Lunacy Review

[EdwardP]

Also the best teams tended to be the ones like 217 and 111 who rather than use their human players ablity to shoot just had them fill hoppers up for the robot to score.

Still, I do agree human players where too involved in the game.

[Herodotus]

I was not really a big fan of Lunacy. Of the four games I've personally witnessed I would rank them, from highest to lowest:

2007
2008
2009
2006

Likes:
Trailers- Having to score on a moving target was pretty cool, and made for more energetic matches, generally.

Different Surface- I think changing it up is always a good thing, though I would have found an uneven surface to be even cooler.

Easy to Do, Hard to Do Well- I think this needs to be the mantra for the GDC when it comes to the primary scoring device. It should be easy to score and participate, but hard to do it well. Most teams could score, even if it was only the first 7 balls or a couple more, but not many teams could deliver game changing dumps like 67, 148, 0r 1625.

Dislikes:
No secondary scoring method- This especially applies to the end game. I just think having the end game being different from the rest of the scoring period seems somehow more impressive. Climbing the ramps at the end of 2006 or 2007 was always a high tension moment as you never knew who would fall off or just barely make it. The super cells tended to just come out of nowhere and didn't really build as much tension, except maybe when a bot would deliver them.

G14- I don't think much needs to be said. I personally think this is the worst rule I've seen in my four years of FIRST. No one should ever be punished for doing well. Each robot and team should be given the chance to perform to the best of it's abilities, with no arbitrary limitations. I think it's ten times worse then the G22 last year, despite having less of an effect.

Flat Field- Flat fields seem more boring. Stairs, ramps, platforms, and bridges all really add to a game and make it more interesting.

HP scoring- I've always thought of the human player as someone who helps the robot score somehow, such as by loading them up. I'd prefer not to see the human player be able to directly score, except in rare circumstances.

Overly protective bumper rules- Am I the only one who felt this way? Isn't it up to the teams to make a robot that can handle the the contact you get with these robots? What was so bad about the pre-bumper era? Were robots being destroyed left and right?

Confusing rules at first- Many of the rules seemed very confusing at first, like the not extending beyond the box. For example, they continued to refer to the "starting box" if I remember correctly, which initially led me to believe that you could extend outside of said starting box. How many people review the rules before the game is released? I'd suggest always running the game past a diverse group of people, maybe even people not even involved in FIRST, and see if they can understand the rules.

[s_forbes]

My favorite part about this year's game was the absence of questionable referee calls. It was great how matches with penalties were somewhat rare, as opposed to last year where penalties played a role in almost every match.

[davidalln]

At Archimedes, one of the color commentators called autonomous "a programmer's dream". But unfortunately, this year, there was no inspiration to code.

Our robot picked up two regional wins this year with code that does nothing but mapping buttons to motors and has an autonomous that moves forward.

Hopefully next year, scoring in autonomous will be an important part of strategy to the extent of Aim High.

Otherwise, I though Lunacy was an amazing game and would love to see more open-ended games in the future.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by jblay

the thing is that the better performing bots won in the match no matter how good the human players. that is what made the game work out.

I have the opposite take on this. This is the worst year EVER for top robots.

In every other year I've seen since 2001 an elite robot could win matches all by itself, or with minimal help from alliance partners. This year having sub par alliance partners was the kiss of death. Particularly your third partner in the eliminations. If your third partner couldn't contribute and not get loaded up with 30 balls in their trailer, it doesn't matter if you have the best robot in FIRST. You're still going to lose.

Human players for an alliance could easily score 70 points alone. The best robots could only average 15-19 balls per match. When the humans can score nearly as much, or outright outscore the very best robots, something is not right.

[jblay]

i completely agree that this year more than any other year before it did not allow for dominance of one bot in a match like 1114 last year. the point i was making was in regard to the human players. i was saying that the matches were decided by the bots and not the human players and that in matches with good bots that robots scored the majority of the points and decided the game.

[KF987]

There are several reasons why Lunacy was not a fun and exciting game to watch and play.

Dislikes
-The surface & wheels did not allow teams to be creative & unique. Almost every team had the exact same drive trains. with the exception of those w/ swerve ect.. which didnt really give an advantage in this years game. Everyone was pushed around.

-Human Players were too involved for my taste. They should not have been allowed to throw into goals during auto. Rather only to load a robot. In some of the very close matches the balls the human players scored at the beginning of the match were often the difference. Dean always talks about how he doesn't like the fact that people make a bunch of money/succeed for throwing or bouncing a ball, why have it play such a part in one of his games?

-Having a partner who cant play the game hurts you. I feel it should be neutral. If your partner didn't show up for a match it was usually a death sentence if you were playing against three descent bots. In past years if a partner didn't show up it wouldn't hurt your alliance nearly as much. A dead trailer cost an alliance at least 26 points in auto. (13 the PS usually starts with)

-End game was boring. The only time I regularly saw a robot deliver the super cell to the trailer was when I watched 217. They had a great end game strategy. I started w/ first in 06 and since then every game had an exciting end game whether it be flying down the field last minute to get on a ramp (06,07) or placing a ball on top of an overpass. All were done by the robots not the human players like this year where they often shot the super cells.

-G14 I hope this is the only year for that.

-I was on Archimedes doing field reset on thursday and the camera man asked me what the game was so he would know what to film, he thought the point of the game was for the robots to evade the HP throwing balls in to their trailer.

-Bumper rules severely limited teams ability to design their robots to play this game.

-Defense, their needs to be a time limit a team can pin and then let their victim go. Their is a place for defense, but it can't be disable a robot for the entire match, and then not be able to get out of it because there is no traction.

