We are getting so close to kick off now (30 days to be exact), and a little bet of the game won’t hurt! So come on in and post your prediction, whether it’s just the format of the game, or the entire game itself.
I’ve decided to start a little prediction competition, and the price will be one pair of scrub pants for each of the two closest guesses to the competition!!! (for more info of the scrub pants, take a look at this link: Help an alum, wear scrub pants this season! )
Yes, that’s right. If you take a random guess of the game, and turns out you are one of the two closest to the actual competition, you will win a pair of scrub pants made by Jessica Boucher’s lovely company (you won’t have to pay, of course…). You can even decide the logo yourself!
I know you all have been making guesses now and then at here and there, but now, it’s time to take it seriously, and win a price! 
I know a lot of you are tired of writing the same thing over and over again, so I did a little research through the threads and come up with a list of people and their predictions. If you see your name in it, and want to modify your prediction, just post a reply. If you DON’T see your name in it, then START POSTING!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I realize a lot of these aren’t thought through… so feel free to post your serious prediction. And a lot of these predictions are similar, so it would be great if there’s more details. Some of you probably want to modify your prediction to increase your chance of winning.
-Mike Soukup: it could be 2 v 2 v 2. We’ll get a taste of this format in a month for CDI (which uses a 24x24 field). When I saw the game for CDI, I was a little disapointed because I liked it so much and I thought FIRST would be less likely to use a similar game.
-Patrickrd: I also do not think the field dimensions will be the same this year, unless they go back to 2v2 or something like 3v3. 3v3 maybe, but I don’t think we’ll see alliances with more than 2 teams. Thus, in my opinion, I think we’ll see a 2v2v2 or no alliances at all… Or something completely out of the ordinary that none of us are expecting.
-Chris Hibner: I think 4 in a match everyone for themselves is a great idea. It could be a great game theory experiment, where if the teams cooperate in some aspect, all of their scores will be higher, but there is still a winner. I see that there will be a cooperation period at the beginning of each match, then as soon as one robot back-stabs the others, all hell will break loose. It could be quite entertaining.
-EddieMcD: Anyhow, I’d like to see it go back to the 1 v 1 v 1 format. I happen to be a big fan of Torrid Terror. That, and we took 2nd in 98.
I still say the main obstecle wont be very obstructive to movement, only scoring i.e., a spinning goal. I am also going to predict that we have to manipulate more than 1 shape (cube, pyramid, sphere). And perhaps lighten the restrictions on opposing contact between machines.
-M.O.E. Hoe: Last years game wasn’t appealing to me from the actual match prospective. I wasn’t all gung hoe and maybe the 1 vs 1 vs 1 would bring excitment back into the match.
-Nate: I think footballs will be the objects of play this year. Also i think the field will be taller, meaning your robot needs to extened more.
-Kane: Me and my sparks of wisdom, I think this year will be a 2 on 2 matchup, where the object is to throw as many of your opponents balls or something to that effect out of the arena. So what you have to do is collect the yours and throw the other teams out.
-MrsT: How about some kind of obstacle course / scavenger hunt…with MANY different ways to score points-- …field including maybe a 3 ft tall platform “the stage” where robots could earn points & collect props by climbing on top or crawling underneath…balls through hoops, frisbees through hole, rings on pole, boxes stacked on shelf…etc Ample small point props…limited big point items. No robot could possibly do it all. Simple scoring…2 pt per ball here…3 pt per ball there…etc Would get a WIDE variety of bots…making for very interesting alliances
-Dave… Ping pong balls, tennis balls and hockey pucks have been on my mind the past two years. To say that footballs are too difficult to handle for many teams seems to only encourage Dean and Woodie to maybe consider such an item. This is supposed to be a challenge, right? The only problem I see with ping pong and tennis balls is their size. The drivers would have a hard time even seeing them, and resetting the playing field after every match might be cumbersome.
I would like to get away from the balls…maybe something more like foam cubes that you have to stack… Or, if you want some involvement of water, how about carrying water balloons across the field?? (just kidding, really bad idea). Having a playing field where the teams can play and set-up simultaneously (like the past two years) really seem to help speed up the competition. Now, if we could only get the scoring to be more simplistic so that the ref’s don’t have to take so long, then we’d be in business!
-Matt Leese: I’ve been saying it since '98 and I’ll say it again: inflatable cubes.
-Andy Baker: Good idea with the stairs. Along with stairs, we could have firehose as a scoring object. We could drag the hose around the playing field, up and over the stairs and place the hose into a fixture. That way, 6 months from now, all or our communities would have fire-fighting robots. In the wake of 9-11… this would be a way that we could make an impact. 2002 competition will be 1 vs 1 vs 1 vs 1, or 4 teams on the field at a time, each scoring their own points. There could be some co-operation on the field, but each team could get their own score.
-OtakuRob: In my humble opinion, I think we’ll go back to the 2 on 2 format, or some variation thereof… I think that they saw last year that some direct competion brings out a better experience… Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game last year, but I liked the direct competition format of the previous year… Aside from that, I think that it will have something to do with stairs, possibly moving some sort of object, and lets include the carrying of some object bigger than a breadbox…
-Ken Leung :
I will say, next year’s game will be a weird version of 3 vs. 3, where 4 of the robots compete in the main stage, and the other two off to a side on a smaller competition of their own. They can all share a main field, and the 1 vs. 1 will have some sort of effect to the 2 vs. 2 on the main stage (maybe the 1 vs. 1 fight for a defensive position to de-score for their alliance partners?).
So there will be alliances of 3 robot, where you have to decide how to pair up two of the three robot, and if it’s worth putting the best robot on a one to one match. This will require some really different robots, some really good planning to pair up different robots at a time facing some other weird combinations.
-Tom Fairchild: I’ve said it before in other threads, and I’ll say it again. I think that rope would be cool. maybe having them strung across the field, maybe having the pull them in, maybe even having to tie knots with (ick! Now that’d be hard!!). But in general, rope would be a heck of a lot of fun to work with.
-Jeff Waegelin: We’ve seen really large balls in the game, but what about really small balls? Maybe we’ll get a game where we have to pick up 300 tennis balls. It might be interesting to design something to move a large amount of small objects like that.
-Meaubry: Sorry Joe, but I gotta guess and if I nail it, a call from Dean wouldn’t hurt that bad (or does it?) Anyway, I predict a 3 sets of 2 robots - like at CDI (really dynamic effect once you get to the finals) and the floor will float either on a cushion of air or pivot about a mid field axis. The game pieces will be square colored plastic boxes that measure 3ft per side. The object will be to - out score, out smart, and out play (sounds like a TV show to me) the other 2 teams by stacking the boxes on platforms that are located around the perimeter of the field. The higher the stack the more points you score for the team whos color box is on the very top. Colors and team assignments are shared at the completion of the 2 minute match. Thats it - its that simple!
