Lunacy Review

[Kyle Love]

I really think this game would be been amazing on the typical carpet and not the new material. That's pretty much the only gripe I have with this years game.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

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.

At our little dog-and-pony offseason event, we had 2v2 playing Overdrive. To my eyes, it made the game more exciting and easy to follow, and each robot had a trackball (if it wanted it).
It should be noted that the reason we did 2v2 is we only had 16 teams and a ton of technical difficulties, but I was happy with the outcome.
That being said, I believe the reason FIRST has gone 3v3 is the sheer number of robots competing. By putting six robots on the field instead of four, the playing time increases by 50%. At an event like IRI with 72 teams, each robot may play 3 or 4 times total in a 2v2 format. For some teams, LNHS is a long way to go to play three matches.

Since it seems en vogue to do so:

2006 Best
2009
2008
2005
2007 Worst

[Mr_I]

Many of these observations have already been made, but here's my $(1/50):

Likes
- Regolith meant EVERYone had to design a drive train, not just grab one off the shelf.
- Trailers: Now that you've got a bin full of balls, you have to FIND where to put them!
- Few penalties! Great all-around action (even if some call that "boring")
- Supercells mean you could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (or the other way around, if you score in the wrong trailer! )


Dislikes
- Regolith also meant a major static problem, at least in the early regionals until the GDC identified the problem and the solution(s). (Unfortunately, 811 was in a first week regional )
- Why couldn't the trailer flags been pink OR green (or, heavens, red or blue)? The "pink on top means red" made it hard for the casual observer to figure out who's trailer was whose. Yes, I know, the goal was to make the robots figure it out, but ...
- ... there was scant opportunity for autonomous mode. The uberteams obviously could get robo-targeting working, but most everyone else didn't.
- Okay, I'll say it: Too much emphasis on human players throughout the game.
- Weak partners, or a single breakdown, could doom an alliance. (Compare this to 2006 when we won even with one dead and one tipped partner.)

And my eight year ranking, from best to worst:
2004 - FIRST Frenzy
2007 - Rack n Roll
2006 - Aim High
2009 - Lunacy
2008 - OverDrive
2005 - Triple Play
2002 - Zone Zeal
2003 - Stack Attack

[Rob]

In the end, I think that Lunacy suffered from the same issue as several other game challenges in that the field was simply too crowded.

This made the game hard to watch from a spectator standpoint, and also made it hard for action to stay flowing, especially with sharp manuvering being difficult for many teams this year.

I think Lunacy would have benefitted from a wider field. Maybe that isn't logistically possible, but I think it would have greatly improved the audience experience. Teams would have been able to keep moving better and defensive strategies would have needed to work harder for results.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Taylor

I believe the reason FIRST has gone 3v3 is the sheer number of robots competing. By putting six robots on the field instead of four, the playing time increases by 50%. At an event like IRI with 72 teams, each robot may play 3 or 4 times total in a 2v2 format. For some teams, LNHS is a long way to go to play three matches.

It is my understanding that this is 100% true - the reason for 3 v 3 is to get the teams more matches. However, I think there are enough creative people to figure out how to get teams more matches AND have an easy to watch 2v2 game.

What about going back to pre-2000 and use two fields - reset one while a match is played on the other one. The big thing I would change from the pre-2000 days is to not wait until the most recent match is scored before starting the subsequent match. I think you can get down to a 4 minute turnaround this way.

Example:

Field A: Play match 1 (2:15)
Field B: Announce teams in match 2 (1:00)
Field B: Play match 2 (2:15)
Field A: Announce score from match 1 (0:15)
Field A: Announce teams in match 3 (1:00)
Field A: Play match 3 (2:15)
Field B: Announce score from match 2 (0:15)
Field B: Announce teams in match 4
etc.

Between the announcements and the match play, the field not in use should be able to be scored, reset, and ready to play while the other field is the center of the show. In the pre-2000 days they would score the current match before going on to the next one, which I believe adds at least one minute to the cycle time.

Anyway, that's just a single idea - I'm sure other better ideas are out there.

Also - I'm glad to hear you got to try 2v2.

[Aren_Hill]

I'd like to see 2v2v2 itd make it interesting

[JasonV]

For those of you who say that auton didn't make a big difference I couldn't disagree with you more. Some teams had to think more outside of the box, I am not a programmer but I know that we would not have had much success without the amazing auton that we did have. We had over ten autons this year and the most common one was to start in one corner and turn and go to load up right away, when we did this we put 17 moon rocks into our trailer, thats 34 points that we usually had the oppurtunity to dump rather fast, had we tried to load like this during human mode there is no doubt we would have been pinned there or dumped on, however we also had a "hook" auton so that we could avoid other robots when we went to load up or we also had the option to get an empty cell during autonand head to one of the corners to drop it offf. The best example I can give of this is Midwest, we were the only alliance to top 1625,111, and 1675 in just one match but we did this by having them set up their robots first so we could decide where we wanted to put ours (think 06) strictly for auton. We believe that matches were often won and lost during auton.

My rankings for years I saw in person:
2006 (Mostly spectator, best game ever because it was like a sport)
2009 (If you truely understood the strategy it was amazing)
2008 (tons of offense made this one fun)
2007 (Hard game to play mixed with a bad match algorithm and low scoring)

[Zack247]

I think this game was absolutely amazing. Such a pleasure coming off of Overdrive. I think that this game embodied the meaning of FIRST's creativity in that it gave teams so many different ways to be successful. Defense, Offense, and Bonus were all viable strategies to construct a robot around.

