How would you re-work Steamworks if you could re-do the entire season over? In this scenario, every team has the opportunity to re-build their robots with the new rules in mind.
How would you re-work Steamworks for potential off-season events, whether those are competitive events like IRI, or just fun off-seasons wehn you get to play the game again?
I think a lot of people recognize that the game is oddly balanced, with some tasks being worth far more than others, especially compared to the relative difficulty of each task. But people have varying opinions on how to do this, from increasing and decreasing thresholds or point values to removing parts of the game.
And I’d prefer not just random suggestions like “They should remove some gears”, but instead well thought out changes that are cohesive and fit together.
I think either would be fun to watch on its own, and both would be cheaper to construct (and rewinding time, build robots for) than the combined game. I bet Steamworks Fuel would get hundreds and hundreds of kPa if that was the focus.
{edit} - I would argue the vast majority of us are already playing game #1
If I could re-do Steamworks from the beginning I would:
Change the gear threshold for each rotor from 1,3,7,13 to 2,4,6,8, and remove the reserve gear.
Gears on a peg or in the airship, but not currently on a rotor are worth 5 points/gear
Only 2 climbs count for points, such that if three robots are climbing, it’s worth the same as two robots climbing, but the climb value stays the same
Make scoring in the low boiler worth the same amount of kPa as the high boiler, but still have each ball be worth 1/9th of a point. This allows for the low boiler to have use getting to the pressure threshold, but isn’t as useful for scoring points.
Add a break between autonomous and teleop for the fuel serializers to count all the autonomous fuel, and for pilots to score any autonomous gears.
The idea behind this list is to
a) lower the 4 rotor threshold to a similar level as the capture threshold last year. This allows more 4 rotor matches to occur at all levels of play.
b) lower the influence that climbing has on ranking by making climbs less valuable and both gears and fuel have more value in terms of ranking points
c) encourage more fuel play of all kinds by making gears past 4 rotors worth less and low efficiency fuel worth more
If I could change Steamworks going forward (mostly for IRI type events) I would:
Remove the reserve gear
Move a prepopulated gear from the third rotor to the fourth
Only 2 climbs count for points, such that if three robots are climbing, it’s worth the same as two robots climbing, but the climb value stays the same
Steamworks is the game it is, for better or for worse at this point. Removing the reserve gear and moving a prepopulated gear make 4 rotors slightly harder, and makes 3 rotors harder. 3 rotors right now is crazy easy to achieve, even if your opponents are playing hard defense, while hard defense make that gap between 3 and 4 rotors pretty large. And lastly, making only two climbs count for points reduces the effect it has on ranking, while still rewarding teams with consistent climbs.
I would rework the boiler and make the high goal target a lot bigger.
Something along the lines of removing the stack, the net, and the top of the boiler and make the target a 4ft by 4ft square.
Then I think it would have played more like the GDC was envisioning.
If I were to redo the season, I would’ve told my team more forcefully that they needed to specialize, either focus on all fuel or all gears, and have ground pickup for that element. We were so concerned about getting both extra rank points that it didn’t occur to us exactly how rare that would be, and that W-L-T would dominate rankings.
If I were to change the game, fuel would have the same score but the extra ranking would kick in at about 1/3rd - 1/4th its current amount. Also, I’d make the ball dumps work independent of one another and charge a team points for activating them. Then I’d remove the penalty for “amplifying game difficulty” with game pieces.
Make fuel worth 1/2 kPa in teleop. Removal of kPa bonus.
Low Goal worth 1/5 kPA in teleop and 1/3 in autonomous.
Eliminate rotor scoring and make each gear in the airship worth 15 points each. No limit to amount of gears that can be scored. 10 extra points for each gear scored in autonomous.
The idea here is that the game would be all about cycling gears and/or fuel and make both strategies viable. Robots that could cycle both at the same time would be able to maximize scoring output.
Bring climbs down to 25 points each.
Adding a delay from autonomous and teleop for boiler to finish processing.
