It has become very apparent to me over the last few weeks that a level 3 climb, with or without scoring the colored discs, can easily be outscored. Many teams that can climb to level 3 dedicated their entire build season just to being able to climb due to its difficulty. There are a handful of teams that can easily climb and shoot, like 1114, 148, etc. but many non-powerhouse teams that climb can only climb.
the GDC has also had many rule updates that have almost completely changed the game, like the rule update about the discs being thrown by feeders, and the loading zone fouls. So I was wondering what we think the GDC will do in preparation for Championships. I believe they said that they might increase the point value for a level 3 climb, and if they do I think it will be 50 or 60 points, just to make climbing worth the time and effort it takes.
But I posted this here becuase I wanna know what you guys think.
I’ve never been of the opinion that end-game should be worth the same as the main autonomous and teleop game. I like the point value where its at right now. End game is big, but not big enough to win matches with no autonomous and teleop scoring in most elimination matches. 30 points is equivalent to 10 discs in the high goal during teleop. I feel like this is a fair representation of how difficult it is to shoot a disc vs climb to the top.
While I agree that Level 3 climbing seems underpointed vs. its difficulty, I don’t think the difference in value between climbing and disc scoring is great enough to warrant any scoring changes. Even though there is a rule allowing it in the manual, I would imagine the FRC community (or at least many of its members on this forum) would be furious. Also, remember that most Level 3 climbers have room to improve by scoring 20 points of dumpable pyramid discs.
I could definitely see them increasing the points for climbing, if only to increase the diversity of what’s on the field. From everything I’ve seen, climbing is probably the hardest challenge I’ve seen in FRC, and one of the coolest to see it work correctly! I want to see climbing on Einstein… but the way matches are going right now, it seems like shooting typically earns you more points - we see alliances whose first two picks are shooters beating alliances who pair up a shooter with a climber more often than we see the alliance with a dedicated climber winning.
I’ll be honest, I don’t even like that they allow themselves the option of changing the points at CMP. The beauty of this competition is we all start from the same set of rules and decide our strategies from there. We then have to either adapt to changing circumstances (rebuild per 67 in 2009) or deal with it.
Climbers without shooters knew they were capped at earning 30 points. Shooters knew they would be more variable in their points and more susceptible to defense. These are called tradeoffs and we all had to make them. We made our bed, now we have to lay in it.
I think it’s too early to tell. Many teams are still ironing out climbing, so it’s not as common to see.
A team with 2 climber (with one that can dump) can score 80pts now. If they increase the value from 30 to 40, they are at 100 points.
Last years end game, was easier, but less valuable since points were colaborative, each robot could contribute 10 (or 13.33 points for a triple). This year each team can contribute 10 easily, or 30 with good design (and another 20 within arms reach). I think the increase this year pretty effectively offsets the higher scoring capacity of the game piece, but not enough people can climb (yet?).
An alliance of 2 decent shooters (even just for auton) that can climb, and some dumping ability, and a defender with auton and hang can rack up a whopping 144pts (two climbs, one hang, four pyramid discs, and nine auton shots, no teleop shots).
Such an alliance would not be easy to beat, without scoring a single teleop disc.
Off the top of my head, 1114 has a VERY fast 30 point climber and 179 climbs for 20 and dumps colored disks, and they’ve both won regionals. I also saw 2 dedicated climbers be high seeds at GSR (213 and 61) with 61 making the finals as an alliance captain. Obviously I didn’t hit all the good climbers, so I think climbing will definitely be playing a big role in matches come April.
I would also agree that hanging on the first bar is somewhat overpowered. It didn’t seem that way at the start, but I realized that 3 10 point hangs just don’t seem equal in difficulty to 1 30 point climb. I think it should be worth somewhere in-between 5-10 points.
Oh 79 not 179. Guess I was wrong on that one. Still, I think climbers have shown that they can be useful enough that we’ll see at least one on Einstein.
The 2011 manual did not contain this language, it first appeared in 2012, as a response to the power of minibots in 2011. The combination of diminishing returns on tube scoring and the point swing of minibots, by the upper eschelons of play most matches were almost pre-determined. Whoever had the faster minibots won.
I don’t believe FIRST will exercise this clause, as I believe that it is in place only for a scenario like 2011 where one method of scoring is so powerful and so easy for all top teams to do that the match outcome is virtually assured, save for breakdowns or penalties. Changing the minibots points for championships that year would not have affected most teams, because by that point most teams had almost the same system, and it could be very easily adapted. Even then, the GDC would have given serious consideration before issuing the order to change the points. There’s always SOMEONE who is greatly affected.
It is NOT a fallback because the game doesn’t play exactly like they anticipated. I choose to believe the GDC understands the impact and the backlash that would result if they chose to change the points. Regardless of how the game actually plays, teams made strategy decisions at the beginning of the season based on the point distribution. This clause is for extreme scenarios, and is there “just in case”.
