Cookie cutter game design

[rtfgnow]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Even to the extent that these sorts of scores exist (though some are missing each year), the relative weights change from year to year. Even more importantly, the calculation of "qualification points" (that is, the primary determinant of who gets to be alliance captains) is always changing, sometimes in counter-intuitive ways. FIRST appears to strive to have multiple apparently viable strategies. Recognizing these recurrent "classes" of scoring may enable some simplification of strategy selection process, but the bottom line is still that you are far better off analyzing the game (1), developing your strategy(ies) to play the game (2), and THEN deciding what the relative importance of the tasks in the game are (3). Now, at step 4, you can begin to design your robot. Skipping any of game analysis, strategy, and prioritization is like rolling dice which are loaded against you.

I am confused why you put (2) before (3). I would like to know the relative importance of certain tasks before deciding my game strategy. In 2015 I could see that I could score points by moving litter to the landfill and decide that was the strategy I wanted to use to play the game and then discover that it's importance is relatively low.

Did you mean (2) to be determining strategies to accomplish each scoring opportunity? Meaning a strategy to breach defenses, a strategy to weaken the tower, a strategy to challenge/scale, a strategy to defend, etc and then in steps 3 and 4 you decide which strategies you value more and which you can implement in your robot?

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

I am confused why you put (2) before (3). I would like to know the relative importance of certain tasks before deciding my game strategy. In 2015 I could see that I could score points by moving litter to the landfill and decide that was the strategy I wanted to use to play the game and then discover that it's importance is relatively low.

Did you mean (2) to be determining strategies to accomplish each scoring opportunity? Meaning a strategy to breach defenses, a strategy to weaken the tower, a strategy to challenge/scale, a strategy to defend, etc and then in steps 3 and 4 you decide which strategies you value more and which you can implement in your robot?

The strategy you intend to play determines what YOU need the robot to do. The game design includes point values, and those are certainly part of the weighting of the strategy selection, but after you select your strategy, you design to that.

For example, this year we realized that if we could cross both instances of four categories of defense, we could ensure (or nearly so) that we would get a qualification point each match, win or lose, and that if we got eight boulders in the tower AND everybody was mobile enough to get on the batter, there was another likely one. Scaling gave game points.

Based on these considerations, our strategy was to go after those QP first, working on additional game points as a secondary item. This put importance on being able to cross four classes of defense (all but the drawbridge and sally port), and also to be able to pickup, carry, and score boulders. Based on our strategy, the drive train, low ceiling, and CDF/portcullis manipulators were top priority, the boulder pickup, carry, and score was a close second, and scaling was a distant third.

Other robots seemed to focus on scoring boulders and scaling, and were able to only cross a few defenses (at least one I saw could only do the low bar going in, though of course it could do the drawbridge or sally port on the way out). This design was apparently based on a different game strategy, but the same game rules.

Edit: To further clarify, my "Analyzing the game" includes determining the payoff, difficulty, and risk of each game activity.

[rtfgnow]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

The strategy you intend to play determines what YOU need the robot to do. The game design includes point values, and those are certainly part of the weighting of the strategy selection, but after you select your strategy, you design to that.

For example, this year we realized that if we could cross both instances of four categories of defense, we could ensure (or nearly so) that we would get a qualification point each match, win or lose, and that if we got eight boulders in the tower AND everybody was mobile enough to get on the batter, there was another likely one. Scaling gave game points.

Based on these considerations, our strategy was to go after those QP first, working on additional game points as a secondary item. This put importance on being able to cross four classes of defense (all but the drawbridge and sally port), and also to be able to pickup, carry, and score boulders. Based on our strategy, the drive train, low ceiling, and CDF/portcullis manipulators were top priority, the boulder pickup, carry, and score was a close second, and scaling was a distant third.

Other robots seemed to focus on scoring boulders and scaling, and were able to only cross a few defenses (at least one I saw could only do the low bar going in, though of course it could do the drawbridge or sally port on the way out). This design was apparently based on a different game strategy, but the same game rules.

Edit: To further clarify, my "Analyzing the game" includes determining the payoff, difficulty, and risk of each game activity.

Okay, it sounds like what I interpreted as being your step 3 was actually your step 1. That makes sense.

Can you further clarify what your step 3 is? Would I be correct in say that your step 3 is more deciding the relative importance of robot capabilities than of tasks in the game?

[Edxu]

I think that having a cookie cutter game design, at least in the context of some simple and easy goals, is a good thing for FRC games.

For newer/weaker teams, it gives them an opportunity to put points onto the board that they can be proud of contributing to the alliance, as well as giving them a build goal early into the season that they can follow.

For stronger teams, having an 'easy' objective like crossing or reaching a defense becomes a new challenge; How do we achieve this objective most efficiently, without sacrificing operations that would give us more points overall?

Having objectives that can be easily predicted before kickoff also lets teams do some amount of preparation and prototyping based on past challenges, which improves the overall level of competition, making matches more exciting to watch and participate in.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

Can you further clarify what your step 3 is? Would I be correct in say that your step 3 is more deciding the relative importance of robot capabilities than of tasks in the game?

Yes, step 3 is deciding on the relative importance (and required speed) of different activities as applies to your robot. It is important to remember that these activities are linked back to game tasks; for example, the ability to score a goal in stronhold (whether high or low) would require: boulder pickup, crossing defense carrying boulder (in most cases), aligning the shot, and delivering the ball. If you don't get all of these, the value of the others goes way down.

[Dominick Ferone]

While the games can be seen to follow a trend, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The team I was on in high school would always try to do every part of the game possible, and while it's a nice dream, in reality it isn't always possible.
Some teams focus on one thing only, but if you're amazing at it, then good on you.
I remember a robot for 2012 only focused on being small, and able to balance easy with others being able to rest partially on them.
They won their event easy since they always guarenteed 10 points for the balance, or the coop and in the Elims got the 40 points with a triple balance.

When my friends and I started our new team, we tried to do the mentality of we can do as much as we used to, and it failed miserably. Our saving grace was the fact that Atleast we knew how to build an ok-pretty good drive train, and didn't have to worry about electrical as that was the areas we knew.

Our rookie year ended up being us driving around and trying to block or Atleast hinder teams trying to shoot the track ball, had we known we'd be doing that we wouldn't have used mecanum wheels.

Some teams never realize until too late maybe the task is harder than expected, maybe they can't achieve everything, but there are fallbacks where they can be helpful.

Also not every year had driving autos, 2010, 2011, 2013 come to mind where it was only scoring points with the game piece in auto. And 2009 was just drive to not get scored on.

The secondary scoring, like climbing, balancing and the mini bots was always a cool aspect to me, and can help get more kids involved. If they're more things to work on more students can be in charge of design projects and get more inspired, which is the real point of the program. I loved being apart of the team, and when I was a design leader my senior year I loved all the work I did and that's what really made me inspired to do engineering, and with how much my mentors challenged and inspired us, it made me want to start a team and help others.