Thoughts on Overdrive

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

I think this is exactly wrong. The penalty is to offset the points from a hurdle and a lap, which is 10 points. If the penalty was only two points, robots could flagrantly run backwards to get a ball to score 10 points.

But the ball has to cross the opponent's finish line to score again.

[woody]

Good:
-Scoring distribution (between autonomous, teleoperated, and 'end game') was pretty good this year. In 06, the winner of autonomous got a huge advantage. Last year, matches could be won with decent defense and two ramped robots, but autonomous was hardly worth anything.
-BETTER match randomization. Still needs work, but its a step in the right direction.

Bad:
-Bring back human players!
-It would be nice to allow for a little more robot-robot contact. Calls seemed to be more lenient at the Championship, but during regionals the contact calls were unnecessarily strict. Having a game where teams can't touch each other for fear of a penalty is no fun to drive in or watch. Why do you think people like football?! ; ) Encourage teams to build better, stronger robots by allowing them to face a bit of abuse on the field.

Neutral:
-Blind spots.. these were annoying at first but eventually were just a bit of an added challenge. And some teams got pretty good at using them strategically, knocking balls into the oppositions blind spot to make them harder to acquire.

[bigbeezy]

I personally thought that the game was going to be extremely boring at kickoff. I still think it is boring... but not so much. The elims did bring some fun into the game, but to watch the quals wasn't very exciting. I did like how teams were able to score with just a working drive train so rookies and other weaker teams could spend their time working on a solid drive system instead of trying to do that and a manipulator, thus spreading their resources thin. The Hybrid scoring was nice, however i felt that the bonus points wern't very appealing to teams. Basically if you didnt get the cap, many times we would just be like "oh-well we still got 8 pts for it." There really wasn't any incentive to cap at the end, and i've found crowds really love those last second dashes to get bonus pts (like ramps).

I honestly like 2005 the best (granted i haven't seen any before then) and i'm probabily biased but I loved the tetras. There was also a sence of anticipation after each match because the score couldn't be scored during the match very well. so there was some excitement once the scores came out. With the real-time scoring, save penalties, everyone already knows who won.

Ranking since my first year 2005 i'd have to say:
1. Triple Play
2. Rack & Roll
3. Aim High
4. Overdrive

from what i've heard 2004 was a sweet game and i would love to see that game come back.

[gunsanbob]

Compared to the other years' games Overdrive is BEST I MEAN BEST I like the fast robots going round the track like Racecars, but it's no fun if u lose by penlaties

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

I think this is exactly wrong. The penalty is to offset the points from a hurdle and a lap, which is 10 points. If the penalty was only two points, robots could flagrantly run backwards to get a ball to score 10 points.

I wasn't suggesting to make the penalty only worth 2 points. I guess from a speed bot's perspective, it's basically taking away 5 laps, which for even the fastest teams means probably around half of your tele-operated laps meant nothing.

Penalties were too harsh this year.

One thing I liked about this year - no speed limit. I think we should keep that for future year's games, or at least up it from the usual 12 ft/s. That's going to seem exceptionally slow if FIRST brings that back.

[Doug Leppard]

Commenting only on the autonomous mode (hybrid).

This year was the best. I have been with FIRST since 2003 when the first autonomous came out. This year was the most challenging and fun to take on than any in the past. But also rookie teams could score in autonomous by just driving forward. So any team could be part of autonomous mode and the more advanced teams were very challenged by it. I say to FIRST bring it on more especially with more power of the new processor.

[artdutra04]

At the beginning of the season, I thought the game had promise and I was excited; then a few weeks in I realized how boring the matches were going to be, as you were going to have a limited number of nearly identical robot designs. I did like the downplayed role of bash-em-to-bits defense, and the advent of "smarter" defense.

Here's just a whole bunch of random ideas for improving the game. Some are more feasible (and better) than others, but I'm just throwing them all on the wall to see what sticks. Or if you prefer Dean's lingo, it's time to kiss some frogs.

• A "golden trackball" type of thing which could have been scoreable (only as a hurdle) by either alliance.
• More diversity of playing field objects, a la FIRST Frenzy. Add in some mobile goals, or 20" balls. With three robots per alliance, the possibilities of "specialized" robots would be even cooler than it was back in 2004.
• What if the entire overpass was a teeter-totter (with about 10 degrees of motion), and if you had more trackballs over your homestretch at the end of the match (thus causing it to tip towards you), you can get a multiplier bonus.
• A launching ramp for Dukes of Hazzard style driving. Or even just speed bumps.
• A Red/Blue target light at each trackball position, which would light up as the color of trackball there at the start of the match for CMUcam autonomous navigation.
• Modification of G22 to only count FULLY crossing the lane markers in the clockwise direction as a penalty.
• Elimination round matches are to be played in the opposite direction (CW) than qualification matches (CCW).
• A variable-length autonomous mode. At the very minimum, it starts as ten seconds. But for every five/ten seconds extra you leave your robot in autonomous, the point value of all maneuvers completed autonomously double. (Of course, this will only work if the real-time lane marker sensors had been working...)
• A REAL HUMAN PLAYER POSITION.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

[*]A launching ramp (...)Or even just speed bumps.

