Small balls in 2001 competition

[archiver]

Posted by Scott England at 04/29/2001 5:05 PM EST


College Student on team #401, The Hokie G.U.A.R.D, from Virginia Tech/MCPS and Virginia Tech/VBEP.


In Reply to: Small balls in 2001 competition
Posted by Patrick Dingle on 04/29/2001 4:33 PM EST:



I tend to think from the way Dean said things, it will be an alliance vs the field again, not head to head combat.

Personally, I think that an idea someone mentioned earlier would be interesting to see, like football, offense vs defense

lets say 4 robots have the field and 2 minutes to manipulate stuff, put balls in goals, tires over bowling pits, knock a pendulum one way or another, do everything imaginable to score points.
and then 4 other robots get like 30 seconds to play defense, undoing as much as they can.
then the teams switch positions and do it again,

so while this wouldn't be exactly head to head combat, there would be more of a sense of competition. Also, with this structure, 8 teams would have a round in relatively short order, all the teams right there, with just a short amount of time to reset the field and less introductions before putting the robots back on the field. just an idea, not even saying its the best one, just one way that a bit of the competitive air could be added to the competition without teams antagonizing eachother
~Scott

KAMEN FOR PRESIDENT 2004 !!!



: After reading some of these posts about the game, I think the game could have been given another dimension if they made small balls worth more than one point. Almost all teams decided not to design their robots to handle small balls, since they were worth so little, and humans could load one goal anyway.

: Now say the small balls are worth three points, and that the four-team alliance only has 10 balls in their human player station. Now, if there is a robot that can quickly load a goal with about 6-8 balls, then that's another 20 points or so. It would also make a much more interesting combination of robots. Instead of having balancers, wedges, and big-ball handlers, we would also have small-ball handlers.

: If we do stick with a 4vs0 type setup next year, then I think the game can be made better by making these different scoring options (e.g. big ball, small ball, balancing) all worth relatively the same amount of points... Even if this means removing multipliers, I think it would make each match different, depending on the alliance, and would be somewhat more exciting to watch.

: So say we do keep 4vs0 for another year... Regardless if you like 4vs0 or 2vs2 better, how do others think the 4vs0 can be improved?

: Patrick