Any change is going to affect some number of teams in varying ways and degrees. But you could also probably make the case that no changes is advantageous to some teams (those who had the opportunity to field successful bots in 2020 weeks 1/2). BTW, Swerve is not the only way to have maxed out your motor count. And there were definitely bots that could already handle >5 balls. In fact, I saw bots not only carry, but shoot 6 or 7 balls in week 1. Turns out that was pretty hard to officiate. In fact, I think not having a ball carry limit (other than the obvious limitation of robot envelope) might have engendered more interesting engineering as teams explored various trade-offs.
Kind of interested in the possibility of making the game 2v2 instead of 3v3.
If there are events next season, they will quite likely be smaller in size anyway due to school travel restrictions, venue availability, etc⌠So this format would allow a full 8-alliance playoff bracket with 16 teams instead of 24. If there are only say 20 teams at an event, 2v2 allows teams to play every fifth match instead of every 3rd-ish match with 3v3. That would be effectively zero pit time assuming queuing two matches ahead.
Social distancing will be easier with no one in the center station, and it should be notably less crowded in queuing and field setup.
EDIT:
This would make reffing easier due to fewer robots for the refs to watch, and likely disincentivize defensive play. The endgame also gets far easier to ref with 4 instead of 6 robots trying to squeeze into the shield generator. Might be able to drop one or two refs.
Teams might enjoy endgames more anyway because trying to cram 3 robots into half of the shield generator gets pretty tight and can cause teams to accidentally invalidate othersâ climbs, which is an ugly mechanic imo.
5 Likes
If FiM did not loose any teams, and if the game were made 2v2 with only 20 teams per event. That would require FiM to hold 60 events to allow every team two events.
Having to hold 60 events in 6 weeks would double the number of fields required for FiM.
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Bold of you to assume every team in Michigan will require 2 plays next season.
Unless they totally gut the District model, FiM teams will get 2 plays.
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Just like every team did this season?
Thatâs what was planned for, until circumstances intervened.
Are you saying you think FIRST will plan to have events cancelled in 2021, and will change in advance to accommodate that?
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The entry fee in Districts allows two events, they are not ârequiredâ. FiM has done a fantastic job of ensuring there are enough events to ensure every team gets what they pay for. FiM will also ask teams to play a third event (no district points) to ensure there is a full complement of teams competing.
I see no reason why FiM or First would want to make any change to the current system.
Plan for a full season and if circumstances deem a change (2020) then make adjustments.
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Weâre getting very tangential to my original point. 20 was a very arbitrary number to begin with.
Saying âwe require 2 events per team, and we canât get that many plays with 20 teams/event, therefore 20 teams/event is impossibleâ just seems completely backwards to me. We should start first by seeing how big we can safely get events, and then see how many plays we can get teams under that format, and if itâs less than 2 plays weâre going to have to deal with that.
Smaller events seem more likely to me than larger events at this point, so it may be wise to do things such as making matches 2v2 to better accommodate these smaller events.
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I think that something like this, combined with the removal of the trench completely would be neat.
Counter-point, If there are events next season, they will quite likely be larger in size because there will be fewer venues that can support events in a safe fashion and still plenty of teams fighting for spots.
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Bring back a âmuzzle velocityâ or other restriction aimed at limited the energy teams are pumping into flywheels these days. I donât want it to be a literal âyou fire 0.1mph faster than this limit, you get a penaltyâ rule, but rather a restriction aimed at making flywheel shooters safer. Something that gets the point across you canât just spin wheels as fast as you want without proving theyâre safe.
If that means full court shooters are no longer part of the game, so be it.
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I donât really see the need for a specific rule. Rule S1 already prohibited dangerous robots. Rule G9 already prohibited full court shots. And honestly, the deterioration of the power cells (âballsâ) made even shots from just behind the color-wheel (which was our original strategy) more and more problematic as the match wore on. In my observation most shots were made from either inside your own sector or just outside it.
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Make the power cell hoarding return automatic. Iâm picturing a chute thatâs 15 balls long with a sensor on the 15th ball. If a ball is in front of that sensor for more than 2 sec, a door opens and starts dropping the balls on to the field. Teams would be able to take balls from the chute to feed to their own robots as normal to prevent auto dumping onto the field. Not a very likely change as they would have to rework all of the fields, but I think it wouldâve been a better solution from the start.
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How would this account for the balls that are in the human playersâ hands?
Make the chute 13 balls long and have a rule that says human players can only hold 2 balls? Thatâs way easier to keep track of than the current system.
Its been a while but im pretty sure our sector would be right in front of us, opponentsâ down the field.
I doubt that anyone would be dumb enough to do something like try to run a flywheel at 20,000 rpm or anything that unsafe.
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Rather than being a complicated threshold thing, the control panel / colour wheels become point multipliers. While theyâre spinning* (for some definition), any goal scored is multiplied by X. My intent is to give weaker teams an easy way to boost their partners.
Youâd have to carefully choose X not to create dominant robots that can shoot from the panel while spinning it, or else make that illegal.
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Have you seen how sticky these balls are?
I did an experiment. I took two parallel square tubes with a cross piece at both ends and about about 5 inches apart and placed 5 PCâs on them. I then lifted one end slowly. The balls didnât move until I had the tubes at almost 45 degrees.