Oh and THANK YOU GDC for giving us a game to play defense in!

[MrForbes]

Perhaps a different take on some points?

1. We have a student who's a soccer player, and hasn't really gotten into technical stuff much at all the previous three years. He got really excited about this game, and learned how to read complicated mechanical drawings, and learned how to fabricate stuff by building a trailer.

2. The limited traction appeared to us to level the playing field enough that we were confident that we could do OK by just using the kit drive parts, and putting most of our design creativity into making a great ball handling mechanism. We didn't even have to put nuts on our axle bolts, or worry about having very little chain wrap on the transmission sprockets. And no problems with tread wearing out!

3. The highly protective bumpers and no expansion rules let us get away with building a relatively flimsy robot up top, as well as trying some "new" technology, desiging and building a stout wood chassis.

4. The double/triple score rule encouraged us to build a robot that could score so well that we could win matches without needing supercells.

5. Although there seemed to be only a few very effective design concepts, as usual there was a wide variety in robot designs, especially at the newer regionals.

6. Having only one way to score (balls in trailers) allowed us to put all our design efforts into one mechanism, unlike 2007 where we split into two design/build groups, neither of which had enough resources do to their job well enough.

7. Batteries lasted a long time.

edit: one more--my mom (74 yrs old) said watching the AZ regional was the most excitement she's seen in a long time!

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by Cory

I'd rather play Overdrive or any other game with the exception of Stack Attack than Lunacy.

Dear GDC, please create a game for 2010 that Cory absolutely hates, we seem to have good luck with those

[Wayne C.]

I really enjoyed the concept of robots chasing each other and trying to score on the opponents goal on their backs. As I posted elsewhere- consider if this game was played on last year's oval track at high speed in one direction. That would be thrilling.

But I think the whole idea of the slippery surface was unnecessary and kind of silly.

Overall watching the rounds where our team wasn't involved were kind of slow and sometimes degenerated into pileups that did nothing.

Lunacy gave the impression of a refrigerator square dance.

Lunacy the first game where having an auto mode got you nothing but not having one got you killed. Very few teams got a winning advantage from having a good auto mode (and yes- I did see a few that scored points in auto)



Overall personal assessment:
Strategy Challenge- C
Design Limitations and Kit parts- D-
Excitement- C-
Refereeing- B+ (happily surprised!!)
Rule Changes for this Game-D (no more leveling rules to handicap good performance)

I look forward to seeing how FIRST improves with next year's game.

WC

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

I really enjoyed the concept of robots chasing each other and trying to score on the opponents goal on their backs. As I posted elsewhere- consider if this game was played on last year's oval track at high speed in one direction. That would be thrilling.

But I think the whole idea of the slippery surface was unnecessary and kind of silly.

Overall watching the rounds where our team wasn't involved were kind of slow and sometimes degenerated into pileups that did nothing.

Lunacy gave the impression of a refrigerator square dance.

Lunacy the first game where having an auto mode got you nothing but not having one got you killed. Very few teams got a winning advantage from having a good auto mode (and yes- I did see a few that scored points in auto)

I agree with this for the most part. mine:

Overall personal assessment:
Strategy Challenge- C
Design Limitations and Kit parts- C-
Excitement- C
Refereeing- A
Rule Changes for this Game-D

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Very few teams got a winning advantage from having a good auto mode (and yes- I did see a few that scored points in auto)

Except two of the 6 teams in the finals. Part of what made Wildstang and Thunderchickens so great was that they could start the match with potentially 40 points ready to dump.

I need to write this down for future seasons. When there appears to be something stupid wrong with a game (HPs outscoring robots, unreliable loading, autonomous that accomplishes nothing) I shouldn't complain about it. I should see it as a challenge to exploit! Building a robot that aims to outscore humans, or coming up with an ingenious autoload system in autonomous, these are clever little exploitations of the restrictions. Very helpful ones at that.

[MrForbes]

It sounds to me like Chris gets it

[Adam Freeman]

It was not just Thunderchickens and Wildstang that used auton to their advantage.

HOT and Truck Town also would prefer to load up our robots in auton. Even 971 was attempting to get to the human player station to get additional balls.

The placement of the robots on the field at the start was not by accident. Our alliance knew that 217 and 68 would be very dangerous if they both started with 20 balls, then trapped 971 in the middle of the field for a 40 ball dump into their trailer (ala the Einstien SF2).

Although both 67 and 111 would prefer to load in auton, I was confident that we could get balls off the floor quickly and disrupt 68 and 217 if we both attempted to block them from loading. Worst case in my mind was that we all loaded in auton, then it would come down to who could pin and dump better.

In F1 67 stopped 68, but 217 avoided 111 and both loaded in auton. In F2 67 kinda stopped 68 and loaded, while both 217 and 111 loaded.

We had many auton modes (12) that could be run anytime, but we never had to use them b/c very few teams tried to stop us from loading +6 balls into our robot before the clock started.

I think it gave us a strategic advatage and pushed our scoring average from ~17 balls/match to +23 balls/match.

I was surprised by how many teams only tried to avoid getting scored on in auton, even at the championships.