Lunacy Review

[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.

[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!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I have said it before and I will say it again. When a robot can't function for whatever reason, a human should be allowed to score so that the team doesn't become disenchanted. I also believe that any game where the human player can swing the score or make a fateful last ditch attempt and score makes for an exciting game. I didn't like 2003 for that reason, humans had no effect even though they tried like mad.

[Imadapocalypse]

i like the fact that FIRST tried to level out the playing field with this game though. in our rookie season the game was overdrive, in that game it seemed like you needed to have some sort of idea of the scale of FIRST. Plus we had no real building mentors >.<

[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

[MattB703]

Originally Posted by Mike Soukup

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

ditto!

Best game ever - 1999
Some human player interaction, but it was callenging and it had an excellent end game.

Worst game ever - 2001
To anyone complaining about this game being boring, look up 2001 - Copertition FIRST

(I feel old)

[JonellGregor]

Likes
-A lot more strategy within an alliance. (You had to decide who would be playing defense, scoring, delivering empty cells, etc.)
-Less Penalties!!!
-A lot more game pieces, allowed everyone to have a chance to use them.
-Targets in games were always moving so it was more of a challenge to score
-3 targets for each alliance
-Different surface made it more interesting
-Had more of a theme to it
-More interesting to scout
-Drivers needed a lot more skill

Dislikes
-Human Player could change the outcome of the game way too much!
-The surface was expensive to buy and annoying to set up every meeting.
-Sometimes very boring to watch when all robots were pinned in a corner.
-G14 was horrible
-Game pieces were really annoying to find.
-There weren’t many unique ideas for robot manipulator. A lot of robots looked the same
-Inspections were always different. We were fine with our motors and everything until Atlanta. (Keep inspections constant)
-If a robot was missing or dead, it almost always ended in that alliance losing due to the open trailer
-The scoring during the game was almost always inaccurate. There were times when it said we were lost by almost 20 at the end of the game and then when the final score came out we won, and vice versa

[Chris is me]

I can say without a doubt that this is the best FRC game I've ever played, but that's misleading as it's my only year in FRC

Anyhow, this game was amazing.

Likes:
The rule prohibiting robots from having manipulators extending past the bumpers. Not that I disliked the ability for robots to do so in other years, but stuff like this and the limited wheels made teams have to think hard about their designs. Also how hard would it be to just have a sheet of Plexiglas fold down over your goal?

Allowing pinning and ramming was a brilliant GDC move. In an already extremely strategy oriented game, being able to not have to count to 5 and let off a robot helped teams be able to outplay other robots that had the technical edge. I guess the robot version of "brain before brawn"?

Dislikes:
The field was too small. I realize part of this is to fit in a high school gym (though honestly i prefer the larger-than-life feel of a stadium but I digress), and part of this is to make nowhere to hide, but it seems like there were a lot of mechanisms that did not get to see the light of day simply because a robot was always a second or two away ready to mess you up. In particular, 1986 had an extremely innovative, oddball robot that achieved a 33 and a half foot empty cell delivery. I always have a soft spot for a truly unique robot that does something better than everyone else even if it's easily messed up, and I'm glad they got to go to Atlanta so more teams could have a look.

Originally Posted by katd30

Some sort of input, a hopper and then a dumper.

Well, "some sort of input", "a hopper", and "a dumper" varied dramatically between teams. Look at say 1625 versus 217. You could probably say that all robots in 2007 other than pure lifters had an arm that grabbed and placed tubes.

Having human players was nice since it got more students involved on the field, but then the strategy focused less on robots and more on humans. That's kinda nice if it was in the real world with human robot interaction except you just spent 6 weeks on a robot and then you only use your human player... Doesn't make a lot of sense to me...

If you're only using or primarily using your human player, at least when you got to Atlanta, you're not going to win the match. The farther up the chain competition went, the emphasis grew more and more on the robot itself, to the point where in the final match half of the human players just loaded robots.

[Herodotus]

I was not really a big fan of Lunacy. Of the four games I've personally witnessed I would rank them, from highest to lowest:

2007
2008
2009
2006

Likes:
Trailers- Having to score on a moving target was pretty cool, and made for more energetic matches, generally.

Different Surface- I think changing it up is always a good thing, though I would have found an uneven surface to be even cooler.

Easy to Do, Hard to Do Well- I think this needs to be the mantra for the GDC when it comes to the primary scoring device. It should be easy to score and participate, but hard to do it well. Most teams could score, even if it was only the first 7 balls or a couple more, but not many teams could deliver game changing dumps like 67, 148, 0r 1625.

Dislikes:
No secondary scoring method- This especially applies to the end game. I just think having the end game being different from the rest of the scoring period seems somehow more impressive. Climbing the ramps at the end of 2006 or 2007 was always a high tension moment as you never knew who would fall off or just barely make it. The super cells tended to just come out of nowhere and didn't really build as much tension, except maybe when a bot would deliver them.

G14- I don't think much needs to be said. I personally think this is the worst rule I've seen in my four years of FIRST. No one should ever be punished for doing well. Each robot and team should be given the chance to perform to the best of it's abilities, with no arbitrary limitations. I think it's ten times worse then the G22 last year, despite having less of an effect.

Flat Field- Flat fields seem more boring. Stairs, ramps, platforms, and bridges all really add to a game and make it more interesting.

HP scoring- I've always thought of the human player as someone who helps the robot score somehow, such as by loading them up. I'd prefer not to see the human player be able to directly score, except in rare circumstances.

Overly protective bumper rules- Am I the only one who felt this way? Isn't it up to the teams to make a robot that can handle the the contact you get with these robots? What was so bad about the pre-bumper era? Were robots being destroyed left and right?

Confusing rules at first- Many of the rules seemed very confusing at first, like the not extending beyond the box. For example, they continued to refer to the "starting box" if I remember correctly, which initially led me to believe that you could extend outside of said starting box. How many people review the rules before the game is released? I'd suggest always running the game past a diverse group of people, maybe even people not even involved in FIRST, and see if they can understand the rules.

[Nick Lawrence]

I liked some things about this game, and some that didn't.

I liked how much strategy was involved in this game, more so than previous years.

I liked how you could NOT win easily with just one good robot, and two mediocre robots. It is quite a change, where last year one super efficent, fast, effective robot destroyed the competition.

I liked how a rookie team made it to Einstein.

I didn't like how limiting this game was programming wise and design wise. All the robots did the same thing in Autonomous, and all the robots were fridges on wheels. As a programmer, I was hoping for a really big programming challenge with the new control system.

I didn't like that you played all weekend on a worn down field, and you got to Einstein's pristine, perfect surface. The very first matches were pretty sloppy, and got marginally better throughout the finals.

I didn't like that Mark Leon made all of Archimedes lose the game ...


Oh crap, I lost.