Ranking should go back to W-L-T. Let the breach and capture award their playoff point bonuses during qualifications. All else should remain the same.
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Tower strength 11.
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No tiebreakers: 1 pt each in quals, replay in playoffs.
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Not sure about changes that would require FMS modifications, such as replacing breach and/or capture RPs in quals with the bonuses they earn in playoffs; is this easy to implement? If so then IRI should use playoff scoring in qualifications (exception: yellow/red cards in quals are still for individual teams).
If I were in charge of making Stronghold a top-tier-robot-only game, I would:
Keep the tower strength at 10, as at Championship.
Keep all the defenses. (Heck, if we can design for the drawbridge, anyone can–and if they didn’t, that’s really their problem, isn’t it?)
Get rid of crowd selection and choose the random defense with a coin flip. (I might just be grumpy that they institutionalized a built-in penalty for having a small team.)
Change it so that any boulder that has contacted the carpet of a secret passage must be carried over the outer works to be scored (as if it had come from the neutral zone–so no more scarfing up boulders from your opponent’s secret passage and immediately scoring them, though loose boulders in the courtyard are still fair game).
Change a breach to all five defenses.
I would be adamantly against changing the breach/capture QPs–robots were designed with those parameters in mind, and it would be too significant of a change at this point. As others have said, it adds both tactical decision-making and end-game excitement.
Tiny change:
Spray paint the batter shields to match the color of the alliance.
Removes a massive annoyance for the drivers. Lets the audience watch great driving. Also maintains the challenge of fitting onto the batter for a scale.
I like this change a lot.
My first choice would be to change nothing.
If you want to simplify the game for volunteers, replace the defense selection with a randomized selection of the defenses which applies to both alliances for a complete “round” of matches during qualification. Then, in elimination matches, allow the alliances to select their defenses. Keep the audience selection in both qualification and elimination.
To increase the game difficulty:
- Require that all five defenses are defeated to earn the breach points.
- Increase the defense strengths to 3 or 4.
- Increase the Tower strength to 12.
- During elimination matches, require one (or two) scale(s) plus challenge(s) to earn the capture.
I imagine a lot more teams would have designed in a scaling mechanism if they knew at the beginning of season that it would strictly be a must for an Elims alliance. While I like the spirit of the change, this one puts a heck of a lot more stock into scaling robots than a normal change would.
Also, somewhat related to a rules change, and may be a nonissue:
Will IRI be using the vinyl flaps that FIRST adopted ~Week 2 or will the low bar fabric made out of bumper material be reinstated?
To me this says that an increase to maybe 11 or 12 may be necessary but not much higher
I have a few suggestions for changes that would modify game play slightly in regards to strategy, but not alter it in regards to robot design.
- Different tower strength in Qualifications and Eliminations. Based on some of the averages displayed on this thread, I feel like 10 tower strength in Qualifications, and 12 in Eliminations, would suit the game play.
- Bonus Boulders. We all loved the can grabbing in 2015. It was the one touch of exciting in 2015. I suggest two “bonus boulders” that are placed on the center line (in the spot of two boulders regularly placed there). These boulders are worth double points in Autonomous or Teleoperated. It will introduce new strategy, and value of being close to the center line at the end of Autonomous. Should we stay put in auto? Should we try and snag it in Autonomous? Should we cross, score, and come back? That’s for teams to decide.
- End Game Bonus. It’s exciting, not to mention nerve wracking, seeing if a robot will make it to the tower to lock in the capture at the end of a match. I propose a bonus on boulders scored during the last 20 seconds of the match. This could be, perhaps, 2 points extra on high goals, and 1 point extra on low goals. Should you try and score lots in the last 20 seconds? Should you play it safe and go to the batter early, and not risk trying to score for bonus points? Once again, a new strategic dynamic to consider.
All thoughts are welcome on these rough drafts of game improvement suggestions.
To me this means that championship divisions are much weaker than IRI is, and any three teams at IRI should be able to easily put 10 balls into a goal as long as none of them lose communications.
Honestly IRI qualifications should either:
Leave tower strength at 10 (then captures only occur if someone fails to get on the batter or some other strange thing occurs)
Increase it to at least 12, maybe up to 16 even, depending on how challenging we want capturing to be.
