Finals match 2 at the 2015 Waterbury District Event in CT.
Our alliance (blue) thought we had been defeated based on the real-time scores until a really long pause after the match by the Referees scoring the match.
We assumed they just wanted to delay the outcome to keep us on our toes, but they were actually calculating all the Litter scored. For everyone who doesn’t think Litter can be a factor, you’ve never seen amazing human players like Team 4557’s and ours (Team 237) working together.
The Finals 2 match Litter score pushed it to 3 matches, and we eventually lost in the 3rd but the amount of energy as this screen went up was AMAZING to witness!!
In the first game of the finals at Lake Superior Regional, the score was 100 to 101. The winning alliance was able to move one Litter to the landfill in the last few seconds. Without the move, the other alliance would have won 104 to 100.
I’m preparing our team to throw litter as needed in weeks 5 and 6 hopefully by then litter throwing will NOT be a factor as is it “grey’s” competition …but be prepared anyhow! A good team should not need throw any litter to win IMO. But IF challenged should respond in kind…as in being prepared.
On a related note, our human player got all 10 noodles across for a perfect 40 points during the quarterfinals of the Georgia Southern Classic Regional. Without that perfect game, we wouldn’t have advanced to the semifinals. Has anyone else seen all 10 thrown successfully across?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the “Litter” score shown on the scoreboard also includes the 6 pts for each litter placed in an RC, no?
My point being that sometimes those high litter scores you see are not due to accurate throwers, but rather to teams going for maximum points by placing the litter where (IMHO) it really belongs.
I really feel like that litter shouldn’t be worth so much but it is what it is.
I also really don’t like that one of the core mechanics of this game is promoting throwing trash into your competitions work space, that is just rude.
I would love for the GDC to adjust the litter points to 2 or 3 for thrown. While they are impressive to score and should be valuable, I don’t think they should be valued about equal to the maximum you can get with a stack, it makes seeding matches just that more wonky with co-op thrown in. I really didn’t expect to see the level of noodle throwing we saw at Georgia though, 1466 was an absolute noodle machine.
I don’t think changing point values fixes anything. Even if they made all litter not in cans worth zero points, in elims you ought to throw them across just to make your opponents’ match more difficult. A lucky throw can make your opponent waste tons of time - or even knock them out for the rest of the match if it ends up in a drivetrain or mechanism.
Nicollet FEAR was amazing at this. Seeing the first few matches played, noodles did play a huge part of the game until robots were able to create a strategy that worked for them and their alliance. After that, teleop/coopertition did end up counting more than noodles. I didn’t see Auto do too much to scoring compared to last year.
The purpose of the game was to encourage recycling and care of the environment.
The unintended consequences are that it encourages a team to litter to score points, and to muck up the other field to keep the other side from scoring points. Not a message you want to teach the kids - beneficial to litter.