-Good scoring bots could not carry an alliance this year. Having bad alliance partners killed you in quals. Where as in previous years bots could cary an alliance in quals so the bots who could score would seed high.

Likes
-GDC took away questionable referee calls that plagued the 2008 season.



*Next years game will be one the most exciting ever, because it follows Luncay. FIRST went from polar opposites, a fast paced game (Over Drive) to an extremely slow paced game in 2009

[Koko Ed]

The strategy aspect and the unpredictability factor made this game interesting to follow but the action was slow and the field cluttered with traffic jams and there was far too much going on to often follow. The game rates a C- and out of my seven years of FIRST I place it fith out of seven games.

[AlexD744]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The strategy aspect and the unpredictability factor made this game interesting to follow but the action was slow and the field cluttered with traffic jams and there was far too much going on to often follow. The game rates a C- and out of my seven years of FIRST I place it fith out of seven games.

Let me guess 03' is at the bottom, I couldn't figure that game out when I watched a video, I still think it's which bot could knock over a ton of bin in auto, and then win. Maybe there was a bonus for ramps, I don't really know.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by AlexD744

Let me guess 03' is at the bottom, I couldn't figure that game out when I watched a video, I still think it's which bot could knock over a ton of bin in auto, and then win. Maybe there was a bonus for ramps, I don't really know.

2002 was my least favorite(it changed completely in the eliminations and became a boring pointless tug of war). I also realized my count was off. I've been around for eight seasons (time flies i suppose) so 2009 comes in sixth.

The list.
2004 (the robots were so athletic and amazing. Most Ohhhh/ahhh moments a FIRST game had.The game was so diverse)
2006(best game to watch)
2008(I thought it was a rather fun game to watch really. Especially when it's played well)
2003(this game was better than it got credit for it's only sin was giving way to many points for the top platform)
2007(not a bad game really but brutality at the championship showed it's flaws and the endgame was frustrating and trumped all the hard work good teams did and they could do nothing to stop it)
2009( great at strategy but boring to watch)
2005(very vanilla to be honest)
2002(bleh)

[Jared Russell]

In my 9 years...

Best
2006 - Aim High
2007 - Rack N Roll
2009 - Lunacy
2008 - Overdrive
2003 - Stack Attack
2005 - Triple Play
2004 - FIRST Frenzy
2002 - Zone Zeal
Worst

All in all I liked Lunacy a lot. I loved the changeup of not driving on carpet (though I think it is only fun when it is just that - a one year changeup). I loved the simple game dynamic of driving with a goal stuck to you. I loved the way the supercell brought excitement to the endgame (something that 2008 and 2005 really lacked). I LOVED the lack of robot penalties.

I did NOT like the fact that many of the build rules, taken together, made for very limited room for innovation. Too many robots looked the same (and if you limit your query to the subset of robots who were "elite" this season, there were basically only 3 or 4 winning designs out there). I also did not like how we chose a game piece that was almost impossible to find after kickoff (especially in the northeast).

The game itself was much more fun to play than to watch. Robots moved slowly, huge scrums were the norm, and there wasn't a lot of "wow" factor.

[Enigma's puzzle]

I personally loved the game except for the human player aspect. IMHO, if they had let you put as many balls as you could fit in your robot, and then scattered the rest accross the field it would have become incredibly robot focused, i think that would have been a better way to go. Maybe you could allow the human player to shoot super cells, but i would have been fine without human players except for as super cell administrators.

[Bongle]

I started the season really liking Lunacy:

Likes:
-The field floor removed the advantages that most veteran teams had with regards to drivetrains. No more 8-motor, 8-wheel drives that had been refined for a decade. It was also much safer to test because you didn't have to worry about a high-torque robot spinning out of control and injuring someone. Robots could be restrained with a single person to test drive.
-The inability of dominant robots to really dominate. It required a team effort, which made alliance selection and scouting a much bigger aspect of the game.

However, after watching 1.5 regionals and the championship, I ended up strongly disliking it.

Dislikes:
-It's boring. This isn't so much a field or robot slowness complaint (I liked the low-friction surface so much I hope FIRST uses an only slightly-gripper version in all future games), but a crowding complaint. With all the trailers on field, it was near-impossible for a game to run really smoothly without bunching up. I never got the hang of being able to tell at a glance which trailer was attached to which robot. There was no flow at all.
-Much too heavy reliance on human players. I had the same complaint for the 2004 game.
-Game task was too difficult to automate well. Much like 2007, there were very few robots (in fact, I never saw one on Newton) that could score reliably in autonomous.
-It was hard to tell if a team had super cells ready to go. It would have been cool to have a weight-activated sensor on the empty cell hook that lit up a light above that human player. You could maybe only aim that light at the crowd so the drivers would still have to pay attention.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

...and there was far too much going on to often follow.

This to me is the biggest issue with this game. I have brought many non-FIRSTers to watch events this year and every one of them said that there was always a lot of chaos and it was hard to follow.

I've said this before (okay, I say it after EVERY YEAR), and I'll say it again: ever since the games went to 3 against 3, the games have been nearly impossible for casual observers to follow.

I also always propose this to the IRI powers that be: is it possible to run an hour of unofficial matches sometime during the IRI weekend as 2 vs. 2 just to see if it makes the game easier to follow? I still don't know if that's the cure, but I really would love to give it a try.

[JVN]

"If you have an opinion on something, it often says more about you than it does that thing."

I'm learning a lot about a number of people just from reading this thread.

-John