Don’t really think anything else should really be changed. The only reason I propose the autonomous change even is because gear scoring was buffed with the peg changes/improvements. If anything, I would add one or two prepopulated gears to make four rotors less of game decider.
switch the locations of the airship and the boiler
put a transparent wall behind the boiler with small holes in it for ejecting fuel back onto the field (to prevent shooting into the boiler from center field)
Make the sides of the boiler transparent to improve driver LOS
Put 2 gear pegs where the boiler currently is, which are pulled up by HP’s
Put a 1/3 semicircle backboard behind the boiler top
Do climbing off the Driver’s Station wall, with ropes released by a drive team member
Points changes:
Only the first 2 climbs count
1kPa is worth 3 points
4th rotor bonus in elims is somewhere between 20 and 40 points
For 2):
Only the first 2 climbs count
Maybe some changes to how penalties/Yellow Cards are handled, but no other changes
I think that the opening of the boiler should have been much bigger (like 6ft in diameter) and lower, and the rules should have allowed shooting on any point of the field. This would have really encouraged teams to shoot while running gears. I think this is what the GDC envisioned teams doing, but maybe they got stuck on keeping the boiler the same size of a RR capped six stack.
There also should have been a minimum Kpa requirement for each rotor.
I think you have your gear threshold on each rotor here incorrect. I believe, absent the prepopulate gears, the threshold is 1,2,5,7. For each rotor in order. I personally would like to see the reserve gear go away and change the some of the scoring so that in Autonomous the first rotor is still worth 60 points but an additional rotor in auto is worth 100 points. My hope is that this would encourage teams to try for the side peg in auto thus increasing the number of 2 rotor autos. Also I would make it so that the counting of gears was not done by an optical sensor but some other mechanical solution. What I had in mind was something similar to encoders on drive trains which count rotations.
The other thing that I would do would be to change the kPa and the point values. I would make the High Goal 1:1 and low goal 1:2. But I would then increase the kPa bonus/rank point threshold from 40 to 75. Thus making kPa more attractive by being easier to achieve but also add a little challenge. Auto value would be 2:1 for the first 10 fuel in H.G. and 1:1 for any additional fuel beyond that. With the 2:1 ratio here you still get an added bump in auto without making it too easy by just dumping a hopper into the high goal in auto. Fuel in L.G. would be similar 1:1 for first 10 fuel, and then 1:2 for the rest of auto.
Edit: I forgot to add that the bonus for Elims for 4 rotors would be 60 and the k.P.a. would be 40.
I still don’t get why they made a net behind the goal to funnel it back but didn’t make it feed into the goal. Make in the netting terminate at the boiler so fuel that hits it goes in is probably the biggest change I would make.
If we could redo our season we would probably go the way of the Velcro climber. I came up with an idea to climb the game rope and spent the entire build season making it a reality. In the end, while it worked, it took up almost half the robot and we were eliminated at semifinals in Arizona west due to a flaw in the design that keeps ropes with strange bends at the tail from being climbable.
As far as rules, I thought steamworks was lovely with just the right mixture of helpful and undhelpfully ambiguous rules. Also I’ve spent so much time analyzing them that I have killed some of the creativity in my brain necessary to come up with changes. Maybe if they removed those annoying little neon balls that always found their way on the field…
If I could make an adjustment to the rules, it’d be the value of Fuel, most likely 1/2 instead of 1/3 and 1/6 instead of 1/9 (and 1 point and 1/3 point respectively in auto). That single change would not affect robot design, but it would be a major balancer in terms of fuel/gears strategy. Fun…
Change fuel value from 1/3 kpa to 1 kpa for the high goal and from 1/9 kpa to 1/3 kpa for the low goal
Change gear scoring to the following: Each gear placed on the airship is worth 5 points, and each rotor spinning by the end of the match earns the alliance a 10 point bonus
Fuel 1/2 and 1/4 instead of 1/3 1/9
Climbing is a race like mini bots in 2011. Only 1st team up gets 50 then decrease each climb by 5-10 points, and climbing can only happen in last 20 seconds not 30.
