http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex-clean-sweep.shtml
This looks to be awesome!!
We’ll be back in VEX for this year.
A few points.
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FIRST can take a page out of IFI’s book. The game was launched immediately after the next season, with, I bet little to no confusion. Granted the animation and other documents haven’t been released, but still, it’s nice to know.
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Balls…intersting. I’m predicting a tank tread dominated win. :D.
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Am I proper to understand that teams will have to score over the barrier and on the other side? THAT is really new.
Perhaps
If you are envisioning a tank tread conveyor that
adjusts to 2 or 3 widths during the game, and
can reach over the wall and the other alliance’s goal, and
can predictably handle footballs, and
can pull the small balls out of the holes in the fence
then I totally agree 
Blake
I don’t think the threads need to exactly adjust to the width. The smaller balls are 4" in Diameter so that means roughly 2 treads, but the treads can be spaced out. But scoring the 9" ball will be a “bit” of a challenge.
On page 8 of http://www.vexrobotics.com/docs/vex-clean-sweep/vex-clean-sweep-manual-20090502.pdf it says the medium balls are worth 3 points but everywhere else it says 5. Someone probably rushed this file.
I really like the way this game looks. It’s going to be strategy Dependant which is always cool and I think we’re going to see some neat designs…
Who knows, TheFro might start a vex team… I do have like $1500 in vex stuff lying around…
I don’t think this game is going to be as strategy Dependant as the others.
Mainly because robots cannot really cross the barrier. What might be interesting is having a robot which can cross under the slot and steal all of the balls that are on the other side.
Defense is almost 0 in the game unless a team decides to cross the slot.
Contact Defense is almost Zero, you’re right.
But, if you score on your opponent you’re essentially giving them balls to score on you. So then, if you control when you give them balls you can control when they can score. My idea would be to let my opponent score on my side the whole match (while maybe defending the tall goals) and then gather up what they’ve scored on me and then wait until the last few seconds of the game and dump the balls onto my opponents side. If you do it late enough, your opponent can’t gather the balls back up to retaliate. So you can play defense, it just takes some creativity, a bit of strategy and a lot of Courage.
Also, you can’t cross the slot intentionally according to SG4:
<SG4> Robots are prohibited from intentionally contacting any of the tiles in their scoring zone. Robots
violating this rule will be disabled at the discretion of the head-referee. The intent of this rule is not to
penalize teams who accidentally reach over/under the wall and touch their scoring zone, but instead
prevent strategies involving robots crossing to the far side of the field.
We found this game to be a lot more like FRC than vex competitions usually are - it’s not just the usual scoring in goals.
The game pieces are quite nice - while the “real” ones have a vex logo on them, I think it would be easy and cheap to buy them elsewhere for practice.
Defense will be FAR from nonexistent in this game. Just nonexistent in the forms we’re used to.
Think Stack attack wings…
Aside from that, looks to be a very good game. No “traditional” defense will encourage creative designs, that may be too fragile to use in a normal game.
I have not had a chance to handle the gamepieces yet, but I imagine that the varied sizes, and football shape, will lead to many creative pickup/sorting methods.
The large balls offer an interesting strategic decision. They should only be introduced if you are confident that you will be able to get them to the other side in time.
And finally, we seem to have another “dumpers vs. shooters” debate on our hands 
As it’s far from likely that I’d be involved in VRC in any way (barring the college team pilot thing), here were some of my impressions skimming the rules.
I can easily see some sort of uber-efficient small ball collecting / hopper bot being a very valuable partner. Those are the only balls you can score that your opponent can’t score back at you, and you get 18 not even counting the balls between the divider if those are hard to access. You can scoop 6 up in autonomous, and then go ahead and collect and score em in the high goals for a nice 54 points ! The tricky part of course is that the goal is across the barrier, which ruins my Syntax Error “Hopper that uses the side of the triangle goal to support the balls before it gets to the top” design.
The football scoring impact is misleading; they matter twice as much as their score indicates, since they are also removed from your opponent’s total as you add them.
It’s too bad there are no Vex pneumatics so that you can’t have some kind of “Ball Puncher” that picks up balls and launches them across the field.
Err, GC/EC has a VEX Pneumatics kit??
I’m looking at a few different designs…
a) big box, bottom drops into ramp with aid of a servo
b) long rectangular tube which stores lots of balls, tilts to score
c) simple arm, maybe with a curved bar rather than square to control the roll-age of the balls
or d which is a secret until my team shoots it down 
Heh heh heh. Your homework is to come up with three great defensive robot designs by Tuesday.
I think the design is devilish, and I have already seen the game pieces in person. Think “Aim High poof ball” in different shapes. I’m trying to work out a hybrid Stack Attack, Aim High, Lunacy robot out of Vex parts that will fit in an 18" cube…
Doesn’t say anywhere that you cant block the slot
All I can think of is strategies like Beatty 2002 and 237 from 2004.
I had this EXACT idea earlier. Even down to the different ball sizes and “locking” the balls in. (Although I didn’t call it that) I think the only differences were I had a shorter seperating wall, only 2 ball sizes instead of 3, and no footballs
Anyway, I won’t be competeing, but I made an idea for a design anyway 
Assuming its legal to cover your own triangles, I would make a bot that could cover both triangles and has a massive hopper in the middle that your allies can fill up, that dumps all the balls at the last second.
I don’t think it is feasible to lock up the small balls, thay are 4 inch diameter, it would be hard to score more than 5 in one 18 inch high goal, if you get five in each goal it is equal to 6 medium balls, it would be easier just to shoot balls over the wall.
There are VEX pneumatics and they’ve been legal for two years in VRC.
Ah, I still have the old FTC rules stuck in my head. (designs winning robot)
Something (for me!) to keep in mind is that with absolutely no robot pushing wars to worry about, stuff like omni drive is completely viable, when in previous years a robot with omni drive would get pushed too easily. I’d love to be able to strafe along the barrier with a giant wall of sheet metal.
I have a (bad) design idea for some kind of hinged wall of VEX plates that I might build for fun this summer… it’d be nice and geared, but basically an 18 inch square bot has a plate that folds up from parallel to perpendicular to the chassis, then flaps on the side (that were underneath it when folded) pop out, then the robot plays defense. I don’t know how well it would work but building Vex robots that aren’t gimmicks isn’t really my thing. 
Heh, now I want to make a CAD render of the idea. Or just build it.
I’ve posted some pictures of the new game objects and field layout at: http://www.vexforum.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=3266. There are five total, scroll down to go to the others.