*Originally posted by JosephM *
**How 'about making a game that is easy to learn, hard to master, and can captivate an audience?Sure, FIRST isn’t into the Battlebots thing, but there are still ways of demolition that aren’t viloent. **
Dean, Woodie & Co. have been trying that for years
*Originally posted by JosephM *
**How 'about making a game that is easy to learn, hard to master, and can captivate an audience?.. **
Othello… thats all I have to say.
I think that 130 pounds is enough. I am a the one who has to carry it on and off the field and I think that 130 pounds is plenty. I think that dimensions should grow if the game grows. But what I would like to see is a lager variety of pneumatics, and more allowed on the robot 5 is not enough.
the only problem is, if you use more pneumatics, you need larger/more accumulators, you need a bigger compressor, you need a stronger battery, and so on, and that means it will wind up weighing much more than it does now. then we come back to the whole problem of fitting it through a standard size door. i think that no matter how the game changes, the size will never change. eventually, FIRST might allow heavier robots, but that’s a big if. especially if there’s only four people on the field, you can’t make the robot too heavy. the only way around that is if they let you wheel the robot onto the field, although that could damage the carpet, so i doubt that.
i’m not saying i oppose changes to size and weight, it’s just that it would be a very difficult thing for FIRST to do.
I want to see the nematics to be more flexible. I want to be able to do more with pneumatics but at the same time keep the wieght low. If there are more vertical obsticals and climbing the weight should be lowerd and there should be more maneuverablitlity in the feild of pneumatics. i would really hate to see the weight go up because then either the gearbox or motor sizes would have to increase inadvertenly increasin g it’s own weight.
What i m trying to say is that there is an inverse relationship with the weight and pneumatic options.
In response to the rubber tile idea for the feild, i think that that woiuld be a great idea. Alot like the interlocking puzzle shaped tiles in a weight room. that stuff would be awesome for tracktion and is very durable at the same time!
What ever the game is, I hope it encourages robots to be speedy. I don’t know, but this year seemed like a bunch of tanks. Watching 4 robots go after 3 goals was like watching slugs fighting it out. It was boring to everyone watching! But when a bunch of 'bots with high gearing went out and scooted all over, I noticed people getting really into it (not just team members). If you want people out side of FIRST to take notice, 3 fps drive trains just arn’t going to do us much good. People don’t like watching mack trucks, they like sports cars and formula one!
I just like speed…
-Andy A.
This wont really help people looking for teams at an event…but how about at the Regionals/Nationals mixing up the team numbers or integrating rookie teams/newer teams with the veteran teams?
This would help out with what Al Skierkiewicz was saying about helping teams…most (hopefully all) veteran teams are always willing to share tools/materials with other teams if they need them.
Remove the anti-TJ^2 rule!!! (For those who don’t know it’s using velcro. Watch the 99 season I believe Nationals
If the carpet is being used again ban filecards. Why because now everybody knows the secret and its not very entertaining
Can we PLEASE go back to everyman for themselves!!! Too many times has the alliance thing screwed teams over. Fine you say so what do you purpose 1vs.1vs.1vs.1 same amount of teams playing so the speed factor is ok. Plus nobody can gain up and dominate over one person because now their is that fourth person. With the alliance system now teams who are seeded 1-4 are victimizing their partners who might have a chance of either breaking into the top 8 or higher. This happened to my team this year and we were pushed down in the seedings to seventh at Florida and we felt very betrayed by the system.
Define all rules and be consistant maybe give a video demonstration with the team updates with the rules so clarity can be certain. A visual usually works better than words because words can be misinterpeted.
To qualify for Florida points have to carry over… And if spots are open the teams with the most points should be able to qualify. (Like say team X has 4 points and a spot is available after the odd teams they should be let in)
Have a cut off date for signing up for Nationals don’t hold teams in limbo. Like say have all teams that are
qualified sign up on Jan.1
Odd numbered teams Jan15
Teams with most qualifiying points Feb 15
Devise a qualification system for Nationals that lets teams have the ability to travel to Nationals. Weeks notice is not good and not cheap…
Chairman’s award needs more time robot is still being designed during the time the chairman’s award is being completed.
Ok that’s it for now that I can think of:D
*Originally posted by Todd Derbyshire *
**4) Define all rules and be consistant maybe give a video demonstration with the team updates with the rules so clarity can be certain. A visual usually works better than words because words can be misinterpeted.
To qualify for Florida points have to carry over… And if spots are open the teams with the most points should be able to qualify. (Like say team X has 4 points and a spot is available after the odd teams they should be let in)
Devise a qualification system for Nationals that lets teams have the ability to travel to Nationals. Weeks notice is not good and not cheap… **
For #4 on the list… they sort of already do that at Kick off - they show (using people) how the game should be played… But showing better diagrams of rule changes (i.e. tethers under the goal, etc) would be helpful to us all!
As for #5, That’s another thing FIRST did this year. Even numbered teams qualified first. Then people with a certain number of points, then people with a lower number of points and then they let anyone else who wanted to sign up, sign up (just because they didn’t have enough teams the first two times around).
