2016: The year of bullying kitbots and hypothetical situations

[alopex_rex]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Someone absolutely correct me if I am wrong, but I am not finding another game where game mechanics were changed during a match due to technical fouls.

Because I am a programmer and think very literally, I can think of lots of years where game mechanics were changed during a match due to fouls. Points are a game mechanic, after all.

In all seriousness, tech fouls this year actually seem modest vis-a-vis regular fouls, compared to previous years. I remember in the past tech fouls being horrific disasters, whereas this year they're only mildly worse than regular fouls.

[MrJohnston]

I look at the secret passage like this:
It's the human player feeder station. It's perfectly reasonable to make the feeder station a "protected area." The difference in this game is that game pieces being sent through are more attainable by the opposition than before.

Consider:
* The human player is required to send boulders out at a certain point - whether that alliance's robot is ready or not.
* All boulders sent through the station will spent some time on the ground - and likely not in the possession of the intended bot.

In other words, we have a feeder station that is inviting the opposition to swipe the game pieces.... They just have to be really, really careful.

I can see a real value in a new type of defense at high levels: An offensive bot that specializes in quickly grabbing boulders in the opponents' secret passage.... And I can see human players rolling a tantalizing boulder out just a wee before their robot arrives, tempting said bot to make an error in judgment.... There could be some interesting play around this....

[thatnameistaken]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

In this years game if you position your robot is in a bad position at anytime during a match you can get punished for it heavily.

According to the G11 clarifications, the only time this is true is when you willingly put your robot in the opponent's secret passage. No other time.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by thatnameistaken

According to the G11 clarifications, the only time this is true is when you willingly put your robot in the opponent's secret passage. No other time.

If the GDC wanted to they could have made the secret passage a safe zone, instead they gave it complex mechanics. The secret passage is dangerous but it isn't without its rewards.

[thatnameistaken]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

If the GDC wanted to they could have made the secret passage a safe zone, instead they gave it complex mechanics. The secret passage is dangerous but it isn't without its rewards.

Yes. This is the idea. Stealing a boulder from your opponent's secret passage is a high risk/high reward strategy. Not being familiar with this may hurt rookies (or any team founded since 2014, really), as you stated earlier. However, not being familiar with the intricacies of the rules can always hurt any team, and always will.

I still don't think this is as complex as you're making it out to be, though. Essentially:
-Only enter your opponent's secret passage from the courtyard.
-If you go in your opponent's secret passage, don't get touched.
-Don't push your opponent into your own secret passage for no reason.

...and that's it, really. I suppose this is comparatively more complex than just "don't go in", but every team is supposed to thoroughly read the manual. For whatever reason, the GDC decided you should be able to take boulders from your opponent's secret passage (though if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's so an alliance with a big enough lead can't just hoard all the boulders in their secret passage and sit there for the rest of the match).