Why I Like This Year's Game

[Jeff Waegelin]

I like this game because it will be easy for spectators to watch, but challenging for competitors to design and play. It's a very simple game on the surface, which is great for the audience - everyone understands the concept of racing and making laps, and the addition of the trackballs is also easy to explain. With all the extra rules, the challenge of picking up a ball larger than your robot, and a competition quite unlike anything we've seen before, it's got enough to make it interesting and engaging for competitors. Is it my favorite game ever? No, but it's got a lot to offer.

[billbo911]

This game has several aspects I really like seeing:

1) It allows the most basic robot (Can you say Rookie team?) to still contribute to an alliance. If a team just assembles the KOP chassis and hooks up the electronics, they can score!

2) "Middle experienced" teams can stretch their skills and do really well in Hybrid Mode. A small amount of programming and they can score quite well. Add in the use of a gyro and encoders along with the IR board and now you have a reliably killer Hybrid bot.

3) Senior teams have the opportunity to really strut their stuff. Look for some really awesome bots from this level this year.

4) This point is actually one of my favorites. Defense, though still present, has been greatly reduced in it's value and reward. I never have felt that it had much of a place in FIRST. Don't get me wrong, there can be a lot of creativity and strategy in defense, but they way it has been heading in the last few years, I didn't feel we were much different than BattleBots. I have always felt there was way more value in designing a robot to achieve something than there was in preventing others from succeeding in achieving what they had designed for.



I fully expect to see some awesome drive trains this year: Holonomic, Swerve Drive, Crab Drive, Multi Speed trannies etc. I'm looking for innovative arms and hoists. Hybrid/Autonomous modes that are very impressive.