And for #7 - yeah, I definitely agree. Trying to get hotel reservations and, mostly, plane tickets with only a few weeks notice would not be fun. Our team was lucky enough to sign up when they let whoever wanted to go sign up. But if we hadn’t done that, we would have found out that we were going a month before Nationals (for winning a technical award) - and a month is a decent amount of time compared to some teams!
A few more things (some echoing what others have said):
At both regionals and Nationals, have veteren teams play with rookies more often, and mix up the teams a little more! I know at our regional we played with some of the same teams three times during quals.
I think weight should be left the same or even lowered (make the bots lighter). That would be interesting 
Keep the size the same.
Up the amount you can spend at Digikey.
Let teams use whatever springs they want (ok, maybe have restrictions on what kind of springs can be used, but give more freedom than just what comes in the kit).
And make sure the same rules are followed by all of the inspectors at competitions (Don’t tell teams at regionals that it is OK to use tape to cover up nuts/bolts that are sticking out - especially if it’s electrical tape that won’t really cover any sharp edges … The checklist even says “electrical tape is used only as an insulator”!!) Yeah. When that team gets to Nationals with thier tape-coved bolts … they won’t be too happy when the inspectors there say “You need to take that tape off - and file down those bolts by hand.” (even though that’s what should have been done in the first place!). :rolleyes:
Ok, that’s my $.02!!
I say decrease the size of the robot and keep the same weight therefore making it easier to keep the robot under the weight limit!!! (Maybe by 6 inches?
3v3 would be nice for a change instead of 1v1v1, 2v2, and 4vthemselves!
If First did decrease the size of the robot and kept the field size the same it would allow 6 robots on the field at once.
3v3 would also give you a better chance of winning because if 1 partner dies you still have the other one!
I would like some suggestions/comments!
Here are my thoughts… don’t know if they’re worth much.
Inspectors who have kept up with the rules updates and know their stuff, and who can recognize a van door motor from a chiaphua. A more comprehensive electrical and mechanical checklist would be great - their favorite words were “file those edges”, and that was it.
More judge coverage. I know there are only so many judges, but having only two spend 2 minutes with a team doesn’t do many teams justice. Maybe a bit longer, or more judges patrolling the pit areas? I never saw too many…
Enhanced pneumatics, I definitely agree. My pneumatically-driven Internal Combustion Engine model on a FIRST robot is still quite a ways away. More tanks, cylinders from anywhere… maybe a better compressor? Either that or a “black box” compressor that you don’t have to mount with rubber feet (thanks goes out to the team members who decided to put the feet on with locknuts right before the chassis had to go to the welders…).
More small electronics. The game is still virtually entirely based on the mechanical competence of the team - programming and electronics are wallowing in the dust. Let custom sensors be anywhere on the robot as long as they follow the FIRST rules of electrical systems - no grounding to the chassis, no open-air electric surfaces, etc. We could’ve done incredible trigonometric calculations with those optical sensors with a secondary basic stamp, if the sensors didn’t have to be in the “black box” to be part of the package. And up the money level on those digikey parts.
For crying out loud, change the playing field. Carpet has been mastered by the veterans and the rookies are generally left in the dust.
Open up the default materials some. Aluminum and steel are fine, why are they restricted on types (i.e. 410’s C steel)?
Bring back the featherweight award! Teams need to be rewarded for how light they can make these robots, considering most of us are drilling holes while a select few stand back and watch with a smirk.
More servomotors! Servomotors are excellent ways to control your robot’s smaller parts, but only a few are allowed. There are tons of PWM outputs that remain unused…
That’s all I can think of for right now.
The rules need to be a lot more enforced. My team spent hundreds of dollars and many hours on making a telescoping pole extender that was 25 feet long and would never touch the ground only to find out that they were now allowing “entangling” devices like tape measures to be used as an extender. We actually lost a match because the goal we were pushing got caught up on a previously illegal tape measure extender. All the rules need to be there from the start so there is no room for questioning or argument.
As for the game, Robotica on TLC was really cool. I wish that FIRST could make it more like that and not just a flat, rectangular piece or carpet. We need some ramps and small stairs and sand pits and narrow turns and other obstacles. That way, the robots with their “slammed” bodies 2mm off the ground would be useless. I’m talking big tires, 4wd, massive ground clearance and perhaps suspension. Now that would be cool.
Just please no walking bots, at least not yet. The thousands of years old wheel is still rolling strong.
Lightweight award, here here! I would love to see that come back. No holes drilled in the robot rendered over yonder <-- that weighed in at 104.9 lbs; not the lightest robot that hit the carpet, but far from the heaviest, and quite possibly the most sturdy bot in Jersey. No welds either, but I won’t step near that today.
Lowriders, like ours, work well on FLAT surfaces. I’d like to see the flat surfaces go away, maybe in favor of a moving floor (Naw, too expensive and BattleBots-like…) or a craggy surface. A rolling surface (~~~~~~~) would be neat too. Hey, how about a giant waterbed! Talk about making a skilled drive team mandatory…
Lemme think… Oh yes, FRC Chat. Chief Delphi and weekly updates from FIRST blow that idea out of the water. Calling FIRST up works better, and quicker too.
