Not to jinx next year, but...

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by Tim Sharp

Throwing a football sounds like an interesting engineering challenge. Especially if they are of the NERF variety.

My fear is that creating a machine that throws a perfect spiral is so easy that there would be no unpredictability to the upper level matches; kind of like this year, in fact. If they do football, it seems to me they'd not do it for the typical low/mid/high target scores.

[Tim Sharp]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

My fear is that creating a machine that throws a perfect spiral is so easy that there would be no unpredictability to the upper level matches; kind of like this year, in fact. If they do football, it seems to me they'd not do it for the typical low/mid/high target scores.

I think a game could be designed to address the predictability factor. Ultimate Ascent is a good example of that. Some bots could score consistently from full court, but still had to climb to win, while the lower ability teams were still able to contribute in a meaningful way.

As a former coach, I've used football throwing machines numerous times over the years and I can tell you from experience that throwing a spiral is the easy part. Consistently throwing to a tight window is much harder. The machine "drifts" constantly due to the differences in how the wheels initially engage the ball and several other factors where a small difference in input can create a large difference in results.

A further complication would be the NERF balls. I assume they would be used instead of regulation footballs due to the safety factor. The COG of a regulation ball is very different from a NERF ball. The heavier outer rim of the regulation ball makes for a tighter, more controlled spiral and thus better accuracy. The COG of the NERF ( I'm assuming a solid foam ball) is near the center and thus it has to be spun much faster to maintain stability.

The variability is interesting enough IMO to create a worthwhile game. Especially with a few 'twists" thrown in.

[BrennanB]

Will point you all to...

This, this, this, this, and to some extent this



I know Chief likes its rumors/predictions... But... Yeah.

Originally Posted by jlmcmchl

Watch right before champs in 2015, someone will make a new thread about this, and then someone else will point to this one.

Close enough.

[IronicDeadBird]

Next year I wan the game to be a cross between hungry hungry hippos and garbage.
The idea is you get a billion tennis balls on the ground and the goal is to have fewer on your side then the opposing side.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

My fear is that creating a machine that throws a perfect spiral is so easy that there would be no unpredictability to the upper level matches; kind of like this year, in fact. If they do football, it seems to me they'd not do it for the typical low/mid/high target scores.

The issue would be catching at the other end. The match could have safe zones at the other end but the robot toss could be interesting. But please tell us it's coming months before the build season....

[WillNess]

Volleyball please. In the middle of the field is a giant net that extends all the way from the floor up to five feet. Enter X many balls and whoever has the most balls on one side of the field loses. Maybe also there could be holes in nets in certain places so you don't always have to go over. Not volleyballs though because they're somewhat hard and could possibly hurt people, maybe like Aerial Assist balls or soccer balls.

[Anthony Galea]

Originally Posted by WillNess

Volleyball please. In the middle of the field is a giant net that extends all the way from the floor up to five feet. Enter X many balls and whoever has the most balls on one side of the field loses. Maybe also there could be holes in nets in certain places so you don't always have to go over. Not volleyballs though because they're somewhat hard and could possibly hurt people, maybe like Aerial Assist balls or soccer balls.

In GameSense last year when Frank was on the show, I think he said that Aerial Assist was originally a volleyball game that developed into AA (hence the truss).

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Next year I wan the game to be a cross between hungry hungry hippos and garbage.
The idea is you get a billion tennis balls on the ground and the goal is to have fewer on your side then the opposing side.

I could get behind this.

Though real time scoring would be ridiculously difficult. Even counting the final score (assuming even hundreds not billions) would take several minutes.