Not to jinx next year, but...

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by robochick1319

2015 was a sort of re-do/throwback to 2003.
2014 was a sort of re-do/throwback to 2008.
2012 was a sort of re-do/throwback to 2006. (kinda sorta maybe it's a stretch)
2011 was a sort of re-do/throwback to 2007.

2016 will be a re-do/throwback to.......2005?? #tetras

FIRST Frenzy, the 2004 game, is regarded as the best game pre-3v3 era. I would love to see a modern take on that game. It looks super dated when you look at the game now, but some obvious changes that would take the scoring objectives and modernize it into a 3v3 game 12 years later could prove to be fun.

This is considered to be a pretty famous moment from that game.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

FIRST Frenzy, the 2004 game, is regarded as the best game pre-3v3 era. I would love to see a modern take on that game. It looks super dated when you look at the game now, but some obvious changes that would take the scoring objectives and modernize it into a 3v3 game 12 years later could prove to be fun.

This is considered to be a pretty famous moment from that game.

The platform took up so much room they would have to shrink it down so six robots could fit on the field. The autonomous needs to be something more than just releasing the balls early.
The coolest moment I ever saw at a FIRST event happened that year during the elims at Buckeye when 378 was on the top platform and 279 was on the lower platform and was trying to get up on the bar. 378 parked on top of 279 so 279 decided to take them with them. 378 eventually fell off but still won the match.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The platform took up so much room they would have to shrink it down so six robots could fit on the field. The autonomous needs to be something more than just releasing the balls early.
The coolest moment I ever saw at a FIRST event happened that year during the elims at Buckeye when 378 was on the top platform and 279 was on the lower platform and was trying to get up on the bar. 378 parked on top of 279 so 279 decided to take them with them. 378 eventually fell off but still won the match.

Yes to both suggestions. You probably would enter the option for robots to shoot balls into the goals (like in Autonomous) with humans getting <30 seconds to score. The platform equivalent would need to be downsized to fit the existence of two other robots, but having some kind of field obstacle should probably stay (my favorite field obstacle is the 2012 bump. Think about how different 2014 would have been with 2012 style bumps delineating zones or at midfield!)

[TheModMaster8]

I'd like to see a cross of FRC robot with a implication of a EV3 and a FTC robot to accomplish a side task, through something in the main game that would make the robots Battle more i.e hit/collide more, so that there is more of a need for pushing power, Which gives me an idea... make it a game were your robot has to push like 200-300 pound crates to a certain objective, of have a game like king of the hill. those are my ideas lol

[GeeTwo]

Forget water games. Do you really thing FIRST is going to risk foundation damage by putting several thousand gallons of water on the floors of high school gymnasia at districts? FIRST is heavily invested in the roughly 27' x 54' field and 3 vs 3 format. The control system for 2015 was new, so don't expect any major changes there for three or four years. Carpet has been the primary surface except for Maize Craze and Lunacy, so I'll give that a 90+% likelihood for 2016.

According to my research, every even year has had spherical balls as the primary game pieces, going all the way back to Maize Craze in 1992. Zone Zeal (2002) and First Frenzy (2004) also had movable goals, and First Frenzy had two different ball sizes. Except for the endgame of FIRST Overdrive (2008), stacking or hanging game pieces has been exclusively an odd-year endeavor. I fully expect a return to defense, mandatory bumpers, and one or more thrown or at least throwable spherical game pieces for 2016.

It's been a while since robots could carry a lot of game pieces. This year there was no legal limit, but very few carried more than eight (a 42 point stack) at a time. The past three years had limits of four or fewer game pieces at a time. I didn't check the rules for Logomotion (2011), but from the videos it looked like robots carried one inner tube at a time. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of relatively small balls in 2016, with no carry limit.

Within my team, I'm stumping for an off-season build of an autonomous robot that cleans up the balls from the tennis court and returns them to an open-topped box or bin; we should learn something useful for next year. And oh yes, tennis balls would be a nice 25th anniversary touch.

[Ryan_Todd]

@GeeTwo:
Yes, yes, so much yes. All of the yes, in fact.

Every single nail has been hit on the head right here.

We are definitely due for ball-shaped game pieces again, and lots of them, without any limit on the number of game pieces that can be carried at a time. This combination of rules keeps coming back through the years, and for good reason; handling game pieces in bulk is a very different game challenge from handling them individually, and a good challenge at that (as long as you mix it up with a solid endgame and/or side objective). The last time we had a game like this was back in 2009, so there have already been two graduating classes of students who never got a chance to do this; we are definitely overdue, no doubt about it.

(And yes, I would definitely call out tennis balls / wiffle balls / similar-sized game pieces as a good idea, what with the 25th anniversary and all.)