Lower-cost additional regional registration would be really nice. I would like to see that come into play. Just a bit lower, like down to half the regular registration.
LLLLLLLL… Well, that kinda ruined my theme, but anyway… Sending the animation software early is an excellent idea, and it really helps to be familiar with the software before the season’s begining. And Autodesk’s renderings of all kit parts are a good idea too. But FIRST should make an effort to make sure the shipping is quick and all teams actually recieve the software at the time that it was intended to arrive. And it should be made easier for teams, specifically the animation team members, to access Autodesk’s rendering library.
Well, it’s late, I think I’m pretty much done for now.
Eliminate all dimensional limits except the maximum shipping crate size and weight allowable. This would let in the real-world horror of engineering your own team out of competitiveness!
Put yourself in the place of a team that has a nearly dead or limited function robot. (maybe a rookie team with just a few students and adults) Wouldn’t you like the random chance to play with a robot that would run up your qualifying points, or complement your strategy and function? Of course, and that idea doesn’t beat down teams or make it hard for new teams to get excited about the competition. Knowing that any team can make it into the finals really makes it exciting for the competitors. I was here when it was 1 vs. 1 vs. 1 and it wasn’t that much more exciting but it was demoralizing for some teams when their perception was they couldn’t possibly win. After all the hard work they had put in on the robot, they still had no chance to come close to the finals. It is easy to learn when you are excited and pumped, but you don’t want to do anything when you are depressed.
I am still undecided on whether to announce all alliances ahead of time or just give teams 2 minutes to figure out strategies and then play. Their is an advantage for large teams to have many students scouting and planning in either case, but it seemed more exciting for me not knowing who we were playing with until right before the match. Any other ideas on this one?
I know this sounds dumb but it makes sense . . . to me
I would like to have the music turned down when matches are playing.
Two reasons for this:
Its very hard for friends, family members, and other teams to talk to each other with music blasting. Nothing like yelling “what!” ten times when the person is just trying to tell you to move over.
Also it’s very hard to really concentrate on a match with the music. When you are really trying to study a robot the last thing you want is to hear a song that you absolute loath and see people dancing to it.
More small electronics. The game is still virtually entirely based on the mechanical competence of the team - programming and electronics are wallowing in the dust. Let custom sensors be anywhere on the robot as long as they follow the FIRST rules of electrical systems - no grounding to the chassis, no open-air electric surfaces, etc. We could’ve done incredible trigonometric calculations with those optical sensors with a secondary basic stamp, if the sensors didn’t have to be in the “black box” to be part of the package. And up the money level on those digikey parts.
I completely agree. FIRST took a big leap forward this year by allowing the custom circuit and I think that was an extremely positive move. However, being able to place sensors outside of the housing would really open up the possibilities in regards to what we can do with the custom circuit. The $100 limit definitely should be raised. As Al said, $150 or $200 would be nice.
I would also like to request that we be allowed some other way of enclosing the custom circuit. That BUD Box was rather heavy for what it was. Also, why limit the size of the custom circuit by requiring that it fit in a certain size box? Perhaps a rule that requires the custom circuit to be contained in a non-metallic casing would be appropriate. This would allow teams to buy or build an enclosure that would be appropriate to their application.
I also liked it better when you didnt know who you were with untill right before the match. I was kinda disapointed when we got our matchs and we were already paired up. I think it ads an element of really knowing what you want to do when you get up there and having to comprimise quickly with the other teams. Either way the alliances definetly need to stay in place.
*Originally posted by rlowerr_1 *
**I know this sounds dumb but it makes sense . . . to meI would like to have the music turned down when matches are playing.
Two reasons for this:
Its very hard for friends, family members, and other teams to talk to each other with music blasting. Nothing like yelling “what!” ten times when the person is just trying to tell you to move over.
Also it’s very hard to really concentrate on a match with the music. When you are really trying to study a robot the last thing you want is to hear a song that you absolute loath and see people dancing to it. **
Makes sense to me too. They usually have a good choice in music but often its too loud to hear anouncements. It also makes it very hard to talk while driving:
“The goals are coming!”
“What about the plumbing?”
Even worse was at the LA regional where a team brought their huge drum set. Everytime any robot changed direction the drums were pounding. I lost my voice by the end of the first day shouting over them. Sorry if anyone who reads this is on that team but it was just really loud for everyone. Any other sounds besides the drums were nonexistant. I’d just like to be able to talk to someone without ruining my vocal cords.
I would like to see different weight limits.
Keep the 130 lbs. limit but allow 20 lbs. over with penalty points. This will allow teams from going crazy with the hand drills.
If the robot is 100 lbs. or less give bonus points. This will
allow new teams or small schools with simple designs be become more competitive because their lite robot’s bonus points.
The penalty and bonus points will be determine by FIRST.
