Rule Changes at off season competitions

[Ken Leung]

Since off season competitions are unofficial events, we get to change the rules a little bit if we want to. I remember for the 2003 game we changed the finals format back to best 2 out of 3 instead of elimination points. There were also talks of making one of the bin 10 points instead of 1, but we never had enough time to announce it ahead of time.

I want to create a thread to discuss possible rule change at off season events that will make the game much more interesting. They have to be feasible of course, and won't create unfair advantage for bigger, more experienced teams.

2 Idea popped right into my head. I believe 1 of them is appropriate, another isn't. Take a look at them and suggest your own rule change.

1. Let robots score balls into goals. This is obviously a very interesting rule change. In fact, it will change the game into a completely different thing. I would've love to see this rule when they announce the game. But I have a feeling teams won't be ready to play such a game during post seasons. It will call for major rework on a lot of robot, and a lot of people are gone during the summer. So, while this is an interesting idea, I don't think it is feasible to apply.

2. Up the weight limit to 140 lbs. I think this will allow teams to add a whole new component to their robot if they want to. They can use bigger chains, bigger wheels, or add another set of pneumatics on their robot. While 10 lbs isn't a whole lot, it can be a matter of life and death for an arm, a winch, or a ball roller. I think with enough ahead of time announcement, this rule can be applied to an off season event and motivate teams to work on their robot during the summer.

What kind of rule change would you like to see at your event?

[miketwalker]

I personally would love to see descoring in finals matches for all balls, not just 2x. I think that it could be possible with the many arm mechanisms we see... it would definitly make a more creative strategy for defense.

[Brandon Holley]

i dont think those rule changes would make the game better.
number 1: hardly any teams, if any, are going to change their robot to score balls
number 2: this may make the teams that are already almost unbeatable, completely unbeatable, making it more difficult for rookies, and not so good teams...

my 2 cents

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Divide the field into three zones. Zone 1 from the wall to the beginning of the platform, zone 2 the entire length of the platform, and zone 3 from the end of the platform to the wall. Each 'end zone' corresponds to it nearest alliance.
Make the moveable goals neutral. When in zone 2 they don't count either way. When a moveable goal is in a teams zone it couts for 10pts plus the balls indside/ontop. Then, pushing a moveable goal to block your opponents ball chute would be giving them 10 pts. I think it would be a simple, fun way to spice it up a bit.

Here's a crappy little pic I whipped up fast to help explain the zone layout.
If you wanted to complicate things more, you could switch the blue and red zones, so your zone is on the opposite side of the field.

[Heretic121]

definatley add the weight up to 140... it lets teams add little things that they wanted to add during the season, but it but them overwieght. I also like the idea's of zones alot. it gives more incentive to use it. but have a stipulation where you have to have at least 1 ball in the mobile goal. so thereforth if i am on red, and i push our mobile goal into blue's zone, they have to give us 5 pts for them to get 10, so its only a 5pt trade off in the end, but it could be the game diffrence in a match.

[Arefin Bari]

if we can change the rule for the weight to 140... my goal grabber is going on..

[Specialagentjim]

Not so much a rule change as a subgame.

I want to see a match where you place all the robots on the field at once, and say whoever can hang first wins. (for those of you who remember mayhem in miami, think King of the Hill)

[Mike Schroeder]

make an addition to the rules so if your robot can get on the first level of the platform, thats 5 points, and if your robot can get on to the second level of the platform, you get 15 points, you would have to end your round there, to be eligble for the points

[tiffany34990]

Originally Posted by mechman108

if we can change the rule for the weight to 140... my goal grabber is going on..

lol--- yeah well with weigh change everybody will be a bit happy-- i know my team might as well put on our other mechanism to knock out the 2x ball then

changes to the rules sure can be interesting--

enjoy y'all!