As for the difficulty of accurate and/or realtime scoring with large numbers of small game pieces, I would propose that we take a cue from FTC 2015 "Cascade Effect" and measure your score based on the cumulative depth of game pieces scored in the goal(s) instead of attempting to count the game pieces individually.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Skywalkar

As for the difficulty of accurate and/or realtime scoring with large numbers of small game pieces, I would propose that we take a cue from FTC 2015 "Cascade Effect" and measure your score based on the cumulative depth of game pieces scored in the goal(s) instead of attempting to count the game pieces individually.

As I recall, the real-time scoring for Ultimate Ascent was based on weight. If there were only one game piece, or there were very few "specials", or the scoring were directly proportional to weight, this could also work for a game with a great number of balls.

[Loose Screw]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

It's been a while since robots could carry a lot of game pieces. This year there was no legal limit, but very few carried more than eight (a 42 point stack) at a time. The past three years had limits of four or fewer game pieces at a time. I didn't check the rules for Logomotion (2011), but from the videos it looked like robots carried one inner tube at a time. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of relatively small balls in 2016, with no carry limit.

Within my team, I'm stumping for an off-season build of an autonomous robot that cleans up the balls from the tennis court and returns them to an open-topped box or bin; we should learn something useful for next year. And oh yes, tennis balls would be a nice 25th anniversary touch.

2011 had a limit of 1 tube at a time. Any more and the robots would look drastically different (look at FTC's Ring it Up).

I agree with tennis balls being a likely game piece for next year. I find the challenges with a carry limit to be more challenging than those without that cap. Carrying 4 blocks or 5 balls (previous FTC games) was easy, but stopping that 5th block and 6th balls was the real challenge there.

I think tennis balls are a good choice because there hasn't been an FRC gamepiece small enough to get stuck in your robot. Coaching an FTC team this year we struggled with the little balls getting caught in small gaps in our robot. I think FRC could use that challenge.

[xman206]

My money is on a football-like game...it should be interesting!

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Loose Screw

..there hasn't been an FRC gamepiece small enough to get stuck in your robot.

We got Frisbees stuck in our hopper for Ultimate Ascent several times in practice; we managed to improve the mechanism before bagging.
I saw about a half dozen matches in which litter got caught in robots' lifts or wheels or can burglars this year, not counting videos.

[Loose Screw]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

We got Frisbees stuck in our hopper for Ultimate Ascent several times in practice; we managed to improve the mechanism before bagging.
I saw about a half dozen matches in which litter got caught in robots' lifts or wheels or can burglars this year, not counting videos.

Sorry, should clarify. I meant game pieces that could find their way into any exposed nook and cranny of your robot. Frisbees would get stuck in places where frisbees were meant to go, and under robots, lifting them off the ground in rare cases. Litter would go into places you didn't want it to go, but that was more of a "defense" issue.

I was talking about pieces you want to manipulate ending up in random spaces in your robot. The kind where you wonder, "how did that get there?" My team had plenty of those moments (along with the occasional loose screw), and it made us really think of ways to better contain the gamepieces, as well as isolate the rest of our robot from them.

[Ratback]

Next year is also the 25th season of FRC so that is something to factor in...maybe?

[Alex2614]

As long as we take a break from alliteration next year. It was cool in rebound rumble and ultimate ascent, got old with aerial assist (I still get the latter two mixed up every time I try to say one of them), and Recycle Rush was enough for me. They took a break from it for a few years 2008-2011.

[Chris is me]

If I had to guess the game next year: It'll involve mass game piece control (many smaller balls), elevated scoring of some sort, scoring in high volumes (large "dumps" rather than a few precise shots). Scoring from range will be an option but not really required or necessarily even a good idea. It'll certainly be a game with opponent interaction to some extent.

I personally really think that rules restricting the number of game pieces the robot can carry are generally not a great idea and that problems with starvation strategies, etc. should be dealt with in the game design, not patched with a rule later on. There are some exceptions (2013 really needed the four disk rule) but I generally think letting the teams figure out their limits works better.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If I had to guess the game next year: It'll involve mass game piece control (many smaller balls), elevated scoring of some sort, scoring in high volumes (large "dumps" rather than a few precise shots). Scoring from range will be an option but not really required or necessarily even a good idea. It'll certainly be a game with opponent interaction to some extent.

I personally really think that rules restricting the number of game pieces the robot can carry are generally not a great idea and that problems with starvation strategies, etc. should be dealt with in the game design, not patched with a rule later on. There are some exceptions (2013 really needed the four disk rule) but I generally think letting the teams figure out their limits works better.

I agree with most of what you said, but every game since 2010 has had elevated scoring of some sort (if you count the recycling containers this year).

And I hope there's defense...seriously.