I’ll address number 2 because it’s still useful, but I think it would have worked well for number 1 as well.
Climbs are worth 30pts.
4 rotors are worth 30pts. (Or a ranking point in quals)
High fuel is worth 1kPa in auto or 1/2kPa in telop.
Low fuel is worth 1/3kPa in auto or 1/6kPa in telop.
Only 2 climbs count. Point value stays the same so that an alliance can come back to win at the end from a 1 rotor deficit by having a 1 climb advantage (otherwise the end game is meaningless). Only 2 climbs allows a team to be viable for playoffs without a climber.
No reserve gear. This makes being able to only do a single gear slightly more valuable, while making 3 or 4 rotors a more difficult challenge. It also makes the balance between gears and climbing more even since one robot that climbs without anything else forces an opposing alliance without climbers to score 6 gears not to lose currently, and two robots climbing results in a loss or tie for an alliance that can’t climb if they don’t reach 4 rotors.
Raise the height of all hoppers by 3 inches so balls actually roll into a 24" tall robot across the bumper gap without a team having to build drop down sides, while still requiring some work for 36" tall robots that want to take advantage of the extra height. The hoppers are there to make ball acquisition easier than a floor pickup, and shouldn’t require an active mechanism or incredibly short robot to fall in properly.
Raise the height of human loading stations by 3 inches, for same reasons as above.
Change fuel to be worth 1 point/kPa in the high goal and 1/3 point/kPa in the low goal for both teleop and auto. Put the ranking point/20 point bonus threshold at 60 kPa. Fuel is simply not worth enough right now. A bonus threshold of 60 would still be difficult for all but the best teams to achieve alone but is possible with a combination of two good fuel bots that invest a sizable amount of match time in the objective. It also gives incentive to care about fuel after autonomous since a team is unlikely to ever reach the 60 kPa threshold solo in autonomous.
Give a 10 point bonus in autonomous for reaching a 10 kPa threshold, so that scoring all 10 preloaded balls in the high goal is worth the same value as starting a rotor in autonomous.
Items 3 - 5 are crucial if FIRST wants the low goal to be a viable option for low resource teams. Fuel need to be worth scoring, and a team needs to be able to score them with a box on wheels that doesn’t have a floor pick up.
If I we’re to start over I would eliminate the side boilers entirely and instead make a high goal in the center of the airship surrounded by netting to protect the kids. Points in the boiler would be scored by height, with easily identified markings (for example 5 points for every 5" that are filled). Fuel that is scored does not return to the field. In lieu of a low hopper there would be a port on the floor that can transfer fuel to the boiler via conveyer belt at a fixed rate (say 1 ball per second). Teams would get 1 RP for filling the boiler completely.
Only field ropes would be permitted.
The reserve gear and 4th rotor would be eliminated. Teams would still get 1 RP for getting three rotors. Each rotor would require 4 gears to activate, with no gears prepopulated.
Ropes, gears, and fuel would be scored equally, meaning that a robot that was dedicated to fuel would be able to score just as many points as a robot dedicated to gears.
Player stations would be located diagonally on opposite sides of the field.
From an observers standpoint, my biggest issues was knowing how many gears were needed to make the next rotor turn. Some announcers kept us informed, but I would rather have had a light illuminate each time a gear was scored and have those lights grouped by rotor so observers could see exactly how each team was doing.
Another thing missing was the actual points scored in auto. This is an important scouting metric and something that was fun to watch and compare. Since the camera angles were shifting, it was not possible to tell what each alliance did. One could guess from the score, but not based on the data First displays.
I really liked the way the PNW reported team stats by including the team number with the team name.
My suggested changes to the game include:
Removing all protected zones to encourage defense
Increase fuel points in auto to 1 point per fuel high goal, .5 points in low goal