Either of these would be a really interesting game element. Or even both: a 6-inch high ramp on the left hand lane and a 3-inch speed bump on the right. Woo hoo!

[Drwurm]

This year I went to 4 regionals and 1 championship.

One of the biggest complaints I was hearing all year was bad reffing. I didn't see so much bad reffing, as inadequate reffing. There were far too many things going on at once to try and call every penalty.

I saw blatant out of bumper zone contact never called because the refs were too busy trying to see if a bot would G22.

In another situation, a robot parked sideways in front of us and "pinned" us against a finish line. We backed up to get around the bot and incurred a G22 from a ref. From this ref's POV, we had simply gone over the line (he couldn't see the other robot in front of us). The ref that would have called impeding on the robot in front of us was busy watching another potential G22 occurring in another part of the field. Situations like this plagued every regional I was at.

There was simply way too much going on at one time in this game for the refs to deal with. If the refs are going to be required to look for so many things, some sort of instant replay MUST be included.

Now to the game itself.

Hybrid mode is an awesome idea with great potential. However, I was dissatisfied with the communication to the robots (IR). In later years, it would be nice if the hybrid commands were sent directly to the robot via the OI->RC system so that we didn't have to deal with bazooka remotes and IR diode arrays.

I didn't like the fact that all the goals in this game were based off of a similar task. Last year there were 2 completely unrelated tasks, which lent a little more to the alliance strategy. This year every alliance was clear. 2 great hurdlers, 1 defender favorably with ball knocking or some hurdling capability.

Also, I should ask how many devoted lap bots you saw in the finals. None-ish? This is because the 2 points awarded for a single lap is completely drowned out by hurdling. All bots that would have otherwise been lapping were playing defense on the hurdlers. Even 148, a bot designed to make laps reverted to defense(impressive I might add).

The point is, these laps made little difference to the actual score of the match since the bots hurdling simultaneously make laps. If FIRST is going to make other objectives count, they need to put more value on these objectives and make them specialized and unique from the main objective.

Also, the field was far too constricted this year. This would be a much faster game if robots had more room to pass and move around. I believe speed and constant movement were 2 of the goals FIRST was aiming for this year, so in retrospect, a larger field would have been better.

Bumping to pass????L-O-L. nough said.

What I liked about 2007 was that every robot on an alliance could accomplish the main task. Unfortunately, since this year had only 2 game pieces per alliance, one robot had to sit out. What I did not like about 2007 was that having such a central scoring structure led to huge pushing matches just to score a couple ringers in the finals. So in that aspect, FIRST did a good job this year, separating the scoring zones for each alliance.

Endgame was very exciting, even more so than last year in some cases. This clincher play excitement really made some of the matches for me.

What I would like to see in 2009:

Less penalty potential

Hybrid (with a bit stronger comm link)

Enough game pieces so every robot can have at least one

Separated scoring zones (This does not mean completely separated robots. I love defense.)

A strong secondary goal that has no relation to the primary goal

Endgame excitement!

[lingomaniac88]

The concept of hybrid mode was a cool idea. Unfortunately, some IR boards did not work at the regionals... there were probably better ways (as in besides infrared) for the robocoach to communicate with the robot.

For the human player:
Perhaps the human player could actually go onto the field and play like a robot! In the case of this year, the human player would run around the track and move the trackballs themselves. With disabling the robots as a safety measure, of course.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by lingomaniac88

The concept of hybrid mode was a cool idea. Unfortunately, some IR boards did not work at the regionals... there were probably better ways (as in besides infrared) for the robocoach to communicate with the robot.

For the human player:
Perhaps the human player could actually go onto the field and play like a robot! In the case of this year, the human player would run around the track and move the trackballs themselves. With disabling the robots as a safety measure, of course.

This would never happen. Its a robotics competition first and people would get injured like crazy. Imagine a robot playing defense on a human player.
End result: Not pretty!

[Brian J. R.]

My first reaction to that was that blood has got to be bad on the electronics. My second thought was to give the human player a sawzall. My final thought was that a sawzall has got to be bad for the electronics.
/joke

When this season started, I was throughly disapointed by the game. Until build season started that is. And wrapping it all up, with our driver wracking up $1500 in damages to the robot..(Snapping 3 carbon fiber claws) I have to say that it was a awesome year.

[bilal1219]

"Teams got lot of speeding tickets"

[EricH]

Originally Posted by gunsanbob

Compared to the other years' games Overdrive is BEST I MEAN BEST I like the fast robots going round the track like Racecars, but it's no fun if u lose by penlaties

Thou art a rookie. Wait until next year. Or review matches from previous years.

Originally Posted by waialua359

This would never happen. Its a robotics competition first and people would get injured like crazy. Imagine a robot playing defense on a human player.
End result: Not pretty!

2003. HP went out onto the field to make like a robot. Robots were disabled. Then in auto mode, the robots could aim for the human bins.

[sgreco]

This would never happen. Its a robotics competition first and people would get injured like crazy. Imagine a robot playing defense on a human player.

Human players don't actually have to be on the field