FIRST has, for a few years now, left some element of the game open to an increase of difficulty for championships. This year, it’s tower strength. Do you think it will increase, and if so, to what level?
I was honestly surprised at how damaged we were able to get the tower with a good alliance in week 2. We were able to get it to a strength of -4 in one match. Now, for week 2, it was absolutely an exception rather than the rule. It seemed to almost never occur during qualifications (happened only a couple times in Pittsburgh), but in elims/playoffs, it’s almost too easy with a well formed alliance. So again, given what we know now about how the game is being played, do you think the tower strength will increase for championships?
My guess is it gets increased to at least a strength of 10.
i find it hard to believe they will change it just because of how rarely it happens but it always a possibility i would like to see it change for sure. maybe to even more ten 10 to something where it a game changer and not guaranteed every round.
We will see more clearly as the weeks progress. Captures are still rare–though there have been a few in quals, usually they’re seen in semis and finals.
If the teams progress to where most matches on Saturday get very close, or succeed, I would expect a strengthening. If, on the other hand, captures remain a relative rarity outside of elims, and somewhat in elims, I’d expect anywhere from nothing to a 1-point weakening.
it’s obviously too early to tell, but I dont think that getting the 8 boulders in is meant to be a goal meant only for the best of alliances. another part of the challenge is getting all 3 robots on the batter, which can be quite difficult for some teams
My fear is breaching will almost become trivial at the championship, where nearly all alliances will be able to do it unless they really screw something up.
It’s already basically trivial at the regional level(for eliminations at least). I honestly wouldn’t mind a update for champs where the health is increased to 3. Though I can imagine there would be a lot of outrage since it wasn’t in the rules.
Yeah the beaching strength could be increased to three theoretically but it won’t be, because they didn’t put it in the rules. In terms of tower strength, I can see anywhere from 10 to 12, if they do anything at all.
Increasing health for the defenses is way more game-changing than increasing the health of the tower. Increasing the health of the defenses implies that points will be awarded for the third crossing (if not, the rules will be less intuitive and even harder to understand). That increases the viability of breacher bots and render high goal shooters more obsolete. After all, crossing the low bar awards the same amount of points as scoring in the high goal. A big reason to go for the more difficult high goal shot is the unlimited points potential. Lifting the limit on crossing points will drastically change the nature of the game, unfairly devaluing high goal shooter strategies and rewarding breacher bot strategies, both decided with the original game in mind.
Increasing defenses’ health is too much of a game changer. I don’t think it will or should happen.
Who ever decided that the majority of that match needed to be shot through a overhead view from the tower, and not the very nice side view where everything can be seen deserves to be dragged into the street and pelted with boulders.
In their defense, they were probably standing on the balcony that overlooked the field judging by the angle, and most likely only wanted to record their one alliance.
Anyway, if an alliance with a rookie team can score so many boulders, top-tier robots at champs most certainly can.
The rules also didn’t say that the rock wall dimensions would change before the end of build or that different fabric would go on the low bar between week 1 and week 2.
Is there any reason a change in defense strength couldn’t just be in a team update?
This is a pretty interesting discussion because we don’t know what it would take for the GDC to use this rule. It’s been in the books since 2012 (probably because minibots were overpowered in 2011) and hasn’t been used since then. But I’d have to say the games have been reasonably balanced in all those years (2015 was bad but changing point values would not have helped). Would the GDC only act if the game is very broken? Would they do it simply to improve gameplay?