2007 RachaCha Ruckus

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I respectfully state that if I were a competitor at this event, I think I'd prefer the top seeded teams have the option to pick their own alliances. Because the intermixing of the alliance robots' functions is so critical to the alliance's strategy and success this year (Can you climb our ramps? How many ramps do we want in the alliance? Do we want a 2 defensive/1 offensive alliance or another configuration? etc.), I don't think random pairings would be the best choice for the elimination rounds. For example, what if numbers worked out such that 3 defensive/rampbots ended up in one alliance? I don't think any of those 3 teams would enjoy that too much. Although it would be fun to see full team defense played against an alliance, I don't think it would work for very long. You run the risk of formulating too many weird/incompatible alliances, and then the gameplay in the elims would suffer.

Just my opinion. Hopefully you guys get a ton of teams this year and you can run a standard playoff operation.

Understood & agreed, but I also think it might make for more non-traditional strategy. For teams that can run the same strategy they ran in regionals and in championships, I think it would be boring and predictable. Our most fun match was a match in Boston where we were with 2 ramp bots (one without wheels!), and were against three scorers, two of which were fairly consistant. We ran a very crazy strategy that would have worked except for one misinterpretation of the rules.

Besides, in my mind, I like offseason events that are fun, and allow teams to throw any team member into the driveteam (we do this at Bash every year... every student that goes gets a chance to be on the driveteam). When you feel like you have to be serious to get your rank up there, teams tend not to do things like this. They focus on winning. But just my opinion, not necessarily what the committee will decide

I guess we will have to see what kind of teams sign up. Maybe we could do a random selection by category (ie scorers, rampbots, bothbots). I dunno... its far from decided... the committee can discuss it