I apologize if such lunacy were suggested already, but since it seems many are considering breaching to be an afterthought, and greater visibility is desired…
Remove all defenses entirely. Bare carpet. Leave the secret passages. Field resetters, rejoice. Cycle times would greatly decrease - more matches per team.
2016? Meet 2014. Declare a safe shooting zone where the defenses used to be. Meet 2012.
Increase tower strengths to 15…or 20.
I like the game where RPs are used for qualification and then converted to points for eliminations. Raising the Tower strength at CMPs was a good idea, perhaps even a bit more would be good. Another thing might be to require all defense weakening to occur in teleop, effectively raising the number of defense crossing by three. Points could be earned during AUTO but the defense would not be weakened.
Allow the possession of up to three boulders at a time.
Did someone say 6 ball auto?
I re-watched some of the matches, SF1M1 did get a bit excessive, but overall I think most of the flips were due to the all terrain nature of the robots. The hits this year have much less energy than 2014, and the force is a side effect of a single defender trying to disrupt two or three robots at once, something you can’t do if you’re moving slowly or trying to brake before every impact.
I do agree with you about the intentional fouling of robots during the endgame and generally throughout the match, it was disappointing when I realized that rule was not really going to be enforced this year but we kinda just buckled down and dealt with it.
Despite losing twice in a row for this reason, I agree that this change would be bad. Einstein was the most set of most exciting matches I’ve seen in sequence. That the final came down to breaking a tie was most appropriate.
I suggest replacing the first tie breaker with the auto points rather than foul points (and we could never remember which way the tiebreaker went). Let the teams have more control rather than leaving it to the fickle discretion of the refs.
Make it such that boulders can be launched across completely damaged defenses (or launched from the neutral zone to the courtyard when the defenses have been breached).
Redefine a breach as damaging all 5 defenses.
Keep tower strength at 10 (like in Champs)
Make scaling more valuable – 25 points
Allow robots to push up to 1 extra ball over/through the defenses (in addition to the one they are carrying)
Auto mode – record multiple defense crossings if performed in auto
Make the rough terrain more difficult
I think that the first one would be too hard for the refs to determine the legality of the shot. The second one could be viable, though.
The second option is in spirit of the medieval theme. Typically, when you are able to break down your opponent’s defenses, it should be an option to feed through shots.
One obvious rule change: put actual water in the moat…
For those who are wondering, 4646, in auto, accidentally turns and shoots a ball over to the Ref, a la 2014 assist.
I think making the tower health double and adding more weight to high goals would be a lot cooler. I also think allowing two balls to be controlled at once would mean a lot less undeserved penalties.
Reduce penalties for interacting near defenses/crossing.
Such that if a two robots come in contact during a robot cross as long as the contact doesn’t affect the cross and is unintentional there isn’t a penalty.
This would be useful for teams accessing the position 5 defense and secret passage at the same time.
Raise the low bar to 5 feet high
Well unless they build their own Portcullis it is out of play anyway. So if they do build their own defense please please please tell teams ahead of time what it will be with accurate schematics so teams can know if they can successfully cross it.
One thing I would love to know before we (or the Planning Committee) goes to insane with changing tower strength, is what percentage of qualification matches at champs had a tower brought down to 0 (or atleast had 10 balls scored) and what percentage had captures, cause this would help to see if captures were not happening because of tower strength or failure to get back to the batter.
Also I don’t know if it is possible to do away with the extra RP for breach and capture since it is so ingrained into the FMS and referee panels but if we do go to a straight win/loss with bonus points for those actions (Like they did in 2012) I would love to see if we can use the breach and capture totals as the first tie breaker.
I think it would be cool also if we make it so there is an extra two balls that start in the castles and increase the number of balls allowed back in the castle by 1 or 2 to allow for teams to be more strategic in the balls in the tower instead of just creating a 469 in 2010 situation.
I 100% agree with paragraph 1, and I could roll with paragraph 2 at IRI.
That said, I think ties in the finals (and only the finals) should be replayed. If finals yield the heavyweight title fight I think we’re all hoping for, I don’t think anyone minds the extra 10 minutes to settle it.
At Suffield Shakedown, our robot almost made a boulder into the basketball hoop stowed up on the ceiling.
Just a friendly reminder: It’s not possible to award a total of 8 ranking points. Only one alliance can get the 2 RP for a win.
Do you mean high goals should be worth more? Based on CMP, high goal shooting bots already have a distinct advantage over low goal bots. No need to further the gap IMO.
Wouldn’t this completely change the idea and strategy behind the game? I love the concept, and it would be cool to play, but maybe at a less “important” offseason.
+1 I agree entirely