They did. Most of the time.
It wasn’t uncommon for a ref to miss a crossing, even at Champs.
My current call is elevated platforms at the driver station or center field with objects to pick and place on the floor in between. Deep space esque platforms to elevate the robots out of the ocean and bring themselves “on shore” at the end of the match. thats about all i have. Some of my students keep suggesting pool noodles but… i dont really want to think about those as a game element again, lol
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One of the things that I’m not seeing folks consider is the idea that the official scorer could be simply just to take on the role of line crossing in auto.
In recent years we have seen the FRC community have many complaints about auto line crosses and how blatantly they can be missed (refs do their best, but it can be hard!!)
What’s to say that these score keepers aren’t implying pick and place but simply an extra position to help the refs out?
(Can you tell I don’t want a PNP? 
)
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I’d love a pick and place game simply because both of my teams worlds appearances were during a pick and place game. We might’ve gone again in 2023 but our intake was messed up most of MSC. I’d also love a climbing end game since that’s what was great for us in 2022 and 2020.
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I don’t think first would mandate some form of vision on robots, even with deep space you could have an auto but autos just require one robot to bump you and it messes up.
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I hope we can have more than 1 game piece in the robot. Think how different the robots would have been the last two years if we could hold 2 or more
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A pick-and-place game where you can hold two or more items at a time might bring in some interesting design strategies. We have seen many shooting games that allow you to hold multiple game pieces at once but I’m not sure I’ve seen a pick-and-place game like that before. If Reefscape does end up being a pick-and-place game, I hope it would allow robots to manipulate two game pieces at a time.
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With a dock as the theme, the highest-point platform could have no front surface (like a floating dock) to make the climb more difficult
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How about a dock-simulator where its hung on 4 chains, so it waggles around!
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As a safety feature, I would put 4 chains on the top as well as 4 chains on the bottom so then the platform won’t tip over. It will still wiggle, but mainly on the horizontal plane and not so much on the vertical plane. Otherwise, there would be a lot of robots falling off the platform and getting critically damaged.
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Similarly, they could be chained to a structure rather than in a fixed location. Definitely would be a twist on past climbs.
i hope! i would love to see something with a similar concept as the floor used in the 2009 game, lunacy.
I haven’t fully thought this one out. But you cut the field in half with a opaque/semi-opaque reef banner / sea cave entrance. You have to either cross the short route over rough sea floor or go around the longer path. The game pieces are sea life stuck on the overhead chains and you have to return them to your side and a tiered shelf. Also there are sea boulders for you to acquire and move out of your zone to your opponents side, and you get scored where they end up. Possible that you gain points by tossing them over the cave wall. At the end you climb up your rope to return to the surface.
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An interesting design restriction that could be added is a limitation on where in the robot the game piece can be possessed. Perhaps the game object can only be controlled above/below a certain height, or cannot enter into the frame perimeter by more than a few inches. Not something that has been seen since I believe 2010.
And for good reason.
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With the Alliance Selection update requiring that “Team representatives will move to the emcee, at a centralized location on the field, to make their pick”
I think we have official confirmation that there will not be a field element in the center of the playing area? (e.g. no 2018 Scale, no 2022 Hub, etc.)
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“Centralized location” doesn’t necessarily mean dead center. I’m sure if there is a structure in the middle they will work around it, and I wouldn’t take this as a hint to what the game or field will be.
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Probably between 2 and 3 in the above image, if it’s open–that’s typically “Audience Side Stage Center” for considerations of A/V stuff. So for a 2022 Hub, they’d just go to center on the “Audience side”.
But what if it’s like the airship and it’s meant to have people on it? Or the time to takes to climb up and down would slow down the process so they’d skip it anyways?
Since it’s reefscape it’s now called the “Submarine”.
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