FIRST Rule Changes

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

I appreciate you bringing this topic up. It worthy of discussion. I must say that I take exception to the phrase "game exploit scheme". Isn't having a different solution what all teams want? My elevator pitch to bring outsiders to a regional is that all 60 teams have a common challenge and there are 60 different solutions to that challenge. There are going to be teams that have very unique solutions.
Example: 2004 FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar. There was a 50 point bonus awarded for hanging on the 10' bar at the end of the match. We had one of those "game exploit scheme" ideas of moving back and forth across that bar and defending it. Only 3 or 4 teams total did that. We dominated our first regional and then got our butts handed to us once others understood what we were doing and how to defend it.

The competition is the big leveler. It will be defendable. We're looking for 1700 different ways to play this years challenge. That's why we keep coming back.

Gah, it was YOU! Assuming you are the team I'm thinking of (2004, NJ regional), we were hung from the bar in one of the qualification matches (one of our last i think) and a team that moved back and forth to defend the bar hit us seemingly trying to push us off the bar and bent a part of our lift mechanism by rolling through it.

We ended up doing some very temporary repairs (hose clamps and sheet metal!) and were able to keep it running long enough to make the elimination matches (we picked up 2nd seed!). Unfortunately our fix failed in the 3rd match of the 1/4 finals, causing our team to go home.

Faux anger aside, I was very impressed with the side to side bot, it was very great at defending.