forced the robots to focus more on completing the task as opposed to stopping the other alliance from completing the task. This gave us more time to watch the capabilities of the robots and focus only on that rather than just trying to get in the way of another bot and stop them from scoring. I think that this forced the robots to evolve and in my opinion this is a good thing. Either way I do still agree that a defense game is more fun to watch.

[WillNess]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

Nobody has to worry about durability in the real world right?

However this year did present a different kind of challenge, which should be welcomed. Your team found that challenge to be more inspiring in some ways, which is great!

Well I understand that people have to worry about durability in the real world, but not worrying about durability let teams do much more creative and productive things. For example they can include more mechanisms on the robot which will teach kids on the CAD/Design side, the mechanical side, and the programming side instead of using a stronger material that weighs more so you won't get damaged.