2013 season

Seeing that the season is about 4 months away and there is not posts yet about the theories on the game, let us start talking about it.
A few theories out there (that I have heard) is a speed event, Curiosity related, water task, hockey, and Olympic games of sorts (which could tie into the speed event).
What are y’all’s thoughts about these theories or about the theories you have heard?
I, personally, am getting really excited about this season!
Happy Building!

Well since last year had balls, this year should be non balls. FIRST seems to be favoring fairly light objects probably for safety, I’m thinking another inflatable object. (UGH! I volunteer for field set up. Inflatables are rough on the ears.) To keep game easy to comprehend for non-FIRST audience members, limit on how many objects a robot can possess/score. End game. Leaning towards ramp or endzone robot parking. We have done hanging, balancing, and minibot deployment recently. Its been a few years since there has been goal “owning” or multiplier objects, they may make a return. Kinect will probably be back again.

The wild card this year will be the changes FIRST implements to fix some of the issues revealed during the Einstein testing.

Searching “2013 game” gave me this thread (that, granted, I already knew about).
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106055&highlight=2013+game
It’s pretty extensive.

Welcome to the 2013 FRC game, Rover Rowdiness. All six robots begin the match suspended 43 feet above the arena floor. At the start of the game, all six robots will be dropped. During the Hybrid Mode, robots should guide themselves to a soft landing within the playing field. Surviving robots go on to compete during the Teleoperated period. :stuck_out_tongue:

C’mon, Don! You know that the soft landing is a given! Any robot surviving splashdown competes in Teleoperated; whether they float on top of the water or act like a submarine is up to the team.

As long as I get explosive bolts. I always wanted explosive bolts!

It was only a matter of time until this came up.

My opinion on the game, though:

I think it would be really cool to see a speed game again. They have the con of being not very spectator friendly, however. A hockey game would be cool, but that would be too similar to Lunacy :mad: . My personal prediction is a stacking game with ramps/ raised portions of the field. I also hope the GDC gets rid of the Co-op points, like the center bridge this year.

It probably won’t be a water task because of the fact that some of the regionals are in gyms, and the floors were ruined FIRST would then have to pay for it. I believe they it will be a game like Triple Play.

I liked the bridges this past year, I thought it was a good solid tie-breaker.

we can take out any thought of a sport related game, since the pattern for FIRST is, “people known sport one year, game only understood by FIRSTers” the next year. and basketball was the theme just last year.

I will not guess at what this years game will be, but what I would love to see is a robot game equivalent of “shoot the moon”. This was a toy when I was a kid that had a large metal ball about the size of a pinball that rode up two steel rods.
The rods were sloped up to where the user held them so to get the ball to climb you had to spread the rods out. But if you went too far the ball dropped into a low scoring bin. It took just the right balance to get the ball to climb, and your reflexes had to be even faster as you got higher. Google “Shoot the Moon toy” if you have never seen one. I can imagine a large version of this that required one robot to load at the far end while another robot operated the levers. Perhaps with the levers spring loaded to require cooperation.