I know that FIRST mentioned it would return to a more competitive competition this year, but I don’t remember seeing an outright statement that they would be repeating the 2 vs. 2 format.
I noticed that only 160 spots have been used for Nationals so far. It could mean that FIRST is holding the remaining 128 spots for the teams that qualify during the 2002 Regionals. There are 5 “qualifying” awards at each Regional: Current year Regional Chairman’s Award winners (2002) (new award); Current year Technical Award winners at Regional Events (2002) (Driving Tomorrow’s Technology, Quality, Creativity and Leadership in Controls)
Plus, the alliance that wins the Regional gets a spot as well, so let’s do the math.
Regional winners = 2.53 (This must be like having 2.5 children:))
Anyway, I think this means that there will be 3 teams in an winning Regional alliance, 2 teams play in a match with one team as a backup. Because the number is less than 3, I think it is expected that some teams that already have spots will win some of the Regionals. That’s not a far-fetched idea.
Or do you think that only 2 teams will be in the winning alliance?
I just got thinking… Even with the winning alliance being 3 teams, two main team and a back up team, the competition format doesn’t necessary have to be 2 vs. 2…
Maybe! Just maybe… they will do 2 vs. 2 vs. 2, going back to the format at 1998 (1 vs. 1 vs. 1). It should be interesting, considering they will most likely use the same field again.
Maybe some modification to the drivers station, but the field should fit 6 robot fine with 3 on each side driving directly toward each other, fighting for the puck/tree/goal/kill saw/giant 5 ft deep hole…
It should be interesting… It’s time for soft objects like floopies to appear in the game again. Hopefully the game will expand upward as the field size remain the same! Maybe 10 ft up in the air this time.
*Originally posted by Ken Leung *
**Maybe! Just maybe… they will do 2 vs. 2 vs. 2, going back to the format at 1998 (1 vs. 1 vs. 1). It should be interesting, considering they will most likely use the same field again.
Maybe some modification to the drivers station, but the field should fit 6 robot fine with 3 on each side driving directly toward each other, fighting for the puck/tree/goal/kill saw/giant 5 ft deep hole…**
I was thinking across the same lines; it could be 2 v 2 v 2. We’ll get a taste of this format in a month for CDI (which uses a 24x24 field). When I saw the game for CDI, I was a little disapointed because I liked it so much and I thought FIRST would be less likely to use a similar game.
FIRST using the same field is only a wild guess anyway… but a couple of clues lead to this guess:
Since FIRST is doing the regional at the same places, the field size will most like be the same… Here is why: I don’t know about other regional, but I know for certain that the place in San Jose State for the Silicon Valley regional can’t possible have a bigger playing field in there anymore. So, if they are doing it there again, FIRST can only put something the same size or smaller… and I don’t think it would be getting smaller.
Second, FIRST can save money by using the same arena. They got the crates figured out for this field, they have existing fields from the pass two years… I am not saying they won’t spend money to build different fields, but it’s economical to keep this ones while the money can be used for some where else (such as more regionals or more TV coverage).
Just trying to make some educated guesses before everything is announced at kick off. Then again, FIRST can be quite unpredictable sometimes.
I also do not think the field dimensions will be the same this year, unless they go back to 2v2 or something like 3v3. A 2v2v2 situation would be virtually impossible to organize on a rectangular field… Sure you could have 1 robot from each alliance start on opposite ends of the field, but you can’t fairly arrange the starting positions (one alliance gets middle, other two alliances get sides, etc…). I highly doubt to see 2vs2 again… I’m just not convinced FIRST would go back to something they deemed worthy to change at the end of 2000. 3v3 maybe, but I don’t think we’ll see alliances with more than 2 teams. Thus, in my opinion, I think we’ll see a 2v2v2 or no alliances at all… Or something completely out of the ordinary that none of us are expecting.
*Originally posted by patrickrd *
** I think we’ll see a 2v2v2 or no alliances at all… Or something completely out of the ordinary that none of us are expecting.
Patrick **
Having no alliances would be interesting. There are only 115 teams who have been around since '98, so most of today’s FIRST teams only know alliance-based competition.
This would go against FIRST’s push to get us to co-operate, but it would also make the game easier to understand and more media-friendly.
IF FIRST has a way to keep inter-team communication open and some way to keep us co-operating, I can see them going back to the individual style of play as opposed to alliances.
A problem with only having 1-on-1 is throughput. FIRST couldn’t give us enough Q matches if there would be only 2 teams on the field. Combining the fact that the current fields are set up nicely for 4 teams playing at a time, my prediction is this:
2002 competition will be 1 vs 1 vs 1 vs 1, or 4 teams on the field at a time, each scoring their own points. There could be some co-operation on the field, but each team could get their own score.
At the San Jose team forum, there was one team representative who brought up a 4v1 scenario… where the lone team was the spoiler, the defensive team. Just thought I’d bring this up.
I think 4 in a match everyone for themselves is a great idea. It could be a great game theory experiment, where if the teams cooperate in some aspect, all of their scores will be higher, but there is still a winner. Therefore, there is motivation for cooperation, but there is also motivation to go on your own. I see that there will be a cooperation period at the beginning of each match, then as soon as one robot back-stabs the others, all hell will break loose. It could be quite entertaining.
Since 188 teams are pre-registered for Nationals, that only leaves 100 slots for the Regionals.
Hmmm. That means the slots for 5 award winners from each Regional and only 15 slots remaining for regional winners. It looks like FIRST is expecting a lot of overlap between award winners, regional winners, and pre-reg teams. Could be risky?
I expect the field to change this year, too. In the forum minutes, it seems strange that FIRST mentioned how few of the teams actually built the entire field. I think only 3 teams in MI. Sounds like they will change the field. And a 2v2v2 game would increase their throughput and make the game more dynamic.
We build the playing field ever year and we invite other teams from around the area to play on our built field. So, not every team doesn’t build the playing field…
I wouldn’t mind actually geting into a competition and being able to root for my team and say yeah we are doing good. Last years game wasn’t appealing to me from the actual match prospective. I wasn’t all gung hoe and maybe the 1 vs 1 vs 1 would bring excitment back into the match.
