Did Lunacy really level the playing field?

[Jon Jack]

I also have to say that we spend a lot of time debating wide or long. We had several pages of notes on the pros and cons of both orientations, but in the end we decided that long was better for two reasons... 1) Made ball manipulation easier 2) It allowed us to squeeze through tight gaps to get to our target.

If we had to make the decision again, I'm not sure that we would have changed our orientation.

Overall Lunacy did not level the playing field...

I think in terms of designing this game made it easier on veteran teams. As Cory stated in his first post, there wasn't nearly as much time put into the drivetrain design as there were in previous years. All we did was redesign Tough Boxes to fit with our 'West Coast Drive'. Really by mid week 2 our drivetrain out of the design phase and into the fabrication phase. This left us with a lot of time to work out the finer details of our ball manipulation systems. By the end of week 4 we already had both superstructures welded (and one Powder Coated) and had started running balls through them. The first few iterations were NOT pretty and far from where they are now. However, having all of week 5 and most of week 6 to refine the superstructures was a big part of why we had the success we did.

Having a second robot to practice with was HUGE. I cannot stress this enough. Going into our first competition with ~40 hours of practice time in was huge. Not only did our driver already know how to drive on the FRP, but our driver and operator had already been working on how to stalk and attack trailers. Our operator knew when it was okay to let loose on a trailer and when not to.

On top of this after San Diego we went back and refined our strategies and design. We put our drive team through the ringer, putting them in pinning situations and then forcing them to have to work throughit and get out of it. While they were practicing trying to score in trailers, we'd have another robot coming up and pushing them out of the way.

We did the same thing after Las Vegas. We would refine the design, play matches, create and play through scenarios.

Lunacy did have glaring flaws though that gave it the perception that it was 'leveling the playing field'
1) Too much reliance on alliance partners
2) Too much freedom for human players
3) Lack of pinning rule or vehicle for pinned robots to get out of a pin

I don't think these game features were put in to intentionally 'level the playing field' but instead these were overlooked by the GDC and once announced at kick-off they would have been too drastic of changes to implement in an update or Q&A.