Week 1 Impressions of Rack 'N Roll

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by platypus

If you see past the fast-pace, the game is deceptively shallow. I really hope that this changes as the season moves forward...

I LOVED your analysis of the game, but I find a big flaw with this statement. You're assuming a few major things with what you say...

1.) You can ONLY score one ringer on each spider leg. This is not true, anyone can go over what you put, but ONLY ONCE. Two can fit on. This is a proactive way to negate a large score. This adds a MASSIVE amount of new strategy to the game that only boggles the mind. Even though it's harder to see on the other side of the field, any scoring on the sides can be well seen and changed.

2.) You igonre the ramp bot quite a bit and fail to realize it's potential to act on defense during the match. If the robot has a good latch system and drive train, some pushing and ringer moving would give the other alliance enough of a headache to gain a small advantage.

3.) You fail to address the unpredicable nature of the tubes. These aren't sure fire scoring objects like balls, they are like bins, very unpredictable.

4.) The rack multiplication goes up and down along with side to side. A sqauare of 4 would get you the same amount of points as 4 on the bottom, but would be harder to break for the opposing alliance due to visibility.

I see this game as lacking certain aspects of previous year's games, but not to the point of being shallow. There's a lot there.

Oh, and I disagree that last year's game was hard to understand, by far, it was one of the easiest for new people to understand (shoot balls in the goals for 3 points, side goals for 1, 4 game periods, ramp at end) compared to other years games (balls fall, humans must shoot, can cap, only counts in colored goals, bots can hang, etc.)

Here's some things I agree on...

Spoilers- pointless at the current time, I think their inclusion was a test by FIRST, much as the inclusing of having robots interact with other robots to score (aka the ramp).

Keepers- they seem to lack any significant value during the qualifications besides making your team stand out, as we progress to The 4 and beyond (aka the 4 Championship fields and Einstein) they will be priceless, especially if they can score them on the sides of the rack, not just the part facing them.

Auton- will win games just like the ramps. If you get those 3 up there, that's just 2 more to put up till you negate a robot on their side. JUST TWO. One more would negate the max 60 points they can get by raising their robot.