Without any restrictions, what do you think would be the coolest FRC game to see? You can incorporate past game elements, or create something completely new and exiting (water game, anyone? ).
Try to meet these criteria:
Creative possibilities / fun to design / lots of possible solutions
Balance between simple robots and very complex robots
Entertainment for viewers
I would want to see some sort of Stronghold-ish game with field obstacles, but it also has a ramp to a high point, and then minibots that can ride on ziplines to deliver the pieces to the other side - so that the robotâs donât actually have to go over the obstacles at all.
I really, really liked the 2022 design of game piece placement being effectively random. Combine that with 2019âs auto situation, and any endgame between 2016-2019 and Iâd love it.
Well⌠If we are saying on no restrictions, I would like to see Robots be able to climb the 1â side rails (maybe like mobility but climbing the walls), do laps around the field (like 2008 but around the outside the field) , shoot game pieces into goals inside the field, to the Human Players and to the audience for extra points
An Olympics themed game! Speed skating around the perimeter, golf, archery. Endgame is climbing up the podium by means of step or pull-up. Skating is low point but easy scoring (low friction floor), golf is medium point scoring crazy golf style with increasing points, archery with moving target is high difficulty.
A ring toss shooter where you are also able to extend high enough to place. It would be interesting to see the balance of fast cycling with shooting vs reliable placement with elevators & arms. Not to mention that this version of a shooter game would require much higher precision than other shooters in the past.
This could be a very interesting game design and hasnât really been done before.
I loved the audience interaction with 2016. Let the audience decide on some semi-important choice of field element. I liked the strategy sessions at the time. Alliances had to think about placement of starting position and which obstacles they had the best chances of solving as a group.
I also really like the various levels of difficulty that came with each defense. You could have something for every alliance partner to do to help. Basic kit bots could clear the gate or the low bar, teams with a simple intake type arm would handle the gate and Chival de Freis. Just all around well balanced and fun to watch.
As far as end games go I think 2013 and 2017 are my favorites. Climbing that pyramid was difficult and unique. Teams attempted swinging between levels similar to 2022 with the monkey bars, or climbing the corners. Also made for some nasty spills.
2017 I liked the rope. It was tougher than pull up bars, but easy enough if you did lots of ground work testing various rope types. It was a massive advantage to use a nylon rope and hook and loop tape on your winch spool. This would snag really quickly and was a cheap and effective solution to the problem. I like endgames that everyone can participate in
Minibots but better implementation? Maybe they are tethered to make things easier? Idk, there were mini bots my rookie year and there havenât been any since and I think thatâs a shame because I thought they were cool as heck.
Your ring toss made me think it would be funny have to have an unobstructed ring post on each robot and you could get mega points by tossing onto an opposing teams bots.
Honestly I would just like a shooting game where we can full court shoot and/or cycle.
2013 was the last one although I do wonder if 2020 was allowed to play out if 3/4 field shooters would have become a valuable archetype.
2014, 2015*, 2016. 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2023 all had rules about only being allowed to launch game pieces when closer to the goals.
2022 only allowed it because the goal was in the middle of the field. With modern motors some of the challenge to full field shooting has been taken away but for anyone who was around for games where this was possible would agree the bigger challenge was not getting the game piece to travel the field but instead getting it to actually score.
Can I go âanti game designâ (as Iâm saying without that game design the game is overall cooler)
I have climbing fatigue. I really liked how this past game implemented this cooperative platform balancing. I just liked the excitement and participation a lot better than cooperative climbing.
Cool version of this would be a seesaw style climb⌠which I know was in 2012. Bring it back!
I would like to see a game different event winners are executing different strategies. We saw some of this in Charged Up, where a hybrid cube 'bot could be a great member of an alliance, both due to link scoring, and due to supercharging. However, fundamentally, everyone was still cycling to fill the grid and balancing â same outcome. It would be interesting to see there be different sets of tasks with similar numbers of points.
It could be a tradeoff between the high and low goal. For example, in Rapid React, it would have been interesting to see a variant where the high goal was worth, say, 1/2 or 2/3 of the low goal, but the low goal was only accessible at close range. By the end of the season, high goal shooters were easily scoring in greater quantities than low goal dumpers â probably because of selective pressure. If it were carefully worked out that you could cycle to the high goal faster, but points-per-second came out the same, it would open up low goal scoring as a possibility at high levels of play.
It could be a difference in the way the cycles work â on kickoff of 2023, we discussed the idea of splitting up cross-field cycles and scoring: get a bunch of pieces to your community, then pick up and score them in quick succession. There have been only a few games in the past where robot-to-robot handoffs were productive, but apart from 2014, most of those were in autonomous.
Iâd also like to see another endgame thatâs not a robot-positioning challenge. The only ones I know of were 2008 (which was a game piece positioning challenge, subject to interference from opponents) and 2011 (which was a minibot race).
Sort of, and it kind of depends on what you mean by âdynamically changingâ.
1999âs Puck was a multiplier depending which side of the field it was on.
2001 had bonus balls, plus 10 points for whichever robot got theirs onto the goals. (2001 is notably the only game regarded as worse than Recycle Rushâby 1/4 second of interaction.)
2002 had mobile goals weighing more than the robotâpush them to the other side of the field but not all the way and the goals and any soccer balls in them scored for you.
2005, any goal could be owned by either alliance. Highest tetra owned, which meant that the target height was constantly changing as was ownership.
2006, the goals were only active during certain periods (both, one, other, both). Winner of auto couldnât score in the next period of the game.
2007, anyone could score anywhere but the targets were moving.
2009⌠ahh, 2009. The goals werenât dynamic per se, but their location constantly changed.
2018âs scales and switches were semi-predictable as far as which side scored for who, but only because there were a limited number of color patterns. Their heights constantly shifted.
2020/2021âs balance bar being on a pivot proved somewhat annoyingâŚ
Descoring. This Vex game allows descoring, but it is balanced in a way that it works well. Ironically, this was during the pandemic so most matches were played virtually, so the descoring was never a huge part of the game.
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