12 means each robot scores 4 balls each, or 2 robots score 6 balls each.
15 means each robot scores 5 balls each, or 2 robots score 7.5 balls each.
You might be saying “But Kevin, 7.5 high goals in a match for one robot is a huge number”. But you’re forgetting that low goals exist.
I think teams having to switch between which goal they’re scoring into, or otherwise increasing their output of ball scoring is something cool about this game. I also think captures shouldn’t be a given, even if it’s IRI. I like having strategy meetings in close matches be a potential choice between getting a guaranteed capture and perhaps losing the match, or playing defense, losing the capture, and winning the match.
These choices are a big part of why I had a blast in FIRST Stronghold, and I’d like to see them stay at IRI.
Fair point, but this is off-season and teams have time to make functional improvements. Still, my first choice would be to change nothing.
I vote to Increase the Autonomous time from 15 seconds to 20 seconds. I guess you can leave the Teleop Period the same.
The reason for this change, while subtle will make a huge impact in autonomous. Robots whom currently have a 2-ball auto can spend the time to make them more accurate (more time to visually line up) instead of firing rapidly just to run back and get the second ball.
Also this opens the door for other robots/teams whom may have had slower mechanisms or systems which did not support 2 balls in 15 seconds or under, but the extra 5 seconds may now allow them to accomplish the task.
I think off-season events are all about pushing the limits, and this change may help make that 80-point auto a reality at IRI.
Obviously this would potentially extend every match 5 seconds, unless it was reduced in Teleop? Is that a big deal? Over 100 matches that would only be ~+8 minutes.
Plus side, this change should be simple to integrate, and does not negatively effect any current design or team. Should only be a positive addition if implemented
Here’s an idea I had over dinner.
Make audience selection done via some sort of app or website. I’ll preface that unless I have a work conflict, I’ll be volunteering to scorekeep at IRI, so any resulting scorekeeper burdens I acknowledge and accept 
The idea is that since IRI is an often watched livestream, for an audience selection to really reflect the audience, the livestream viewers should also have a say. In addition, this gives a more quantitative result to choose from. Finally, it frees up a little bit of cycle time (not that it’s enough to care about).
Here’s how it would work: When the selection is “scheduled” the MC announces the selection. AV shows the defense screen (which scorekeepers can do w/o making a selection at that time). Then the next match proceeds, during which people (including livestream viewers) vote on the defense. After the score is announced for the match, the selection’s result is announced and entered into FMS (possibly the app’s result screen shown by AV). While that puts the actual selection one match later than normal, as long as the choice is made before prestarting the first match using that selection, FMS is happy.
This is a cool way to do it that feels more quantitative.
The one thing about audience selected defenses is that it does give you another piece of information to use during strategy discussions. Knowing 2/5 of the defenses prior to the match helps very much with match strategy.
The other ones could be debated, but this one should not happen. If a human player blows the roll-in, and the drivers are willing to risk the penalties of going into the secret passage, then they should be able to reap the benefits.
I didn’t figure everyone would like all of my suggestions. 
I’m with Billfred on this one. Your other suggestions are reasonable and should be debated. But this one is just legalized hoarding. It would change the game fundamentally, because alliances would not need to guard their SPs. Entrance to the SP would become a chokepoint, with a high potential for fouls. The result would be less shooting and more damage to robots. I think this area is one that the GDC considered carefully, from the viewpoint of match flow, and I think they got it right.
Okay I know I’m super late to this, but I had kicked around the idea with a few people of changing what was needed for a capture in quals (I don’t think it’s needed in elims, but perhaps)
You would still have to get whatever the tower strength is with boulders
You either have (a) all 3 robots either parked on the batter OR (b) at least one robot parked on the batter and a second robot must be hanging fully above the low goal.
I thought this would help solve the problem of being stuck with a dead partner in a qual match and also give a bit more value for hanging. Maybe I’m biased but this seems like a good thing I think.
Just my $0.02. I think this would help the rankings not be quite as dependent on match schedule luck.
If you give the spy bot 3 boulders that can do whatever they want with, but only let them use them in the last 30 seconds that would make for some actually interesting human player strategy.
Or allowing multiple boulders to be held in the last 30 seconds as well, could add an interesting twist.