2010 Lesson Learned: The Positive

[Koko Ed]

What did you think FIRST did particularly well this year?

[The Cyborg]

FIRST did very well at making a game that people unfamiliar with FIRST can watch and track without much help.
They also did very well with the automated scoring system! I was first very iffy about using an automated scoring system this year because of the disasters that happened with using one in 2006. It looks like they made a game and successfully implemented this system without many problems.

[Cuyir]

They also did a nice job making the game more team based - you needed to choose alliance partners who bots would complement your own (although this also hurt some teams in the qualifiers who had strong bots but were more specialized and needed a certain type to work with them (like 910 was strong in the close, but needs a good mid-range bot to feed them balls).

[kwotremb]

I really liked the bumper colors. It has to be one of the beast and easiest ways I have seen to easily tell which bot is on which alliance. Last year was horrible for that, a bot with blue bumpers pulling a red trailer???? Ya it is a little painful to change them sometimes, but I think after another year or 2 teams can get really fast and have some really unique bumper designs.

[efoote868]

An easy to watch/explain game, and an easy way to recognize alliances (bumpers) were good things for this year.

[Jared Russell]

Almost everything related to the game.

The robot rules this year were almost completely unambiguous. Very easy to understand.

Materials utilization took another step in the right direction (several pneumatics restrictions were relaxed).

The Dean's List Award is a great addition.

Thursday matches at CMP are a huge home run.

[Radical Pi]

Live camera feed
Very helpful debugging tools built into control system (NetConsole, status displays on DS, Dashboard if you could implement it)

[JesseK]

++ A game that is simple to play yet complex to design for.
++ A way to implement multiple autonomous routines just by clicking switching on the DS classmate rather than having to tediously wire switches up (left time for electronics team to do cooler things)
++ FIRST's response to the snow and to the seeding system gripes
++ Dean's list recipients
++ For more matches played across the board at most, if not all, regionals.

[Grim Tuesday]

KISS

Very simple game, but with a multitude of solutions. The way it should be.

[vhcook]

Bag and Tag outside Michigan worked nicely based on our experiences at KC and OKC.

[steelerborn]

This year's game was by far my favorite yet.
It required a lot more strategy from the start of the year to the very end.
Plus I really liked how this year was modeled off a sport it made it fun to watch but still challenging to the teams.

[The Cyborg]

Originally Posted by Cuyir

They also did a nice job making the game more team based - you needed to choose alliance partners who bots would complement your own (although this also hurt some teams in the qualifiers who had strong bots but were more specialized and needed a certain type to work with them (like 910 was strong in the close, but needs a good mid-range bot to feed them balls).

I agree. This year's game was more focused on the whole "coopertition" aspect of playing on alliances. This provides a little more variation and innovation amongst robots, and even made very effective strategies (take 469's robot for example). I hope to see more of this in the future.

[IKE]

I liked the weekly update even when there were no updates so you could rest assured everything was the same for next week.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by vhcook

Bag and Tag outside Michigan worked nicely based on our experiences at KC and OKC.

I agree that B&T outside Michigan (based on my experience with it at WAT and GTR) worked famously BUT. I think traditional shipping should be an option for teams coming from farther away than X. I don't know what X is, but B&T is just not realistic for a NJ team competing in CA (25), or for an HI team competing in AZ (359). B&T for local teams, and visiting teams from other regions are allowed to ship.

[vhcook]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

I agree that B&T outside Michigan (based on my experience with it at WAT and GTR) worked famously BUT. I think traditional shipping should be an option for teams coming from farther away than X. I don't know what X is, but B&T is just not realistic for a NJ team competing in CA, or for an HI team competing in IL. B&T for local teams, and visiting teams from other regions are allowed to ship.

I'd definitely agree with that. If we'd been far enough that driving was not practical, B&T would have been a problem.