There’s been a lot of talk recently about the BLDC “arms race” and the problems it poses for teams.
The new motor limit rule is explicitly intended to address some of these concerns. There’s already been plenty of discussion of whether the new rule as-worded, or perhaps with some slight modifications (in implementation, not in spirit), will achieve these goals. This thread is not for that discussion.
I want to suggest a solution in a completely different direction: FIRST should favor game tasks where high scores are gated by precision, not by speed.
FIRST has a history of these sorts of tasks already - off the top of my head, I can point to the ordinary low goal/high goal divide, varying-sized targets in 2013, and the smaller “inner” target in 2020 as examples of this sort of thinking in FRC game design.
If FIRST wants to limit the race for high-powered motors, they should take this idea further. Develop high-reward tasks that require precise or complex interactions, and weight the point value of these tasks such that it is rewarding for teams to slow down and take a long time to do something exacting, rather than racing to do a simple task many times over. To implement this might require some fundamentally-different point structures and tasks that can be graded on a higher-resolution scale than we’re used to in FRC, but I think it should be doable.
What do y’all think?
EDIT: Updated thread title to better reflect the broader discussion that’s taking place.
While I like the broad idea proposed in this thread, I think this would be one of, if not the, driving factor behind FIRST not wanting to go this route.
If this task can be repeated multiple times per game, then the objective to improve cycle time is still going to drive teams to fast, powerful drivetrains. This was certainly the case with the 2020 game. although teams would park and “take their time” lining up to score, collecting the next set of power cells to score with was a fast task to try to improve the number of scoring cycles.
If this is a task that can only be completed once during the game, then you have capped the score (all top teams will complete this task) resulting in no ability to differentiate. This type of task is usually limited to the autonomous period or end game period, but it could be also in play during teleoperated period.
FIRST has (to their credit) always included multiple scoring tasks so that teams at all levels can contribute to the scoring. So, in the case where the high precision task was a once per game task and assuming that there were lower scoring tasks available, the teams that completed the high precision task would then turn their attention to the lower scoring tasks and try to complete those to increase their score. So, again, speed comes into play.
Does it matter how it looks? Did 2015 drive people away from the program because it was a boring game?
A fun, fast, exciting, game is better for spectators for sure, but I think ultimately how much the spectators enjoy an FRC game doesn’t really have much impact on the program.
2020 did a good job of this. About every team in the world could score, while the more skilled teams could score a little more, and the most skilled teams could score even more. Precision isn’t black-and-white; there’s varying degrees of it.
I think that no matter how this is approached the gap between the high and low players is going to remain more or less just as big and I don’t think we should be targeting trying to close that gap with rules or game design (within reason, obviously minor things can be tweaked, but I think those tweakable things are more about improving the game than closing any gaps).
I think the fast paced high scores is what makes the game fun an interesting and is what’s going to drive more resources to the program in turn raising the floor.
Like what’s been said over and over, no matter how you try to “cap” the powerhouses/limit arms races, they’re always going to find a way, and that’s because they have crazy smart, dedicated and informed people behind them.
I think the goal should be how to we get more of those crazy smart, dedicated, and informed mentors into the program.
Speaking as someone who’s senior year was 2015, I have several friends who likely would have attempted to stay involved in the program had the 2015 game been more exciting/engaging.
In a slightly different vein, do protected scoring zones help or hurt? There are interesting games that had a combination, of course, like 2012 where you could score from a protected zone at a longer distance, or go close, but be unprotected.
It is a bit difficult to remove speed as a central goal for teams but I think maybe there are a couple ways to reduce its role.
Lots of pieces near scoring area. You have to pick them up and score, but you aren’t sprinting around.
Allowed to hold more gamepieces. Like 2020 but allow 10 instead of 5. Less full court sprints and more lining up shots.
I agree that removing too much speed from the game moves it from exciting to boring. While FIRST can make a change that would downplay fast drivetrains for precision, they should pull that lever slowly and check that the games are still fun.
Wasn’t cone scoring a pretty precise element? You named another (inner target) that was pretty precise but not out of reach and still accomplished with speed.
It highly depends on their implementation and the rest of the game design. IMO, protected zones improve the game when they are situational, allowing you to avoid heavy defense, but at a cost of speed or points. Protected zones which completely control the game flow make games worse and more boring.
The protected zones this year and in infinite recharge to a lesser degree are bad because they were too large and overbearing. There wasn’t much defense in either game against except trying to slow a field crossing which is boring, not very skillful, and minimally influential.
Rapid react had the tiny launch pads which did improve the game. They are out of the way and a long distance so you really don’t want to be shooting from them often. They act as a way to prevent complete shutdown defense because the offensive bot will eventually make it to the launchpads, even if it takes a while. But due to the open field and central goal, if the offensive bot had a more skilled driver, the launch pads aren’t necessary and shooting out in the open was viable again and often still the best option.
But then there are games like deep space which needed more protected zones. The defender will be pushing you a few inches whether they were good at driving or not, whether you liked it or not and that will make you miss the hatch, which led to complete shutdown defense being too common except against a few mechanically-complicated robots. Had there been some protected zones, like maybe the nearside of the rocket, the game would have been better. However, the same could be said if the hatch panels were easy to score.
What I’ll say is that games with lower precision requirements are consistently ranked higher on people’s “good FRC games” scales than high precision games are. You can look through this thread if you want to see that play out, but that’s also been my personal belief and my experience of others’ beliefs.
I think this is because high precision tasks tend to (a) generate feel-bad moments for teams when you miss by a slim margin and get no points for your robot attempting a game task and (b) be less dynamic, with robots spending more time being stationary and doing alignment, among other reasons.
Great FRC games (by the metric of “great” explained above) are dynamic games with lots of robot movement, interaction, and gameplay strategy. I see what you’re going for by saying that high precision tasks are a solution to the motors arms-race, but I think skewing games in that direction is antithetical to excellent FRC games, and a good solution is a reasonable limitation by rules, similar to what FRC just sent down for drivetrain propulsion motors.
2001 was like that, the alliance of 4 ran out and did tasks as fast as possible, and you could all estop your robot early to signal you are finished for a bonus multiplier. I think 2015 was similar (that was a year before I came back).
Having a more precision based game on the surface seems like a way to slow down the BLDC arms race, but I think this would do the opposite. This could possibly create a larger divide between the top 1% of teams and the rest of the field vs the current type of games.
Every FRC game is about speed, because time is the main constraint. And I really don’t see a feasible way to take time out of the equation.
