One of the reasons AA had strategic depth (and was really easy and fun to watch) was because there were only ever 2 game pieces on the field*. This forced alliances to split up tasks and time (rather than doing everything in parallel).
I’m sure thats a formula that can be repeated, while providing more of a technical challenge.
*let’s not talk about resurrecting robots
I’m going to be self-righteous and point out that I loved that game in 2014. My team had our robot literally torn in half in Utah and I still loved it. I think there were a bunch of people who loved it then.
I will wholeheartedly agree that Aerial Assist was the best FRC game I’ve seen.
The vast majority of FRC games are, unfortunately, “robots performing tasks in parallel” with very little interaction (with some exception for defense). Aerial Assist, on the other hand, required a lot of actual coordination and sports strategy, in addition to heaps more defense than any other FRC game I can think of. The result was a blast to play and to watch.
Yes, it was rather rough on robots - but that’s a design constraint like any other, and it’s not like it was unique in that regard (see: 2016).
Madtown 2015 was awesome! We attempted to make a swerve clone of 254 which looked pretty cool but due to some mechanical issues, shot issues, and programming issues of my making (I never had programmed swerve before, the code is great now though), we regressed to inbounding and playing defense by the end of the tournament, which you had a 1/3 shot of doing anyway. I can honestly say though, it was a ton of fun, and brought back the nostalgia for me.
Based Andrew Lawrence
Wasn’t there but I hear the defense bots made of 2x4s and PVC pipe were a nice touch.
Way too many matches were lost purely because an alliance spent too much time removing missed autonomous balls for Aerial Assist to be my favorite game. In FRC, there’s no reason to have such a disincentive for teams to try to accomplish the only thing there is to do in autonomous. Autonomous was pretty bland that year anyway, and if you add in the fact that a sizable portion of alliances would have fared better waiting until teleop to play the game, you have a challenge I’m not that fond of.
Agreed, but that was literally the only good thing about it.
At least we haven’t seen shudders coopertition return since then. Coopertition that year was extremely bad game design imo
Another thing about Aerial Assist was that it was very exciting to watch from an audience perspective. I find myself going back and watching our matches from 2014 and thinking how awesome the game was compared to all of the other games I have been involved in.
I recently did a speech on FIRST robotics in my public speaking class and used the Finals 2 video from Einstein in 2014 as an example. On my student response sheets, many of my peers commented that they were very enthralled by the video. I don’t think they would have had the same reaction for Recycle Rush.
Honestly in my opinion Aerial Assist is the best game FIRST has come up with and I would love for them to create something similar in the future. The sport aspect of it made it extremely fun to play and watch. It also allowed for many different strategies. Obviously the optimal strategy was 3 assists, truss, and high goal. But working to your alliance’s strengths could win a tournament. At Bayou in 2014 we teamed up with 3937 and 3616 and employed the 2 assist, truss, high goal strategy. 3616 played full time defense, 3937 played high goal and truss pickup, and we played inbound and truss throw. Instead of trussing to the human player like many teams did, we imbounded the ball and immediately trussed (from the far zone, our shooter was capable of shooting 18 ft so it was optimal to shoot from quite far back) as quick as possible so that we could play defense. This led to our alliance playing defense with 2 robots about 80% of the time and slowed down the opposing alliances enough to allow us to score more points while only running 2 assist cycles. We ultimately won and I have to say that was my favorite moment in my FIRST experience.
And of course, AA had its flaws. Penalties were pretty bad. We got both sides of that, and it ultimately won us an event and lost us an event (both times happening in finals).
Here’s my thought on that game then:
I agree aerial assist is the best game first has come up with robot interaction ecerywhere allowed for defense to win matches. Gosh I miss that game more gen anything, please bring it back
I really agree with Kevin on this post.
I’ll be the first to admit that I HATED aerial assist midway through the season. I’ll also admit that I later completely changed my tune - I loved the game by the end of the season. It had a few flaws, but they could be ironed out. Overall it ended up being one of my favorite games.
Aerial assist was the greatest driver’s game and the greatest spectator sport in FIRST history when played at a high or even slightly above average level. A lot of this had to do with the fact that there was only one game piece per alliance, and the fact that every team in the world, even world class teams who spend most years running nonstop offensive cycles, needed to not just play defense, but play it at an advanced level, with moves like setting picks that are rarely seen most years. Watching and coaching it felt more like a traditional sport than just about any other game, because every robot had to be a two-way player.
OK, so for the CURRENT crop of folks playing the games, 2014 was pretty good.
Let’s mix it up a bit.
Now, for EACH block, pick 1 BEST game and 1 WORST game. Not familiar with any games in a block? Take a pass.
For non-3v3 games, figure out how to make it 3v3.
For each WORST game, identify the 1 thing that made it awful, and how to eliminate it. For each BEST game, identify what IRI fixed.
Determine which games you’d actually want to play.
Example: I Pass on Block 1. Block 2 gets 2004 (Best) and 2001 (WORST); Block 3 is close but I gotta go with 2007 (Best) and 2009 (Worst). Block 4… 2016 and 2015 respectively.
2004 is easy: Add another robot. There’s plenty to do. 2001… Add 2 more robots, and they’re competing against each other instead of the clock?
Worst fixes: 2001: No defense, at all. Eliminate by playing each other, on two sides of the field (needs 1 more bridge). 2009: Put all the humans behind the walls, robots start in the middle similar to '06. (Humans being close was one part of the problem). Add carpet. 2015: Remove the step and assign only 1 protected platform.
Best repairs: 2004 didn’t have all that many tweaks. 2007, I don’t recall too many fixes either. For 2016, elimination of some defenses and reducing the protected area around the Secret Passage worked wonders.
What would I want to play? 2004 was a very interesting game to strategize for, I’ll go with that one again.
Meh…
Here’s the final not seeing it as so amazing some say here, just like I remembered back in 2014 as a ok BIG BALL first game . Granted some bots like 254 and 1678 were amazing at moving the large balls around and shooting in stride but in general the game was ok. You made me go back and check to see if my memory was off with these posts describing AA.
Just big balls sometimes caught sometimes scored.
I think many just did not like RR and actually hated that game , and elevated AA up way above it somehow watch the games not a lot of crowd excitement…plus the HP part was way too much in a robot competition.
The Ultimate Ascent looked interesting before my time in FRC. Frisbees and Pyramids kinda lit in watching some of those videos.
Stronghold shooting was pretty good with the smaller ball and smaller target from the outer works. Would have been better if you could do multiple boulders after crossing a defense.
SteamWorks pretty entertaining… gear runs some shooting midcourt smashes gears knocked out and great endgame
Then AA and RR
See this is why we should have kept the whole title. “Just big balls caught sometimes scored”
Stronghold was just robots crossing bumps, sometimes gates.
No game ever had me jumping up and down during a close final like AA did.
^^ This, though I have half as many years in. It would have been even more boring if we had done a proper evaluation of the strategy; we actually burned a bunch of brain cells on making sure we could pass and receive the ball robot to robot.
IMO, the game needed to throttle back the importance of the HP (perhaps with a delay before an out-of-bounds ball could be refeilded), and something else, perhaps an endgame, that did NOT involve mobility and manipulating that one ball.
I still remember being blown away by 33 and all the jukes and moving shots they pulled off. I still occasionally go back and watch videos of them that year.
Seems like some people totally forgot about these elements…
The bolded ones are really inherent to the game… possessions are subjective, a dead robot hamstrings an alliance, and the tech fouls were insane (but, in all fairness, they kind of had to be to outweigh 50-60pt cycles).