If you thought the backlash was bad from the Team Update that changed the way the 54" cylinder was applied to climbing robots (before it was clarified), imagine the outcry if they change the points.
Not only can robots not just bolt on 30pt climbers, but this change cannot take effect until championships. With the new qualification-only rules this year, a larger number of teams who attend championships will be the teams who succeeded at the regional level. Changing the point scoring for championships could not only drastically change which robots are successful there, but I suspect would also upset the teams who’s strategy just got a points buff, but were unable to qualify with the old points.
I don’t believe this is a huge game changer, honestly. I think the game is great the way it is, and I really think the freakout over this change was unnecessarily large. I will admit that I was concerned if you care to dig up my post on that, but it seemed to work itself out just fine. That was a much smaller change than changing climbing points would be.
Second, a dedicated climber is still useful. You don’t need to be an alliance captain to win. It can be outscored, but it really depends what you are up against. If you can connect some shots in autonomous and guarantee that you will add 30 to our score, I don’t think that is a robot that would be overlooked. From a match-perspective, if an opposing alliance knows of the dedicated climber, they will try to stop it (FLR eliminations against 340 and 1559).
Lastly, trade-offs. It was mentioned earlier and I couldn’t agree more. The point values drove strategy and design decisions. People had a massive argument over IRI removing the coopertition bridge and that isn’t even a regular season competition. If climb points changed for the champioship, the uproar would, well…gethca’ popcorn ready.
TL;DR? This game is pretty cool and there are lots of great designs. It;s fine the way it is, no need to change it.
I know many teams like ours had long discussions as to what aspects of the game were more valuable than others. Because of the small footprint our team decided it would be tough to fit both a 3rd level climber and a good shooter on our bot. We also, after much deliberation, decided we wanted to score 70 points by ourselves in order to give ourselves the best chance to win in qualifications no matter who we were paired with. (Based on the matches so far I think we did a great job estimating the score we would need). Because of those goals we decided on a strategy of 18pt auto, 10pt hang, and 42pt (13 disk) teleop. By the end of our regional we were able to accomplish very close to that exact goal, making it the correct strategy based on the game constraints. Now if the GDC were to change point values I think that would take away a ton of the strategies that many teams used in deciding how to build their robot.
By the way just because a climb/dumper can’t outscore a good shooter doesn’t mean they can’t play defense for 1:30, then go climb and dump, and still be net positive of that great shooter because of how much they slowed them down. I’m sure that is the strategy of many of the best climb/dump teams that do not have a shooter.
So far, the averages work themselves out so that each part of the game accounts for a nearly equal amount of the points. Last I checked it was like 13 auton, 14 tele, and 12 climbing for an alliance. So in terms of separate parts of the game, the points are about on par. Good alliances (elimination alliances) can score 3x each of those points easily.
Now, the fact that auton and tele correlate much more than climbing with anything makes it seem like climbing got the short end. But while climbing relies on heavy mechanical skills that tele, auton relies on heavier programming skills then tele. I’m not saying they are directly a fair trade, but we have to remember that there is more to a robot than its metal.
Removing the 10pt hang would basically drop the climbing average to next to nothing since there seems to be < 5 30pt climbers at each regional, as opposed to half the robots on the field being able to hang.
I don’t think the problem is in the scoring. I think its just in the faults of the robots themselves. If a robot spends the entire match climbing, that turns it into a 3v2 match essentially. A 50 or even 30pt contribution is much better than the average score (~41) divided by 3 teams (13pts). But when you spend 2 minutes to do just that, or worse, do it in 30 seconds but that 30 seconds happens to be immediately after autonomous, you hurt your alliance.
I personally don’t think FIRST will change anything. The 3 parts of the game are about balanced. I think teams should just reassess their strategies if they are focused climbers. Focused climbers have the opportunity to be a huge contribution to a team. But if it only takes you 30 seconds or even a minute, that doesn’t mean you spend the remainder of the match at the top of the pyramid. If you can prevent or slow down points before you go climb, that is essentially you scoring more points for your own alliance.
If you want a perfect example, look at 148 in 2008. Look at how their strategy changed from the first regional, to their strategy on Einstein.
I agree 100%. The GDC should not change the scoring for the champs. We all started out with the same rules and picked a strategy based on the rules and scoring that was presented. In our case we ruled out more than a 10 point hang as our feeling is that the 30 or 50 potential points of climbing is not worth the difficulty / risk of damage. It is a risk/reward thing but everybody looks at it different. That is what makes things interesting is to see the diversity of robots and the change in strategy as the competitons progress.
If the scoring had been higher for climbing out of the gate we would have factored that in and maybe went a different direction.