[Official 2006 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas

[RyanMcE]

I have a few "radical" ideas:

Radical Idea #1:
Split the Championship into eight divisions, for the same reason it was split into four divisions (as outlined in this post). Then there are 64 teams in the elimination rounds (like a certain very popular basketball tournament that happens in March). This will also make room for the FIRST Championship to expand in the future, as opposed to simply reacting to the growth later on. Four hundred teams next year, anyone?

Radical Idea #2:
Longer matches. Not just by a minute, but MUCH longer. Maybe, 8 minutes. Or 15 minutes. Then one of the engineering challenges becomes how to get batteries to last long enough while still having an active, effecitive machine. This would also allow matches to be split into periods - halves, thirds, or quarters - so that alliances can reevaluate their strategies during breaks, change batteries, do quick mechanical work, etc. The end result I have in mind is that there will actaully be come-from-behind victories, which seems very rare in a two-minute game. Also, each period could begin with a new autonomous mode. This way, we don't have to have a minute-long autonomous mode to please the programmers, but just three or four 15-second versions. Finally, this would allow for serious infractions to have immediate consequences (ie, stop the clock and remove the offending robot from play, or assess the penalty immedaitely instead of at the end of the game, when it isn't always clear what happened or why). I know that longer matches means fewer matches, but the quality of each match could really go up. And it would be interesting, at any rate.

Radical Idea #3:
Autonomous mode at the *end* of human-control mode. Then when a match is close, you have to rely on something you cannot control directly - much more exciting!

Radical Idea #4:
It has already been brought up, but I also really like the idea of "blind" drivers - or areas on the field where the drivers cannot see their robots - but one or two or three (!) human players can see the robot, and have to communicate that information back to the drivers using some innovative technique. A simple six-foot tall obstruction in the center of the field would do the trick.

Radical Idea #5:
Borrow ideas from popular sports to draw in the crowds. A football, for example, is an oddly-shaped object for a robot to manipulate, so that makes for a great engineering challenge. How about a game with a quarterback, a defender, and a reciever. The receiver goes to the other side of the field and must catch or collect the footballs in their endzone that the quarterback throws, while the defender tries to block the balls without touching the quartrback or the reciever (or else it gets shut down for a while) - this way, points aren't arbitraily given or taken away, but it becomes easier or harder to get them. Or how about a 10-foot tall hoop that robots must pass - gasp - basketballs thorugh. Making it something that "normal people" (ie, non-FIRSTers) can relate too should help marketability. That way, we can descibe the game as "its like basketball, but with robots" instead of "its like putting small pyramids on big pyramids, with a taller pyramid in the middle and... uh, no not in Egypt, in Atlanta..."

Ah, there is more, but thats all that wants to come out right now...