[jrgrim12]

What I would like to see is the ball value weighted a little more. This would make the game more interesting and fun to watch. It would make hanging more equal to ball collecting. Say make the balls worth 10 pts. each or 2 of them worth 50 pts. Or make the bar worth 25 pts instead of 50. This would force teams to spend some of the time trying to fight for balls and push balls around for at least some of the games. It would take away from the boring hanging matches where all the teams just hang from the bar. I think it might give it a more of a mad dash to the finish effect; instead of robots just going for the bar. This rule change wouldn't change robots but strategies. This would keep teams from having to redesign their robots. Which in the off season can be a pain.

[AmyPrib]

Wow, and I thought this game already had enough things going on with tasks, rules, objectives, and penalties!!

I personally don't think I'd change much with the game itself.
I think many teams like to take a little break from robot stuff. I wouldn't think it right to change game tasks that may require robot redesigns just to be successful or to gain an advantage in an off-season event. And there may be many teams out there just trying to improve their robot for the game as-is.

Currently, you only have to get 4 extra balls in the goal (you start with 6) to match one hanging robot, and that doesn't even include a 2x ball. 2 hangers can be easy to beat. I think the game did a good job on that type of strategy - "choose how to score". It's pretty balanced.. anyone is beatable with the right strategy.

My opinion would be to limit changes to ones that don't have a relatively large impact to existing robot designs, such as certain game rules, or scoring/ranking system, weight etc. I think the scoring and ranking system went over really well too, so I can't even suggest changing that!!

[David Kelso]

Every year at our River Rage meetings, we go through all the things that could make the game better. This year, I have NO suggestions. You could make it different, but not really better. We have only ever considered rule changes that would NOT give any type of robot design an advantage over another. This is an advantage of having 4 teams on one committee....no one is going to give an advantage to another team. For example, last year, we actually shortened the matches so that they were two minutes TOTAL, counting HP time. This resulted in more teams trying to score points and not just driving around bashing bins. At the end of the day of competition, we had LESS THAN 10 destroyed boxes!

[MikeDubreuil]

Ok, this may be kind of stupid... but I think it would be highly amusing to see it in action.

I think most people would say that scoring the small balls is easy. So easy that for the most part, if the ball gets to the human player station there's a really good chance it will be scored.

My change would be to swap goals. The blue alliance scores in the red goals and the red team scores in the blue goals. A human player would have to be athletic enough to throw the extra distance and accurate enough to throw it over the hanging bar.

To make it easier, the bars of the stationary goal are oriented opposite of what they are now. As far as capping the goals, I think teams might have to get on the platform to score the 2X balls, or hopefully their mechanism just works. Finally, to force teams to use the stationary goals, I would remove the mobile goals.

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by Ken Leung

2. Up the weight limit to 140 lbs. I think this will allow teams to add a whole new component to their robot if they want to. They can use bigger chains, bigger wheels, or add another set of pneumatics on their robot. While 10 lbs isn't a whole lot, it can be a matter of life and death for an arm, a winch, or a ball roller. I think with enough ahead of time announcement, this rule can be applied to an off season event and motivate teams to work on their robot during the summer.

This would provide a disadvantage to teams going to more than one offseason event if all of their events didn't adopt this rule.

[Bcahn836]

[quote=Ken Leung]
2. Up the weight limit to 140 lbs. I think this will allow teams to add a whole new component to their robot if they want to. They can use bigger chains, bigger wheels, or add another set of pneumatics on their robot. While 10 lbs isn't a whole lot, it can be a matter of life and death for an arm, a winch, or a ball roller. I think with enough ahead of time announcement, this rule can be applied to an off season event and motivate teams to work on their robot during the summer.[quote=Ken Leung]

At the offseason competitions i went to last year none of the robots were weighed. The rules at the offseason competitions are more laid back because we all are there to have fun and feed our craving for robotics. But i will say by adding ten lbs some teams can test out parts that never made it on the robot due to weight or try out a new development for next years game.