Not to jinx next year, but...

[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.

[Mykey]

I am hoping for lots of small spherical game pieces.

I want the field to look like a mixture of a rugby match and a popcorn popper.

Whiffle balls would be excellent. They are cheap, not very dangerous if they "go rogue" and head for the stands/refs, easy for all teams to get extras and easy to see from the stands.

Scoring could be done by simple sensors. Don't you love saying oxymoronic
things like "simple sensors"? Have the balls go through a hopper and then fed into a machine that spits them back out into the middle of the field. Keeping the balls moving would not only be cool to watch it would is more exciting than static game pieces.

As an added challenge you have two different colors of balls and the scoring depends on the bots sorting them and shooting them into the correct goals. This will allow more advanced control systems to play a greater part in the competition without keeping teams with less controls experience from not being able to compete.

This years game was challenging in terms of engineering design, allowed greater variability in robot chassis design, and was most importantly about as exciting as watching paint dry. I was fascinated the first time I went into a freight sorting hub for UPS. I did not at any time think to myself "Wow! I would rather watch this than watch Hockey!" I want defense to return. Place enough obstacles in the field to keep the speeds down (and consequently the amount of damages done). But please oh please let there be at least some sort of defense. Even if it there is no contact at least allow blocking.

Also... It could be an interesting twist to require the bumpers to cover 100% of the perimeter of the robots. At the same time set the lower edge height requirement at about 8 inches. This allows the game pieces to fit underneath. This will encourage the design of pick up mechanisms that are less exposed to being damaged by "exciting defense."

As the game for next year is likely already planned out this has been a fun exercise in what if.

On another note: As TheModMaster8 mentioned in another thread - hovercraft style locomotion. I want to build competitive hover-bots.

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by Mykey

l

Also... It could be an interesting twist to require the bumpers to cover 100% of the perimeter of the robots. At the same time set the lower edge height requirement at about 8 inches. This allows the game pieces to fit underneath. This will encourage the design of pick up mechanisms that are less exposed to being damaged by "exciting defense."

They did this in 2010. You're right it was interesting.

[Jay Burnett]

I've kind of been wanting a hockey game for a while now, Its been discussed for at least two years now, and i feel like it could be viable. Think field hockey pucks (so no regolith). There are various ways this could play out, e here is my favorite idea

1. Limited amount of pucks, 4v4 with designated goalies.
This works mostly like normal hockey. Both teams work with their pucks to score the pucks in their goal which is located in a space guarded by the goalie bot. 5 pucks in play at any time, slid into the arena by a human player at one of 6 feeder slots around the field. Three in both alliance section: one behind the goal and two on either side of the field of play. The in-bounding has to happen immediately after a score by the alliance that just scored. Each bot is allowed to posses 1 puck at a time, so potentially the other alliance can steal the in-bounded puck. The goalie bot isn't allowed to move from its zone, and the zone is not a "protected area", but only 1 opposing alliance bot can be there at a time (to prevent mobbing of the goalie and super easy scoring.) A path to the back of the goal would be left unprotected to give access to the in-bounding station there. the goalie bot can intake pucks (only one at a time) and can shoot them across the field or pass to an alliance member within 5 seconds.

Assists could be counted with multipliers that stack through the match for having different robots shoot goals to encourage cooperation and passing, (1.5x each goal for 2 robots each having a goal, 2x for 3, 4x if the goalie and all 3 other robots score. In the endgame we could add the option for coopertition. in the last 20 seconds, 60 or so pucks could be released into each side of the field (its illegal to grab other alliances' endgame pucks) and could be scored in high bins on your side, or in another bin in the middle of the bin for 10 co-op points (+ the score for scored pucks in the bin) extra per alliance that scores in their co-op bin.

The advantages of this are having good amounts of defense possible, both through goalies and other non-goalie robots, but not too much thanks to incentives to scoring and therefore getting close to the goalie and distracting it as opposed to defending entirely, and also the semi-protected status of being in the opposing goalie zone (play goes from to 1v1 in terms of defense in the zone, but with the trade-off of less maneuvering room) FIRST gets its coopertition in two aspects, rookie teams can defend but probably won't be able to wreck a good alliance's scoring, and everyone else gets an endgame and a frozen water game ;P

[Loose Screw]

Originally Posted by Jay Burnett

I've kind of been wanting a hockey game for a while now, Its been discussed for at least two years now, and i feel like it could be viable. Think field hockey pucks (so no regolith). There are various ways this could play out, e here is my favorite idea

Hockey as an FRC game hasn't been done yet, but hockey pucks have been used in an FTC game. In the 2008-2009 FTC game Face Off!, teams had to move hockey pucks to a goal in the center of the field.

Even though that was a while ago and FTC/FRC share aspects of games, FIRST has never used a game piece twice (or at least not to my knowledge). FRC 2011 Logomotion and FTC 2012-2013 Ring it Up both scored rings on a 3x3 grid of poles, but they were both drastically different games. I could go on with examples, but I think those two games are the most similar.

FIRST could break that boundary and use hockey pucks, but I think that won't happen. If they were to play a hockey-styled game, it would be drastically different than the sport. Look at 2010 and 2012 where they played "soccer" and "basketball".